Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 270 09 First attempt at microphotography

After Chen Muwu said those unconventional words, he started to pretend to be mysterious and played Xu Shu into Cao Ying without saying a word.

Zhang Yuanji didn't ask, and it didn't matter if he didn't ask. Fortunately, the manuscript was in his hand. Depending on what the other party meant, he probably wanted to discuss it after he had read the book.

The documentary "The Rise of Great Powers" was played in class by Chen Muwu's Chinese teacher in high school. It mainly talked about the process of the rise of nine countries one after another, and also summarized the historical laws of the rise of countries.

But because this documentary was filmed 80 years later in 2006, many things that were regarded as history at the time have not happened yet.

However, because Chen Muwu only started writing after returning home, he could not finish writing about all nine countries in just a few days.

But the first three countries that appeared in historical order, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands, all enjoyed great glory from the [-]th to [-]th centuries.

Therefore, these three countries are relatively easy to write about, and there is no need to make any modifications to the content in the original documentary.

The manuscripts that Chen Muwu handed over to Zhang Yuanji were also about these three countries.

Because the creators behind the script of this documentary are all professors from the History Department of Beida University.

Behind them are citations from various materials collected in libraries at home and abroad. The historical materials are detailed and there is no problem with the accuracy of the content.

But most of them have just scratched the surface and have not continued to explore in depth.

Therefore, "The Rise of Great Powers" can be regarded as an enlightenment in modern world history, making readers and audiences interested in this matter.

But it must not be regarded as a professional book on modern world history. If Chen Muwu wanted to copy a professional book, why not just copy a "General History of the World"?

It’s just that professional books are troublesome to write, and in today’s China, the number of potential readers is not very large.

Chen Muwu was unwilling to do thankless things.

Zhang Yuanji has been immersed in the publishing industry for many years. The reason why the Commercial Press has grown bigger and stronger under his hands is definitely not luck.

Although Chen Muwu, who had been abroad for several years and had become accustomed to using a typewriter to type in English, his handwriting when he started writing Chinese characters again was not that beautiful, and there were many simplified characters mixed in.

But just by browsing the part about Portugal on the top few pages, Zhang Yuanji was able to judge through his keen publishing intuition that if this book was published and printed, it would not be able to reach the level where a boy can interpret chants and a boy can sing. At least it can set off a trend among the upper-class intellectual circles.

The Commercial Press also produces popular novels, Saturday Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly literature, and other reading materials. If you want to leave those things that ruin your reputation, let World Bookstore handle them yourself.

Zhang Yuanji felt that Chen Muwu had found the right person that morning. Such a good book must be paired with the best publishing company in the country.

However, what does Chen Muwu mean when he says that this book does not require royalties?
Moreover, he also said that this book must be published by the Commercial Press.

So what does this young man mean?
Is it possible that he wants shares in the Commercial Press?

The quality of this book is indeed good, but it is a bit fanciful to want to take away the shares from here based on only one book.

Zhang Yuanji had already set a good price for the book in his mind, so that neither party would suffer.

But before that, he still asked Chen Muwu what he meant and why he said such puzzling words.

Zhang Yuanji did not expect that Chen Muwu's answer was even more baffling.

He said that his book required no money and no shares, but the Commercial Press needed to exchange the book for it.

What does exchanging books mean?

Does he not want to be a shareholder this time, but a distributor?
Get books from the marketing department of Commercial Transport Printing House, and then open your own bookstore on Sima Road to sell books and make money?

Zhang Yuanji thought about Chen Muwu's meaningless words for a long time and could only find the most "reasonable" explanation.

Chen Muwu has been eyeing the Commercial Press for more than a day or two.

His words were full of mystery, which led to Zhang Yuanji's misunderstanding.

The so-called exchange of books does not mean that for every ten or one hundred copies of "The Rise of Great Powers" sold, he would take away a copy of "Wang Yun's Five Dictionaries" from the Commercial Press.

Besides, what's the point of having so many dictionaries?

If Chen Muwu is in a good mood one day, he can figure out the Chinese Pinyin and compete for business with Minister Wang.

It is actually very easy to implement Hanyu Pinyin, and with Chen Muwu’s current reputation and status in domestic studies, it is also easy to implement Hanyu Pinyin.

But the reason why Chen Muwu didn't do that was because he was afraid that he would not be able to control the consequences of this matter.

