Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 302 41 Craftsman Spirit Kapitsa

Chen Muwu had always thought that splitting a perfectly good train into two pieces was a fantasy.

Apart from doing this when the ferry crosses the Qiongzhou Strait, I have never seen this happen elsewhere.

But in this day and age, it is commonplace.

The most representative ones are the two stations in Sihai, North Station and South Station.

Whether it was the General Administration of Roads and Mines in the late Qing Dynasty or the Ministry of Transportation in the early Republic of China, in that chaotic era, their ability to control railways nationwide was very limited.

Except for a few railways near the capital or Beijing-Zhaozhou that can be supervised by the government, the construction of railways in other places is basically jointly done by local governments and powerful gentry. For example, one of the local shareholders of the Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway is Xu Zhimo’s father Xu Shenru.

Anyway, after a long period of pulling and pulling, a tacit understanding has been formed between the central government and local people, and no one will take the initiative to break this balance.

The only exception was when the Qing government, which was short of money and impatient, intervened and wanted to nationalize the Sichuan-Han and Guangdong-Han railways that had been confirmed to be commercial projects. This move became the trigger and directly led to the outbreak of the Wei Chang Uprising. , the Qing government sent itself to the guillotine.

It is precisely because of this slightly abnormal railway construction method that the road construction agencies of each railway work independently and arrange the location of stations to meet their own best interests.

The Shanghai-Nanjing Railway going to the north has its starting station in Wuhai at Zhabei, which is close to the northern boundary of the public concession, while the Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway going south has chosen its starting station in the bustling commercial area south of the old city of Wuhai. place.

Because these two stations, one in the south and one in the north, are located at both ends of the entire Baihai Sea, it is not convenient for people inside and outside the concession who can afford to take the train to travel.

So after the situation calmed down a little, the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway and the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Railway joined forces to establish the Two-Rail Railway Management Bureau, which is where Chen Muwu worked before.

The first task after the establishment of this administration was to build a liaison station between the North Railway Station and the South Railway Station around the concession, connecting the two railways together.

Since then, in the history of Chinese railways, there has finally been the first major artery that can connect the north and the south. A person can take a train directly from Beijing, Harbin and Manchuria to Ganzhou.

The original plan for this connection line was to use a viaduct to cross over the concession like London's suburban railway to Greenwich.

But because the Ministry of Industry Bureau of the Public Concession and the Public Administration Bureau of the French Concession disagreed with this method, they had no choice but to take a long detour.

After the connection line is repaired, passengers will be able to choose whether to take the train at the North Station or the South Station from Yanhai to Ganzhou.

There will be two trains departing from the two stations at about the same time. The train from South Station will be picked up at Xinlonghua Station after the train from North Station.

The same is true for the train from Ganzhou to Qihai. Passengers going to North Station sit in the front carriage, while those going to South Station sit in the rear. When arriving at Xinlonghua Station, it is still split into two parts and driven by two locomotives. Two stations.

This method of taking the train lasted until 1937.

It was not because the two railway bureaus optimized railway travel, but because in that year, Baihai South Station was bombed by the Japanese army. Since then, the station has been wiped off the map and in reality, completely disappearing.

It's still early in the day when the train pulls up to the platform of Milan Central Station.

Most of the people in the same train were still in a deep sleep. Only Chen Muwu, who was still not used to riding the train for several years, could wake up from his sleep at the slightest disturbance.

Chen Muwu got out of the box and planned to stand in the aisle to stretch his muscles, which were a little tired after several days of travel, and take a look at the natural scenery at the southern foot of the Alps through the car window.

It is only more than 50 kilometers from Milan to Como. Because this is a special train for physicists, it will not stop at any station during the period, so in theory it only takes about an hour to reach the destination of this trip.

But Chen Muwu had no hope that the train would arrive in Como on time. Even if Italy’s domestic propaganda machine was operating at full strength, newspapers crazily advocated, “Under the rule of the great Prime Minister Mussolini, all of Italy has The train is never late."

