Jingming

Chapter 283
"Imprint?"

Outside the engraving room of Ming Pao Bank, the master was puzzled.

Printing, do you think the word "brushing" is for nothing?
For many years, after engraving, the ink is first brushed, and then the paper is brushed. The soft brush is the most capable part of the printing process.

No matter what he said, it was difficult for him to connect the word pressing with printing things—the paper and the typeface must not be damaged?

"Your Majesty is very concerned about this matter. The order of the Hall of Mental Cultivation is that we have to figure out how to make such a machine. Novices don't need to go through a long period of practice. After being taught how to use the machine, they can Guaranteed to work."

The two stared at each other, one was a management bureaucrat and the other was a master craftsman for many years, but neither had a clue.

"Finally, there is a way. Since His Majesty has shown mercy on the quality of the printed newspaper, you should think about the long-term plan. Sharpening the knife is not the same as chopping firewood."

The School of Engineering of Huangming University also received this will, and was at a loss after that.

Knowing that this was a decree from His Majesty after he had summoned Alfonso, the dean of the Engineering College also went to visit.

It's just that after he went there, he heard the quarrel inside, and he couldn't just cause trouble for others like this - no matter what, Alfonso's daughter stayed in the palace and was His Majesty's woman.

"How could it be pressed?" Wu Erqi shook his head in the master craftsman training class, "The copper type and hardwood type are fine, but the clay type, won't it be crushed if you use too much force? Besides, paper will also It's crushed. Impossible, absolutely impossible!"

Zheng Kui didn't know what to do.He is just a brick burner, he has been watching this matter, unless they are firing new clay type.

But now the main trouble seems not to be the problem of fonts, character selection, and plate making, but the process of printing is too time-consuming and labor-intensive.

In the Forbidden City, Zhu Houcong was less concerned about the upcoming official national policy meeting than he was about this matter.

In terms of vision and knowledge in this field, Daming is afraid that no one has a wider scope than him.

Although he doesn't understand these professional things, he knows that if he can point out practical ideas, he can save a lot of time for engineering talents like Daming.

Juicing...

Caroline later faltered in translating, and her mother only mentioned that the duke told her that Gutenberg seemed to have been inspired by the tools used to press the juice in winemaking.

Alfonso probably knew very well that his wife could not understand this, and after a few arguments he forced his wife to say the name of a certain duke.Maybe it's a fun chat while tasting wine or even doing some juicing?Anyway, Alfonso's wife felt that the emperor was very concerned about this matter, so she might as well exchange it for some rewards-she was thinking of her dear husband.

The juicer that Zhu Houcong is familiar with is naturally not the European way of squeezing juice in this era, but squeezing is indeed often associated with pressing, squeezing and squeezing.

I asked someone who knows how to extract oil, and there is probably an oil trench when pressing.After the oil is put in, it must be squeezed tightly with a wooden wedge, and then hammered with a big mallet. The method is quite violent, and of course it cannot be used to print things.

What is needed in printing is ingenuity, just the right amount of precision: ink is applied, but the paper and type will not be crushed.

Zhu Houcong has actually realized the key here: precision.

He just didn't know how this precision had anything to do with squeezing grape juice, so Zhu Houcong simply went to Wen Suyun and Carolina's side.

"Where the wine is made?" Carolina shook her head, "I haven't been there, I just drank it. I don't know how the grape juice is pressed."

Zhu Houcong didn't gain anything, and continued to think about it for a while.

Huang Jin watched from the side, only to see that His Majesty was looking at the door with scattered eyes.

Is a small machine more important than a national policy meeting?

"Move it to the side room over there and put it there first."

Faintly hearing Wen Suyun's voice outside the door, Huang Jin went out to take a look, and when he came back, Zhu Houcong asked, "What's the matter?"

"Your Majesty, these are some small objects that Concubine Shu begged from Concubine Xian, and they were used by His Royal Highness the First Prince when he was young."

