Daming 1805

Chapter 251 Let's Use Plastic
When Qi Yanhuai and several craftsmen repaired the "wordless typewriter", Huang Yue, Minister of Rites, rushed to the testing site.

Qi Yanhuai and the craftsmen hurriedly saluted:
"I met Uncle Da Zong. Is Uncle Da Zong free to come to the Ministry of Industry today?"

The 57-year-old Huang Yue said with a very good spirit and a smile:
"The old man heard about the mock test today, so hurry up and take a look, how is the situation now?"

Qi Yanhuai didn't hide anything:
"Something went wrong just now, and it has just been repaired. Uncle Da Zong can come and try it."

Huang Yue had already seen the machine on the workbench, and immediately walked over to reach out to press the keys.

Huang Yue followed the development progress throughout the whole process, so he knew the logic of this typewriter.

Reach out and press the keys of the four partitions, and then instinctively say:
"Heavy...the buttons in this zone A are too heavy..."

Qi Yanhuai said as a matter of course:

"A district controls a large drum, which can be engraved with more than 8000 characters of lead, which weighs more than ten kilograms.

"You press it, and the whole thing spins, and it's going to go into place before you hit all four keys.

"When you get to the place, you have to stop immediately. The process of accelerating, decelerating, and braking is full of energy."

Huang Yue had already typed three characters on his hand, and the machine made three knocking sounds, and then sighed again:

"The old man thought that the keystroke rhythm of the machine was okay, but the keys in Zone A were really heavy.

"We have to find a way to reduce it, otherwise we can't use it for a long time."

Qi Yanhuai is already thinking about this question:
"Even if this structure is changed to aluminum, it still has to weigh three kilograms.

"If you want to continue to reduce, you can only give up the metal type.

"I have to go back and use wood to make types, or try plastic..."

Huang Yue continued to tap the keyboard in the first area slowly, watching the big drum rotate continuously:
"Then hurry up and change the wood or... the plastic to try, our coding is almost done."

Qi Yanhuai thought for a while and said:
"Actually, you can try it now... Let's take off a part of the lead mold and feel it..."

Qi Yanhuai opened the typewriter, removed the large core cylinder, and removed 64 of the 64 small cylinders above, that is, 48 lead rods, leaving sixteen, and two lead rods on each middle cylinder.

Qi Yanhuai put the large drum into the typewriter cavity again, and restored the structure to its original state:

"This is almost the weight of the aluminum alloy font.

"Uncle Da Zong, try it again, just follow the eight constructions in District A, and feel how powerful it is.

"Don't press the keys at the back. Now there is no lead rod to support it. After pressing the four keys, the hammer can smash the paper and ribbon."

Huang Yue pressed a few more times, and said quite satisfied:

"That's right, it's much lighter this way, and it's barely usable. Can the plastic be lighter?"

Qi Yanhuai made up his mind and said:
"Changing plastic to make fonts can save another three-fifths.

"If it is made of white pear wood engraving, it can be reduced to one-sixth of the current size.

"However, the engraving wood is not hard enough, and it will continue to be beaten during the typing process, which may require frequent replacement of the font.

"If you use harder rosewood, it may weigh more than plastic."

Huang Yue continued to press the keyboard, made a brief assessment and said:

"Then make one set with plastic and one set with aluminum alloy, try the weight difference, and compare and test."

Qi Yanhuai nodded in agreement, and went back to make aluminum alloy and plastic font models.

Let a young craftsman reinstall the current typewriter.

Just keep clicking on the spot, record the fault when it is found, repair it and check whether it will reappear.

This continues to verify the failure rate of the machine.

Over the next few days, the typewriter was struck tens of thousands of times.

There have been nearly a hundred various failures one after another. After repeated repairs and adjustments, the failure rate has gradually decreased a lot.

Qi Yanhuai made several sets of aluminum alloy and plastic fonts in the factory of the Ministry of Industry.

Still for simulation, they are all eight-faced flat cylinders with no words engraved on them.

Needless to say, aluminum alloys, plastics already exist in this era.

But not in the modern sense, mainly through plastics produced by the petrochemical industry.

Instead, it is in the initial stage of synthetic resins based on natural polymer materials and coal chemical industry.

What Zhu Jingyuan arranges is developing a synthetic material that uses petroleum as the main raw material.

The first target is polyethylene, and then synthetic fibers, that is, "chemical fibers" such as nylon and spandex.

Qi Yanhuai returned to the laboratory of the Ministry of Industry, replaced the typewriter with aluminum and plastic type models, and tested the effect of typing.

When Huang Yue, Shangshu of the Ministry of Accounting, went to the Ministry of Industry to check the progress again, he brought along the code list that was finally finalized.

Qi Yanhuai handed over the typewriter to Huang Yue again, letting the old man feel the feeling of typing and look at the stopwatch by himself.

