A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

In the era of poverty and poverty like the Republic of China, what was really difficult to develop were large-scale industries, such as compulsory education, infrastructure construction, sound manufacturing, etc. These all required huge government expenditures, and at the same time, a stable situation was required.

These two points were completely unsatisfied during the Republic of China.

On the contrary, a "niche" high-end industry like aircraft can be started as long as someone has the skills.

Of course, everyone must understand that this is a shortcut, a detour, not the right path. Just like India in later generations, the manufacturing industry did not develop, but instead focused on developing the IT industry, which is a high-end category in the tertiary industry.

But in the current situation of the early Republic of China, Li Yu had no other options, and engaging in high-end industries could at least boost national confidence.

In addition, there is a very crucial point. It is not as difficult to build an airplane at this time as it was in later generations, and there are no design standards.

There is a story that in the early days of World War I, you only needed to draw the shape of a new aircraft with chalk on the factory floor, and a complete aircraft could be shipped from the factory two weeks later.

And the body material is relatively simple: wood is used. Timber is easy to obtain anywhere and does not depend on the smelting industry.

The two most important components of an airplane at the beginning of the twentieth century were the engine and the wings.

The engine can't trouble Li Yu, after all, some patents have been registered.

Until World War II, except for some design differences, such as cooling methods, aircraft engines could be regarded as piston engines as a whole. They were not much different from automobile engines and did not pose any particular technical difficulties.

Although some excellent engines were still born in this process, they can only be called "aircraft engines" and cannot be called "aviation engines". They are fundamentally different.

To take a step back, even if Li Yu couldn't make an aircraft engine, he could still buy it on the market.

The best aircraft engine during World War I was the American-made "Liberty" engine. This engine was produced in extremely large quantities, far exceeding that of aircraft.

As a result, many "Freeman" engines were secretly used on motorboats. With their powerful power, some smugglers could leave the coast patrol boats far behind.

As for the wing, as the most important part of the aircraft fuselage component, it carries most of the aerodynamic load of the aircraft. The current shape is basically a biplane.

In fact, some people have also built monoplanes in later generations, but biplanes have unique advantages in the aircraft structure of the early 20th century - compared with a single long and large wing, it is bound by support rods and tension wires. The box-like solid structure formed by two small wings together can provide greater pressure and tension during flight, especially during large maneuvers.

Therefore, even during World War I, most of the fighters used in air combat were biplanes.

The monoplane has obvious aerodynamic advantages and can provide the pilot with a wider field of vision. People have long recognized these two advantages.

However, the structure of the monoplane was still a problem. Because the wings currently used are thin, the space inside the wings cannot meet the layout requirements for a large number of masts and other built-in structures.

Many years later, people will gradually realize the huge advantages of thick wings (that is, the wing structure of modern aircraft), but this is a story for a later time.

In addition, just half a year ago, the Blériot XI, a successful example of a monoplane, suffered several crashes due to wing structural failure, making this configuration of monoplane unpopular.

The British and French armies immediately announced a temporary ban on this type of aircraft, resulting in biplanes being the main force for many years to come.

In terms of aerodynamic design, a biplane is much simpler than a monoplane. If you don't pursue extreme flight speed and climbing capabilities, building an airplane is not difficult.

The best way to get publicity in newspapers these days is a successful flight.

After listening to Li Yu's introduction, Shi Liangcai had a preliminary understanding of airplanes and couldn't help but want to see this strange bird that could fly into the sky.

Shi Liangcai said: "Brother Shucai, what you said is too professional. I will definitely not be able to write the manuscript myself. Otherwise, we should start our own scientific magazine as you mentioned before."

"I can't agree more!" Li Yu said, "Your newspaper is an expert in publishing. I will organize a science club and an editorial board to write and review the content."

Historically, China's "Science Magazine" was born in 1915. The founders were a group of Geng Geng scholarship students studying in the United States, and it initially operated in the United States.

Li Yu has contact with most of these people. As for the magazine itself, let it come out a few years in advance.

There were already a group of science and engineering talents returning to China. Li Yu found Hu Dunfu from Datong University and a group of professors. They all hit it off and immediately decided to establish the editorial board of Science Magazine.