But after personally experiencing the bumpy road conditions of this tourist railway line from the big city Milan to the scenic resort Como, Chen Muwu no longer doubted whether the train would be delayed, but asked God for blessings to prevent any trains from showing up. An unexpected incident of cheating.

Not long after, people from other compartments also got out. They may also be unable to bear the poor condition of the train after passing through Milan.

Chen Muwu, who heard the noise, turned around and looked over and found that it was still his old acquaintance.

Once people get older, their sleep time will only become shorter and shorter. Planck felt that he got up early enough. As a result, he went to the hotel early, and there were even more early arrivals.

Less than half a year later, Planck met Chen Muwu again in Paris yesterday.

He also wanted to find an opportunity to chat with this motivated young student, but Bohr got on the platform first. After getting on the bus, Planck, like everyone else, was stopped by physicists from all over the world. They walked into the box and took turns greeting him, so the matter was put on hold.

"Professor Planck, we meet again. I wanted to say hello to you yesterday, but..."

Chen Muwu was very polite.

Planck smiled and waved: "They are all retired old men, no longer professors.

"Dr. Chen, since before the New Year, Albert has been running to my editorial office from time to time and asked him what he was doing. He only said that he was waiting for your paper.

"I have to say that the machine you developed and the experiment you performed on this machine have made great contributions to the development of physics.

"Albert has been complaining to me before, especially after reading your latest Cambridge paper. He complained to me why I didn't recruit you to the University of Berlin, and handed over such a good genius in vain. Gave it to Cambridge.

“Albert is very caring and understandable, so it’s not easy for me to say anything to him.

"But actually I also have my own difficulties. After the war, Germany's economy has been so bad that even if you go to Berlin, I guess the school's financial resources will not be enough to support the funds you need to carry out those experiments and research, let alone It's about building a large-scale experimental equipment like a particle accelerator. Now that I think about it, I'm even a little lucky that you didn't go to Germany. Otherwise, wouldn't it have delayed and slowed down your achievements in physics?

"Oh, by the way, Dr. Chen, how much does that machine of yours cost approximately? If it's suitable, I'd like to see if I can connect you to purchase one for the University of Berlin."

Although Planck had just modestly said that he had retired and was no longer a professor at the University of Berlin, he still had deep feelings for the school where he had worked for decades.

He had been laying the groundwork in his words for a long time, even at the expense of self-deprecation to praise Chen Muwu, but in the end he finally revealed his true purpose.Chen Muwu came to attend this Como meeting. In addition to being invited by the organizer, he also had a task assigned to him by Rutherford:

That is to sell as much as possible to physicists from various universities and research institutes the particle accelerator, a killer tool for studying nuclear physics that has just been successfully developed by the Cavendish Laboratory.

After being poor for so many years, it’s finally our turn to be rich!

And selling this particle accelerator is just a one-time deal.

Rutherford knew that the principle of this accelerator was not difficult, and its core content was even based on Lord Kelvin's dripping accelerator decades ago.

It's just that the Cavendish Laboratory has promoted it as too mysterious and high-level. Apart from them, other physicists in the world have not yet been able to lift the veil covering it.

As long as everyone realizes that the core of a particle accelerator is so simple, it will only be a matter of time before imitation and piracy appear.

As for having already applied for a patent?
That shabby thing that protects against gentlemen but not villains is almost like a piece of paper in this era.

And even if you take the patent to the court to litigate, the final right of interpretation belongs to the court.

In the mid-to-early [-]th century, the U.S. Supreme Court fought several famous patent cases, including who was the first person to discover and apply for a television patent, etc., but the most famous ones were Marconi and Tesla. The radio patent battle.

Some marketing accounts on the Chinese Internet in later generations often like to publish false news without verification. For example, "It was only after Tesla's death that Marconi admitted that he had plagiarized Tesla's inspiration and technology, and He got ahead of Tesla and applied for a radio patent. Accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court re-judged it in 1945, two years after Tesla's death, and returned the radio patent to Tesla's name."

There are really too many flaws in this internet joke.