Huang Yue explained to Qi Yanhuai while pressing the button:

"Although the eight-by-eight-by-eight-by-sixteen code table can accommodate the general standard Chinese character table, the number of redundant codes is too small.

"There are a large number of Chinese characters. According to the coding rules we have formulated, the positions where they should go cannot be accommodated, so we have to manually move them to codes that do not conform to the rules.

"Users who use this kind of typewriter have to forcibly memorize the unique codes of these Chinese characters."

Qi Yanhuai flipped through the form in his hand and subconsciously asked:

"Small drums with a length of 32 squares on each side, this is not the case, right? After all, the coding capacity has doubled."

Huang Yue thought for a while and said:

"It can't be said that there is no such thing at all, because no matter how we adjust the rules, there are always some Chinese characters whose codes are exactly the same.

"So we have to keep one with the normal code, and change the other Chinese characters to the empty boxes behind the same line.

"However, this change is easier to remember. Compared with the normal encoding, only the last key is different."

Qi Yanhuai didn't know much about Chinese character encoding, while Huang Yue was very knowledgeable.

The two parties are now working together, so when encountering problems, they will continue to ask and discuss:
"Then if it is only required to accommodate common standard Chinese characters, at the same time, in order to avoid forced cross-regional large-scale recoding.

"To achieve the effect of only changing the last key of repeated code characters, how many grids do you need on each side of the small roller?"

Huang Yue once again recalled the information discussed and recorded in coding:
"Probably less than 24 are enough, a total of 1 eight encoding positions."

Qi Yanhuai thought for a while and said:
"If it is not an official popular typewriter, it is made according to the 24 grids on each side of the small drum.

"In this way, on the two types of typewriters, the encoding of the same word is exactly the same, and seamless switching can be performed."

Huang Yue pressed the keyboard of the typewriter in front of him:
"Then the keys of the universal typewriter will be aggravated again..."

Qi Yanhuai smiled and said:
"Anyway, we have to make a 32-grid one. That must be the heaviest one. Let's try it with plastic."

Qi Yanhuai borrowed the typewriter again, and replaced the aluminum alloy typefaces on the cylinder with synthetic resin ones:

"The proportion of plastic is only [-]% of that of aluminum alloy.

"The length increases from 24 grids to [-] grids and it will not be heavier than aluminum alloy.

"Uncle Da Zong, try again and see how the effect is..."

Huang Yue came to press the keys again to experience the effect of typing. This time he said with satisfaction:
"That's right. It's definitely usable at this weight. We'll hurry up and make the finished product. Your Majesty will wait and see."

Qi Yanhuai agreed, took the Chinese character code from the Ministry of Rites, and went to the factory again to prepare new fonts.

The typewriter does not need to be redone. For the convenience of testing, the typewriter was originally made according to the width of 32 grids.

According to the original plan, the sixteen-block typewriter that was put on the market was completely reduced.

Changing the design now just changes the reduction range from halving to [-]/[-] reduction.

The typewriter is still handed over to a few young craftsmen to take turns tapping, looking for possible faults.

The actual effect of this process is similar to finding a BUG.

It will be shown to the emperor later, it is best not to be the problem when it is shown.

It is necessary to find out and solve possible problems in advance as much as possible.

The production of plastic products is usually an injection molding process, and the name of the plastic also comes from this, the material that can be shaped.

Injection molding begins with a metal mold, engraving more than 8000 Chinese characters on it, and then injecting melted plastic material, waiting for cooling and setting.

In this era, there are no CNC machine tools, and making metal molds is a big project, which consumes huge resources.

Therefore, the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Rites decided not to make formal font molds before the typewriter molds were completely finalized.

Instead, 64 resin sticks were directly distributed to 64 letter-engraving craftsmen, and a set was engraved by engraving for trial use.

There are more than 8000 Chinese characters in total, and each craftsman carves [-] characters a day, which is absolutely finished in three days.

Four days later, Qi Yanhuai returned to the Ministry of Industry with the plastic type models and put them back on the prototype typewriter that had been typed 10,000+ times.

Under the watchful eyes of a group of craftsmen, Qi Yanhuai sat down in front of the typewriter and adjusted the state of the machine.

Then I picked up the code list made by the Ministry of Rites and searched for a few words manually.

Theoretically speaking, after learning the coding logic, you can look at the Chinese characters and code yourself, without having to look up the table.

But Qi Yanhuai has never learned it, and even the person who designed the code has never practiced it. Shanghai has never done this in this world.

So the process of Qi Yanhuai's tapping was called a slow, intermittent, one yard, one yard slowly tapping.

Pa, pa, pa, pa, after waiting for a long time, I finished typing the four Chinese characters:
"Da-Ming-An-Kang".

(End of this chapter)