Shi Liangcai called on the American editor-in-chief of "Gezhi Compilation" (China's earliest scientific magazine), American Frya, to help.

This old missionary has a deep affection for China. He has spent most of his life translating science and technology magazines, but he feels that he has forgotten "the will of the Lord". Except for going to church on Saturdays, he almost gives up preaching and studies scientific content all day long.

The "Charter for Accepting Chinese Students to Study in the United States", which is a book that international students should read before going to the United States, introduces the American university system, admissions situation, suggestions and advice, a list of American universities, etc., and was also written by Frya.

Franya is now seventy years old, but her spirit is even better than when we met a few years ago.

After all, the Republic of China was a new country with a republican system after France and the United States. He felt that it was very rare.

After experiencing the great historical changes of the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China, he wanted to stay in China.

Frya volunteered to translate the latest European and American scientific magazines, and at the same time roped in her son.

In addition to reprinting content, what is more important is of course personally organizing and writing articles that are suitable for the domestic scientific situation.

Fortunately, science currently has unlimited promotion space in China. Writing articles is not difficult. Li Yu, Hu Dunfu and others can easily contribute. What is more troublesome is formula typesetting.

At this time, there was no TeX formula typesetting system or formula editor on word processing software. It was quite challenging to use movable type printing to correctly type mathematical formulas.

In particular, formulas involving calculus often ran as long as three lines, which was an absolute nightmare for typesetters - and it remained so for most of the next half century.

I don’t know if you have any impression that in the 1980s, many domestic schools still required handwritten templates for printing mathematics test papers. At that time, some thermal textbooks in the former Soviet Union also required handwritten formulas due to the huge number of formulas.

At present, except for some fixed scientific magazines, if a scientist wants to publish a book on his own, the publishing house will only be willing to typeset it separately for him unless he is well-known.

Otherwise - hey, the formulas randomly printed by the publisher are really terrible, and you can only manually add the missing symbols one by one.

It also includes papers majoring in mathematics and physics from various universities. The typesetters are too lazy to arrange them for you, so just handwrite them yourself!

Even after the advent of computer typesetting, the situation did not improve much. It was not until Turing Award winner Knuth became so angry that he came up with the TeX formula typesetting system.

The TeX version update number is very interesting. It is represented by π. It was 1995 in 3.14159 and has now reached 3.141592653. The newer version has a more accurate π value.

In short, in this era where books and knowledge are valuable, publishing scientific and technological books is even more valuable.

Typesetting is a technical job, so Li Yu, Shi Liangcai, and Fu Lanya could only find Zhang Yuanji of the Commercial Press for help. Zhang Yuanji has introduced a lot of English typefaces for a long time, but when he saw those complicated formulas, he also said: "If I want to type them accurately, I will need at least a month of training in a typesetting class."

Shi Liangcai asked: "It takes so long?"

Zhang Yuanji said: "There are not many literate people nowadays, let alone those who know English and mathematical symbols. I offered a high salary of 40 yuan a month, and only three people who knew English were left. And these mathematical formulas of yours are better than The previous introductory mathematics textbooks were countless times more complicated, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to train them for a month.”

Li Yu smiled and said: "They don't need to understand, they just need to discharge it accurately."

Zhang Yuanji said: "In that case, you will be responsible for checking it yourself."

Flan Ya on the side said: "Leave the verification work to me."

Zhang Yuanji said kindly: "Old sir, the characters are very small."

Frya was not convinced at all: "Even if my eyesight is not as good as those of skilled typesetters, what's the difficulty in just checking a few articles?"

"Okay," Zhang Yuanji said, "if you professionals can come forward to check, I will arrange a separate typesetter to help you with typesetting."

Zhang Yuanji's words are very sincere. The typesetters in his hands are all veterans who can quickly find the corresponding words from five to six thousand typefaces and quickly arrange the word order.

There were very few such people during the Republic of China, when the literacy rate was low, and they were absolutely "high-level skilled workers."

"There will be more and more demands for mathematical typesetting in the future, so Brother Xiaozhai doesn't have to worry about wasting labor," Li Yu said.

"Why should I worry about this," Zhang Yuanji said with a smile, "and I will also ask the Commercial Press branch in Beijing to step up printing of your scientific journals at the same time."