It is estimated that in order to compile this fake news, the marketing accounts must have gone out of their way to check Tesla’s birth and death dates, and also arranged the date of Marconi’s discovery of conscience and the re-sentencing of the U.S. Supreme Court to Tesla’s Two years after his death.

It's just that these marketing accounts checked Tesla, but didn't bother to check the other party in the lawsuit, Marconi.

Marconi was one step ahead of Tesla in 1937, so how did he admit that he had plagiarized Tesla's technology eight years later?
Could it be that Rocky and Doyle were right, and does psychic art that can communicate with the dead really exist?
Historically, it is true that the U.S. Supreme Court did re-hear this patent dispute case, but not in 1945 but in 1943, the year Tesla died.

They did award some patent ownership rights that originally belonged to Marconi to other people after re-opening the case. These people included not only Tesla, but also the just-mentioned Lodge, and John Stone. Stone et al.

The reason why the U.S. Supreme Court made these moves was not because of their conscience and the desire to clear up the name of Tesla, a great scientist who had been stigmatized for a long time, but because Marconi's radio company was accused of using radio communications in World War I. A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court to seek compensation from the U.S. government for the large amount of patent fees incurred.

The Americans didn't want to pay such an astronomical sum of money, so they found another way to change the situation, drain the fire, and directly award the patent that originally belonged to Marconi but was slightly controversial to others.

It can be seen that an empty patent certificate is of no use in this era.

As long as the other party doesn't want to pay the patent fee, they can always come up with [-] ways.

We haven't arrived in Como yet and the meeting hasn't been held yet. Unexpectedly, the first customer couldn't sit still and walked to the door himself.

"Professor, how much does this particle accelerator cost?"

Chen Muwu pondered for a while. He was embarrassed and could not say directly that the cost was only twenty pounds.

No, it seems to be more than twenty pounds. Including the newly made charge conveyor belt, as well as the proton source and a series of other things, all added together, the cost of one hundred pounds is definitely there.

The material cost alone is one hundred pounds, plus the transportation costs of transporting these things from the UK to Germany, as well as the labor costs of accompanying the materials to Berlin to help install them. Chen Muwu thinks that asking Planck for five thousand pounds should be quite suitable. Bar?
Although the other party did help me a lot, it is still necessary to distinguish between public and private.

Even if it is so different from the cost price, Chen Muwu is not afraid when the other party asks.

Just ask and he will answer that it is the value of knowledge.

Readers and Yilin always like to publish philosophical stories, often flaunting their craftsmanship.

And every time the spirit of craftsmanship is mentioned, the famous circle of 10 yuan is always indispensable:

There was a problem with a machine in a Chinese factory. No one in the whole factory could find the problem. In the end, there was no way out. The director had no choice but to contact the manufacturer of the machine and hired an after-sales engineer from the country of origin. Regarding the maintenance fee of this machine, the other party asked for a flat price of 10 yuan.

As a result, when the engineer arrived at the factory, after checking the machine, he just drew a circle on it with chalk and told the factory that the problem was here.

After the factory engineers disassembled the machine in disbelief, after a few simple fiddles with the circle, it resumed operation.

The Chinese factory felt that the 10 yuan was spent too quickly and unjustly, and wanted to bargain. As a result, I said that drawing a circle may only be worth one yuan, but knowing where to draw the circle is worth 99 yuan. One hundred and ninety-nine.

There is some doubt whether this story actually happened, but the protagonist is definitely not me.

At least Chen Muwu has heard this statement in British folklore, but the engineer was replaced by his good friend Kapitsa.

Drawing a circle on the machine turned into smashing the bearing of the hydraulic press with a hammer, and the reward increased from 10 yuan to [-] pounds.

The reason why I say appreciation is because the purchase price of one thousand pounds in 1927 was equivalent to the purchase value of seventy thousand pounds 100 years later.

Chen Muwu also personally asked the person involved to verify whether such an incident really happened.

In the end, all he got in response was a big eye roll and a Russian-style humorous comment:

"If I had really earned this 1000 yuan, I would have bought a new car long ago!"

　happy National Day!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)