Zhu Houcong smiled slightly: "Is this girl doing it on purpose? Since I'm here, I will naturally go to see her and yell so loudly."

Wen Suyun was already excited, after getting acquainted with Carolina and Qumei, the interpreter maid, the three of them lived together in Changle Palace.

Wen Suyun is also pregnant now, and her delivery is not far away.Asking for toys for future children, it wasn't the educational toys that Zhu Houcong arranged for Zhu Zaiyu to make at that time, Luban lock or something...

The smile on Zhu Houcong's face suddenly stopped, and then he walked out of the side hall where Carolina lived, stood at the door and stared at the cornices and brackets under the main hall.

"……His Majesty?"

Seeing the joy and suspicion on Zhu Houcong's face, Huang Jin asked.

"I figured it out!" Zhu Houcong burst out laughing suddenly, "No wonder, no wonder! Go and declare Wang Wensu into the palace! Wang Wensu, Wen Suyun, hahahahaha."

The emperor was very happy, and Huang Jin immediately felt a lot more relaxed: "Young servant, let's go!"

"Come here and tell me after arriving at the Hall of Mental Cultivation."

Zhu Houcong walked towards the main hall of Changle Palace, Wen Suyun was a little confused.

What do you want to understand?
……

Wang Wensu is the dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences. Over the past few years, his main job has become book editing.

This time, I often asked the emperor for advice, and compiled a textbook for teaching mathematics.

At the same time, the School of Mathematical Sciences naturally recruited some students, all of whom were learning that new type of arithmetic.

Suddenly summoned by the emperor, Wen Suyun went to the study of the Hall of Mental Cultivation and waited for a while, then saw the emperor striding over.

He was about to salute, when the emperor said: "No. Come here quickly, I have drawn something, and you can see if you can understand the arithmetic principles in it."

After finishing speaking, he picked up a pen and drew on a piece of paper above the imperial case.

Wang Wensu moved his head closer, and saw that the emperor drew the shape of a stick. The lines on it were real and imaginary, circling around the surface of the stick.

"Your Majesty, is this?"

"Spiral." Zhu Houcong said after finishing speaking, "We must understand the mathematical principles of this thing, so that craftsmen in the future will have a simple and clear method to make this spiral column and nut."

A few new words came, and Wang Wensu just stared at the thing Zhu Houcong drew for the time being.

Hearing the Luban lock, Zhu Houcong suddenly thought of a problem: For thousands of years in China, mortise and tenon structures have been used to fix objects.

As for wine, Zhu Houcong remembered the wine corkscrew later.Among the various later objects that he is familiar with, it is really a common structure to use bolts and nuts to rotate to control precision, clamp things, and put pressure on the other end.

After several years of thinking back, Zhu Houcong suddenly realized that Daming had never seen anything with such a screw-like structure.

The mortise and tenon structure is so easy to use, so no one has applied another connection method in the East.

But now that he has figured out the tricks of controlling precision and giving appropriate pressure, Zhu Houcong already has a picture in his mind.

After handing over this homework to Wang Wensu, and chatting with him about the thick and dense spirals on the pillars and many other points, Zhu Houcong continued to sit down and draw rough sketches seriously.

This printing machine can be made into a wooden frame with a spiral column fixed vertically in the middle of the beam on it.

Underneath is a table on which the typefaces of the board can be placed.

The bottom end of the helical column in the middle part is another flat plate with a nut on the flat plate.A rod can also be attached to the nut for easy twisting.

If the density of the helix is ​​designed well, after the paper is placed under the font and the plate, only the screw nut needs to be rotated from one designated position to another, and the plate can be driven down to give almost Just the right amount of pressure.

Naturally, there will still be a lot of room for experimentation and improvement, but the general structure can be determined.

Maybe it is still difficult to make the spiral column and the nut, but there are quite a few carpenters who are dexterous. At worst, try to make a trial production with a special wood that is not easily deformed to see the effect.