Some people in the New Culture Movement went too far and created a culture that was too new and too advanced. They have been discussing and agitating for the abolition of Chinese characters and the complete Romanization of the alphabet.

If the hypothetical proposal finally succeeds, then the Chinese language in the future may be less like square characters than Ben’s pseudonym and Korean proverbs, and more like the Vietnamese language of Vietnam, its neighbor to the south.

He, Chen Muwu, did not want to become a sinner through the ages.

And there is another embarrassing thing about launching Chinese Pinyin now.

That is, people who are literate are not willing to learn Chinese Pinyin when there are already learning opportunities.

But most people across the country don’t even have the opportunity to go to school, let alone be exposed to Chinese Pinyin.

Make up your mind and overcome all difficulties to launch a nationwide literacy campaign.

Anyway, the current Beiyang government will not have this kind of courage, nor will the future Tengjing government.

As for those whimsical people who spend huge sums of money to educate civilians in small counties, it is a joke from beginning to end.

He was also called one of the "Top Ten Great People with the Most Revolutionary Contributions in the Modern World" along with Einstein, and was selected as one of the "[-] Most Important Figures in the Contemporary World" by the American Pheasant magazine.

Draw a nose on a piece of paper, what a big face!
Let’s go back to the Commercial Press.

What Chen Muwu was eyeing was not the books in the Commercial Press, but the books in the Oriental Library under the Commercial Press.

The Oriental Library was originally a library and reference room attached to the Commercial Press.

Later, as the business of the Commercial Press continued to expand, the size of this library also gradually increased.

In 1909, a five-story building was even built in Zhabei specifically to store books, and the library was renamed "Hanfen Building".

Scholars from wealthy families in the Jiangnan area seem to have a hobby of collecting books.

The same is true for Zhang Yuanji, a Jiang native, but he did not collect books for his own purposes. On the one hand, it was to expand the database of the Commercial Press. On the other hand, it was also a lofty ideal to collect books extensively in order to "preserve the quintessence of the country and perpetuate culture."

Just last year, in 1925, Han Fen Building was renamed the Oriental Library, but the rare books in it still retained their original names.This year, the Oriental Library has begun to open to the public every afternoon, no longer limited to the use of Commercial Press insiders.

At its peak, the library owned by this private enterprise had a collection of more than 46 books, which was even more than the National Beping Library. Not to mention the competitor of the Commercial Press, which only had about [-] books. The Zhonghua Library of Zhonghua Book Company has [-] volumes.

Not to mention being the first in the country, the Oriental Library was also the largest library in Asia at that time.

It was such a modern and large library, but it was completely destroyed by Xiaoben's plane bombing during the first Songhu Anti-Japanese War in 1932.

Except for several thousand rare books from the Song and Yuan Dynasties that were stored in bank safes, all the other books in the library were destroyed by gunfire.

I feel that this bombing has wiped out the Chinese culture that has been passed down for thousands of years, but I never thought that books are not the way to pass on culture, people are.

Chen Muwu found the Commercial Press this time because of this incident.

He always wanted to do something about this matter. Although he cannot spoil it, he said that he knew for 500 years before and for [-] years afterward, and he foresaw that he would definitely take action against the Oriental Library.

It is impossible for anyone to believe this statement, especially Zhang Yuanji. The entire Oriental Library consists of rare ancient books that he acquired from all over the country. It is even more close to his heart than the Commercial Press.

If Chen Muwu appeared out of thin air and said these dirty words to him, he would definitely be regarded as a lunatic.

Since a long time ago, Chen Muwu has been thinking about how to handle this matter better.

He had also had various thoughts. The first thought was to see if he could persuade Zhang Yuanji to transfer these rare books collected with great effort from Jihai, the primary target of the attack, to Sichuan, Chongqing, and Shaanxi. land area.

But the headquarters of the Commercial Press is in Jihai. This request is also unreasonable. If the reference room is moved, what should editors do if they want to check the information in the future?
Chen Muwu's second method was to buy books from Zhang Yuanji.

What he wanted to do was to pay a large price to buy the entire Oriental Library collection and then move it away.

But this idea is still an unrealistic whim.

Zhang Yuanji is a book-loving person, and he has spent so much effort to collect books from all over the country. How can he just buy them just for the sake of him?
Furthermore, the Commercial Press was not short of money, and it did not like Chen Muwu's three melons and two jujubes.

In the end, Chen Muwu could only come up with this last solution.

That is to write a book that can attract Zhang Yuanji's attention in exchange for him.

