Ming Dynasty and New Rome and Infinite Magic Machine

Chapter 265 Exchange
The last step in sending stamps is stamping, which Shangluo has always had.He has a small seal for himself, the size of a fingernail, on which his name is stamped.

After being stamped, the effect is similar to the postmark of the post office, and these stamps are considered to have been used.

"Okay, so you can send it. Let me tell you, it's super fun."

Wen Yuan took the stamped form from his hand, put them all into the delivery bottle, and aimed at the opening of the pneumatic pipe:
"Boom"

The bottle was sucked in.

"This voice seems to be inexplicably emotional."

"That's right, it's the 'Bo' sound. You only need to turn a handle, and you can manipulate a huge system to turn it for you. Ah~~ It's too tax-evading. It's a pity that you can only play it once a month, and you can play it for ten coppers."

"This thing is very expensive, right?"

This thing is very useful at first glance.Because it is so far the only transportation system that can deliver "items" "almost instantly" between "customers and customers".

There are three elements to this: customer-to-customer, near-instant, and items.

Water pipes and the like transfer electricity, not items.Water and electricity are not from customer to customer. Obviously, it is impossible for two neighbors to use wires to generate electricity for each other. Although the telephone can establish a connection between everyone, the telephone can only transmit information, not goods.Another example is running errands, which can pass items from customer to customer, but the speed of running errands is too slow.

The closest thing to this system is actually a fax machine.If documents are being transferred, a fax machine is an almost perfect replacement for a pneumatic transport system.However, what the fax machine cannot cover is the function of delivering "original documents" and "other items".

Among them, the purpose of delivering the "original document" is mainly for encryption and mutual authentication.However, after the electronic certificate and biometric technology cover most of it, the only marginal function of the pneumatic transmission system is "delivery", which cannot be replaced.

However, the elimination of pneumatic transmission systems was far less tangled.Nothing replaces each other, competes with each other or anything like that.Almost as soon as it started, it was approaching the end of its technological lifespan.Only a period of reverie about the "steampunk" era is left in human history.

Shangluo thinks that the most important reason here should be that it is too expensive.The fact that it is "expensive" alone can make the entire system unable to run.

In the "early modern age", such premature but massive projects were not uncommon.Such as seaplanes, airships, etc.After more than ten years of operation, or even a few years of golden period, these technologies quickly withdrew from the stage of history.The reason is not only because the technology at that time was changing with each passing day, but also because human engineering was generally not so developed at that time, and there was no reasonable estimate for the follow-up budget of a project.

The same goes for this pneumatic transport system.When it was first established, its cost can be relied on and new buildings, etc., and it does not seem so expensive.But over time, its maintenance cost becomes quite outrageous and unacceptably expensive.

Then, it's gone.

"Hmm." Wen Yuan thought for a while, "Is it expensive? It seems quite expensive."

"Is the project roughly breaking even?"

"It seems to be. But we only use the additional functions. The real big customer of the pneumatic transmission system is the section from the telegraph office to the stock exchange. Well, but in recent years, more and more private calls have been received, and this fun system will probably shrink slowly. Anyway, I have played with it anyway, and this system has been in service for decades. It is not a bad thing to retire all of them after the service life is over. My grandma is deploying new switches."

"Switch?" Shangluo caught the key word, "Didn't you already have a phone number before? Isn't that a switch?"

"No, those before were actually fetion signals. They used the spirit network to communicate completely. Think about it, do you have a landline phone at home? No? I have it at home. It is very expensive, because each telephone line has to reserve a manual interface at the post office, and then it needs to be transferred step by step. Sometimes a long-distance call requires the coordination and cooperation of several stations. But just last year, we found out how to use phone numbers to dial outside the spirit network."

"Oh? How did you do it?"

"Well, I heard from my grandma that it's called a 'stepping switch'. I haven't seen it, but I heard it's a machine about the size of a room. By dialing the dial, you can find the one you want to call. The principle is this: the phone needs to dial the dial, and when dialing 0 to 9, the angle and time of the dial are different. Then enter the switch, you can recognize the number, and then switch to the dial."

"Recognize the numbers. How do you read them after that?"

"It's very complicated, but it's not incomprehensible. It's the 'stepping' method—have you ever played a small ball machine? That's it. It goes down one level at a time, but it's fixed here. For example, Yujing's area code is 01, Fengjing's is 02, and only these two numbers start with 0. Then when you dial 0, the switchboard will only screen the numbers in Yujing and Fengjing. The next gear, 1 is Yujing, and 2 is Fengjing. Numbers other than 4-01. The second digit is 4, and other than 5-01 are screened out. Then “step” one level at a time until the only number is confirmed, such as 45-01. This is a step-by-step switch. Why do you suddenly ask this?”

"Didn't you say you have an office?"

"Oh, Dongchang, right?"

"You call Dongchang again, believe it or not, I'm in a hurry with you."

"Okay, okay, it's not called Dongchang anymore. What factory is here?"

"It's not a factory. The main task of our office is to build a many-to-many information network for more than 1000 Qi practitioners across the country. Then..."

Shang Luo paused.After that comes more important things. This many-to-many communication network will establish an outpost for the nationwide Internet in the future, allowing everyone to do a "psychological construction", and then the "Pure Land" will come.

"So that's the case." Wen Yuan nodded, "Then our task is quite important. However, the step-by-step switch may not be of much help, it is too basic. The Internet you described seems to be a 'many-to-many' connection? But the step-by-step switch is still just a one-to-one exchange, because it cannot connect multiple telephone lines together, and it only has one dial-up time left."

"Well, it seems that there is a long way to go."

"Do you have any ready-made plans?"

"Yes there is. But if it's just step-swapping it's going to take up a whole room and nothing else. We need something that actually increases the 'computing power'. Do you have any ideas?"

(End of this chapter)