Zhu Houcong has increasingly felt the need to get this thing out.

The helix seems to be related to the rifling in the barrel.

And this matter will also be a very typical matter related to precision and standards.

Zhu Houcong didn't say anything about lead before, because lead is poisonous in his concept.

But now, he is not sure whether the imprinting method used by the printing machine is related to the hardness of the typeface and so on.

After summoning the Baoyuan Bureau responsible for minting money, the Baojin Bureau responsible for mining, and some master craftsmen from military foundry departments such as Bingzhan Bureau and Military Weapons Supervisor, he discovered that lead is actually used in many places now. .

Some of these things are called Qingjin, and some are called Wuxi.The lead farm in Feihong's hometown is actually because there are a lot of these things in the mines there, but the copper is mainly mined there, and the copper leaching method is used.

And lead is very cheap now.

A new reason appeared that made Zhu Houcong feel that this matter was necessary: ​​a large number of privately minted low-quality copper coins, among which the lead content was higher, so they were more profitable.

If a large number of lead type molds are cast in the future, at least it will hit these places and the private casting of money among the people.

Zhu Houcong asked a lot, and finally understood the advantages of lead type molds: it has a relatively low melting point. If it is cast together with tin or something, it will be hard enough, the finished product is smooth, cheap, not easy to damage, and maybe a little bit of flexibility.

Copper movable type is too expensive!

After all the questions were clarified, Zhu Houcong didn't disturb others first, but handed over the task to Huang Jin, and asked him to coordinate the inner court craftsmen to make trial production first.

The most important thing is to wait for Wang Wensu to figure out the mathematical principles, find the helix density with suitable control precision, and find a simple method suitable for others to make studs and nuts.

This thing is not simple, after all, it is a three-dimensional thing.

There must be a helical curve, a thread depth, and a smooth fit between the nut and the threads.

Zhu Houcong himself is also studying.

It is very simple to make columns: how many clean and standard columns are there in the palace?

But how to engrave smooth, coherent, and accurately angled threads on the cylinder, this method must be found.

I kept thinking about this matter, and when I went to Sun Ming's place to rest at night, Zhu Houcong saw her undressing, and suddenly stared at the collar on her neck in a daze.

Sun Ming was a little shy: "Your Majesty...what are you staring at..."

Zhu Houcong slapped his head: "I thought of it again! You wait for a while, I will do an experiment. Is there any scarf in Kunning Palace?"

The originally straight collar overlapped around her neck, isn't that just a slash?

If the side of the cylinder is unfolded, what appears to be a curved helix on the top becomes a straight line in the end.

Naturally there are corner scarves in Kunning Palace, if not, you can cut them out with scissors.

Sun Ming stared blankly at the emperor instructing the maids to wrap the triangular scarf of different widths on the round candle, and the emperor looked excitedly at the stripes on it.

Zhu Houcong was really inspired again and again today, and found the feeling of doing research.

Sure enough, the hypotenuse of the triangle formed a coherent and smooth thread on the cylinder.Next, nothing more than controlling a triangle whose height is the same as the cylinder and the length of the other right-angled side is different, you can get threads with different densities on the cylinder.

"You're done!" Zhu Houcong was very excited, and finally walked towards Sun Ming with confidence.

……

After Wang Wensu was assigned this homework, he stayed up all night facing this new thing.

It is not that the ancients did not study geometry and solid geometry, but the subject given by Zhu Houcong now has specific application significance. Although Wang Wensu has good mathematical literacy, he is not actually a genius in this field, but has been studying it all his life.

"Everyone, have you got anything?"

Waking up early in the morning, Wang Wensu looked at the other professors and priests of the School of Mathematical Sciences who were also red-eyed and stayed up all night. Wang Wensu saw that they all smiled wryly and shook their heads.

"This problem is related to the circle, but the topspin is not the quadrature. Even if I use the new calculation formula taught by His Majesty, I have no clue. I am really ashamed."