However, this exchange is not about exchanging books for books. Chen Muwu thought of another way, the so-called film.

Although the current camera technology is just like that, Chen Muwu is still using the most primitive photographic film of applying developer on the back of a glass plate at the Cavendish Laboratory, but the technology of microfilm has begun to be applied to books. The library's collection of books is being saved and backed up.

In particular, Chen Muwu recently read in the newspaper that two Belgian engineers, Paul Outlet,

and Robert Goldschmidt began to develop and improve microfilm as early as 1906. The latter also served as the host and participated in the first and second Solvay Conference.

And recently, this technology has also begun to be used in business environments.

It's just that the earliest usage scenario was not a library, but a bank in the United States.

In order to save his bank from storing so many copies of expired or canceled checks, a banker in the United States developed a patent for a "check recorder" to make microcopies of these useless checks so that they can be conveniently stored. Banks can save forever.

This patent was later bought by the American Kodak Company and made a fortune from it.

The technology of microfilm photography has finally matured. Since it can be used to photograph checks, of course it can also be used to photograph books.

In fact, just in the past year or two, the Library of Congress, which has no background, has begun to use microfilming to photograph more than 300 million pages of books and manuscripts in the German-speaking British Library.

The time until 1932 was too short, and Chen Muwu was not sure whether he could prevent the "January [-]" tragedy from happening.

But he can always use this method to make a backup of the books in the Oriental Library, which can be regarded as the worst way to prepare for the tragedy.

Although the paper books may be destroyed, at least the contents of the books can be preserved intact.

It is true that it was Chen Muwu who told Zhang Yuanji that he would exchange a book from the Commercial Press for the publishing rights of "The Rise of a Great Power".

After he explained it clearly to this senior in the publishing industry, Zhang Yuanji, who had never been able to figure out what kind of medicine was sold in Chen Muwu's gourd, finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The reasons given by Chen Muwu were also very high-sounding. He did not say that he wanted these books, but that the Crown Prince of Sweden, who was visiting China recently, had always been interested in Chinese culture - otherwise he would not have risked the war. It's a risk to travel all the way to the East.

This time he found Chairman Zhang to help make a connection, and wanted to make a backup copy of the books in the Oriental Library for Sweden.

If there is an opportunity, I also hope to conduct book exchanges with the Oriental Library every year and select a batch of books to be shipped to Sweden for exhibition.

This book "The Rise of Great Powers" by Chen Muwu can be regarded as a gift to the Commercial Press.

If the Commercial Press can nod and agree to facilitate this matter, Sweden will also hand over a copy of the microfilm as a backup.

Chen Muwu said all this with a smile on his face, but he still felt a little bit of pain in his heart.

This microfilming machine must have appeared on its own, and was purchased and exchanged in the United States through Oppenheimer's family.

But the good reputation that fell was handed over to the Swedish crown prince who knew nothing about the matter.

Maybe in Zhang Yuanji's eyes, he was so concerned about this matter and worked so hard for it that he didn't look like a dignified physicist at all, but like a comprador running errands for Sweden.

But even if he takes the blame, he still has to do it. He just wants to have a clear conscience.

Zhang Yuanji agreed in principle to take microfilms of the library's books, which was a harmless thing, but as for book exchanges, he still had to think about it again.

After all, the books in the Oriental Library were all searched hard by me and my colleagues and shipped abroad. If something happened, wouldn't all this hard work be wasted?

At that time, Zhang Yuanji was more interested in Chen Muwu's "The Rise of Great Powers". He asked how many countries this series covered in total, and asked if the three countries that had already been written could be published as the first volume.

If he were an ordinary person, he would definitely take advantage of Chen Muwu.

But Zhang Yuanji was quite generous. He also promised that he would pay the royalties for this book according to the price, and he would never let Chen Muwu's hard work go in vain.

Having money is better than nothing, and he doesn’t know that this royalties can cover a fraction of the cost of ordering microfilm machines from an American company.

The train drove slowly along the shores of Lake Baikal. Unlike when it was in midsummer, now the train windows were filled with the autumn scenery of the lakeside.

Oppenheimer was still in the opposite bunk in the box, revising his China travel diary.

Chen Muwu finally finished writing the heavily abridged American chapter of "The Rise of the Great Powers", which is also the last chapter in this series.

He planned to ask the embassy staff to help him send it back to China when the train arrived at the final stop of his trip, Musko.

(End of this chapter)