The branch of the Commercial Press in Beijing is the Jinghua Press, which is quite powerful throughout the north. Research publications from universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, reports and catalogs from Union Medical College Hospital, calligraphy and painting collections and monthly magazines from the Forbidden City, and books such as Lu Xun's "Wandering" and "Scream" are all undertaken by the Beijing Publishing House.

In the Republic of China, there has always been "commerce in the south and Beijing in the north." In fact, the original owners of both companies were the Commercial Press.

The printing equipment of the Commercial Press and Jinghua Printing Press are very advanced and are basically on par with the world's first-class. As long as there are skilled typesetters, the quality of the publications produced will be very good.

Li Yu asked Fu Lanya again: "How many copies of "Gezhi Collection" did you print in each issue?"

Frya said: ""Gezhi Collection" is a monthly magazine. At the beginning, each volume was issued 3000 copies, and later it was 6000 copies. At its peak, it reached a maximum of 9000 copies."

At that time, it was still the stage of scientific enlightenment, and it was not easy to achieve this kind of circulation.

Shi Liangcai made an estimate and said: "We publish Science Magazine. The initial number can be set at 5000, and it can be increased at any time depending on the sales situation."

Zhang Yuanji came up with an idea and said: "If we can create an interactive Q&A column in the magazine, where subscribers can ask questions and then academic figures like the Shucai brothers can answer, then the monthly magazine can be sold up to 1 copies."

"Make a compromise, let's make 7500 copies." Li Yu finally made the decision.

After roughly deciding on the launch of the magazine, Li Yu went back and wrote a brief article about aircraft, mainly introducing the history of aircraft and an overview of aircraft development in the past four to five years.

Although the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903, the real development of aircraft occurred after they performed that flight show in France and attracted European attention.

At this stage, Lao America is far behind Europe in terms of technology. France, Germany, Britain and other countries worked together to put the plane on the fast track.

At this time, the aircraft had just gone through a wave of great development and had an initial outline. Even though it was still very primitive, it could be called a true aircraft.

At least the safety factor has improved to some extent compared to before.

But for Li Yu, it was not enough.

In Li Yu's view, they still lack a very critical safety essential - a parachute.

This thing is like a car seat belt.

Parachutes attracted widespread attention at the beginning of the year when a tailor jumped from the Eiffel Tower.

At first, France issued a reward: "Whoever can make a safe parachute weighing no more than 25kg for a pilot will receive 1 francs!"

Then a tailor named Franz quickly produced a foldable parachute, which Franz called a flying suit.

This parachute uses silk as the canopy and wooden sticks as the support, which is very different from the modern parachute.

In order to prove its feasibility, Franz used a dummy to test it. After many attempts, it was not satisfactory. He found that he had to operate it in person and increase the altitude in order to effectively upgrade his flight suit.

In other words - experiment on human life.

So Franz personally put on his flight suit and stood on the Eiffel Tower, surrounded by reporters and spectators below.

Although the guard tried to stop him, Franz said to the guard: "I tried this experiment myself because I wanted to prove the value of my invention. Look, my weight of 72 kilograms and this invention will change your ignorance." .”

After saying that, he climbed up on the stool and crossed the guardrail. After hesitating for a while, he shouted: "See you later!"

Jump down.

However, his design was too bloated and complicated and did not comply with the principles of simple, reliable, and easy-to-operate parachutes. Franz did not fully open his parachute in the air, but became tightly entangled.

He fell heavily to the ground, and the whole process happened to be recorded by reporters.

After that, the development of parachutes stalled.

It wasn't until around 1918 that a real parachute was successfully developed by an American named Floyd.

His design is very simple, but at least it works, and the manual rope pulling method is much more reliable.

Li Yu really wanted to be addicted to flying, but he really didn't dare to try it without complete safety guarantee.

In addition, in history, Feng Ru was killed during a domestic flight show. If there is a parachute, the probability of survival will not be improved by a factor.

As soon as he said it, Li Yu had to quickly complete the development of the parachute before Feng Ru returned to China and built the aircraft factory to produce the aircraft. Otherwise, he was really afraid that he would no longer be able to resist the urge to fly to the sky.