"The main difficulty lies in the thick and dense spiral lines. How can this be the reason?"

"Look, everyone, I tried to draw a line on the candle last night, staring at it for more than an hour, and my eyes were a little dizzy."

"I take a paper scroll as a circle, draw it and then spread it out. It looks like this. How do you calculate it?"

A few people were discussing here, and I did see that one person rolled a cylinder with paper yesterday, and then drew a circle of spiral lines on it.After the paper was spread out, there were sections of lines.

Maybe it's because he doesn't draw well, some are straight, some are slightly curved.The distance and angle between each other are also different.

But after all, they are all experts here. After discussing together for a while, they finally saw some clues.

"If the drawing is good enough, these spiral lines are really straight lines, isn't it? Ladies and gentlemen, can you measure the difference in height between these two sections? This is the key to thickness, right?"

"If you draw another line, which is parallel to the bottom of the circle and has an included angle, they should be equal."

After brainstorming, they gradually approached the truth.

However, before they could come up with the final result, someone from the palace sent a piece of paper.

"Your Majesty realized the truth last night. Dean Wang, Your Majesty has an order. Next, we only need to calculate how much height difference there will be if the hypotenuses of the triangles with different angles correspond to the round of the cylinder."

Wang Wensu and others stared blankly at the paper.

A triangle, a cylinder.equal height, but the other right-angled side of the triangle is much larger than the circumference of the cylinder.If it is wrapped, it will naturally become an extremely coherent spiral.

The next topic is easy.

"...Actually, it depends on how many times the long side of Guitian is round and how many times the circumference, how many times can it be turned? The height of the circle and the number of turns are subtracted, isn't it the height of each turn? If you want to have different thicknesses of the turns, we will wait. Multiply the circle by the number of circles to get the long side geometry of the Guitian, and calculate it backwards, you can get the size of the small angle of the Guitian, right?"

"...Your Majesty realized this truth overnight, you are really a god. It's just that this question is so simple, Your Majesty seems to be testing me..."

They all felt that the emperor himself had figured out the truth, so why didn't he figure out the simplest problem in the end?
They must be tested!

So the School of Mathematical Sciences quickly sent the results back to the palace.

After Zhu Houcong concluded another preparatory meeting for the national policy meeting, he returned to the Hall of Mental Cultivation to see the result.

He was also stunned.

Yeah, why didn't I think of that?

Then he couldn't help but laugh.

Anyway, the solution was found.

Next, the principles and machine sketches were sent to Ming Pao Bank and the Engineering College respectively.

Turn the connecting rod on the nut half a turn, and you can get a clear how far to press down.

Master this distance well, so that there is just enough contact between the paper and the typeface, and you can quickly print a piece of paper without carefully brushing the paper.

Then turn the connecting rod backwards to free up the gap, take out the plate on which the typeface was placed, and hand it to another person to connect the printed paper to see if it is necessary to refill the typeface.

As long as several plates of typefaces of the same version are prepared, several people can work in an assembly line around the printing machine, and one person is responsible for one thing.

Zou Shouyi looked at the sketch of the machine, his hands trembling a little.

"Hurry up and try it out! If this machine can be built, how many newspapers and books can the newspaper company print in a year?"

He's a man of culture, and he can see what happens when printing becomes faster, easier, and cheaper.

Many folk engraving merchants in the world will go crazy!
The emperor personally fed the cakes, and now the students in the master's training class were boiling.

Zheng Kui asked Ying with his face full of blood: "Principal, I can fire the kiln! Let me make the type mold!"

The Institute of Engineering naturally wants to rely on the professors and priests who understand the Huangming University to try out the latest printing machine and produce the best.

After all, it is only a blueprint, and there is still a lot of manufacturing and craftsmanship distance from the final practical application.

And there are young master craftsmen from all walks of life in the master training class!
(End of this chapter)