The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 55 Mimeograph Method

Guacaidai was only tried for a few days before it aroused all kinds of suspicions among the people.

Wang Wenlong never imagined that people would be so resistant to new planting methods and new crops in this era. If the promotion of melon and vegetable substitution continues like this, it will definitely not be possible.

After carefully asking Chen Jinglun about his process of spreading sweet potatoes in Fuzhou, Wang Wenlong also discovered that the people's acceptance of new crops in this era was really too low.

Chen Jinglun said that even though he successfully guided people to grow sweet potatoes in Fuzhou and won the Jin Xuezeng Award, the places where sweet potatoes were continued to be planted the next year were limited to the few villages he had guided. There was only one village between them. The people did not dare to introduce seeds.

Wang Wenlong: "It is too difficult for local people to plant new crops on their own initiative. Only religious methods can break their prejudices."

Listening to Wang Wenlong's words, Deng Zhimo's eyes lit up.

"How could you come up with such a solution?"

Wang Wenlong smiled and said nothing. In fact, this method was also summarized from the experience of later generations.

Later generations built many fairy potato temples in southern Fujian to commemorate Chen Zhenlong's introduction of sweet potatoes from overseas. The "Sweet Potato God" enshrined in the temples is Chen Zhenlong, who brought back sweet potatoes, or Jin Xuezeng, who promoted sweet potato cultivation. Even Chen Jinglun has a statue to accompany him. .

Some of these Xianshu temples were built spontaneously by the private sector, but officials quickly followed suit. In the Qing Dynasty, it was clearly recorded that Fujian officials offered sacrifices to Xianshu temples or hosted sacrifices.

Those Fujian officials were unlikely to believe in the existence of the sweet potato god, but they knew that as long as the fairy potato temple was given divinity, the local people's confidence in this crop would greatly increase.

That is to say, in the era when the Qing Dynasty court encouraged the sacrifice of fairy potatoes, sweet potato cultivation was also rapidly promoted in Fujian, which shows that this method is quite effective.

Moreover, Deng Zhimo, as a native of Jiangxi, did not know enough about the enthusiasm of people in southern Fujian to worship wild gods. However, Wang Wenlong, who had experienced the southern Fujian culture in later generations, was deeply impressed. He believed that once his set of melons and vegetables were introduced, it would definitely play a great role in Quanzhou. promotion effect.

"Part of these manuscripts will be used as propaganda manuscripts for the gods, and the other part will be distributed to agricultural officials in various places to guide the people to grow various fruits and vegetables."

"It's really thoughtful."

Deng Zhimo praised Wang Wenlong's approach repeatedly.

But Wang Jingui on the side took the manuscript and read it for a while, but pointed out the difficulty tactfully:
"The method is good, but I don't know how many engravers the feudal lord wants to do, and how long the construction period can be given?"

Wang Wenlong nodded and said: "We must work overtime. The first batch of manuscripts will be published within five days at most, otherwise it will be too late."

Now Xu Xueju has deployed all the seeds in place. The planting of sugar cane, winter melon, and radish has a certain scale in the local area.

The temperature in Fujian is warmer than that of Yunnan and Guizhou. It is originally the southern winter planting area for potatoes. In Wang Wenlong's previous life, potatoes in Fujian were only planted from the end of October to November in the Gregorian calendar and harvested around the Chinese New Year of the next year.

Now planting potatoes in Quanzhou can still catch up with the harvest season, but there is not much time left. There is still a buffer period of ten days at most.

Wang Jingui and Deng Zhimo were stunned when they heard that Wang Wenlong wanted it so urgently.

"How can this be done?" Wang Jingui said bluntly.

The large stack of manuscripts that Wang Wenlong took out contained at least tens of thousands of words, and the engraving craftsmen of this era only carved more than 200 words a day on average, and Wang Wenlong's engravings also needed to include a large number of exquisite pictures.

For such a book, even if all the engravers in Quanzhou were mobilized, it would take at least half a month to type out the manuscript, and this does not include the time for editing and proofreading.

Seeing his uncle's troubled expression, Wang Wenlong smiled and said, "That's why I called you two here today." He led the two of them into the workshop. Wang Jingui and Deng Zhimo did not check carefully when they entered the workshop. Only recently did they realize that although this engraving workshop was also engraving books, it was quite different from the wooden board engraving workshop they were familiar with.

As soon as I got closer, I smelled a strong smell of pine oil. The workers who were busy in front of the woodblock board did not cover the paper on the woodblock board and print it in the familiar way. Instead, they stood on a machine that could be turned over. in front of the machine.

The two saw a worker quickly opening the box-like machine, placing a piece of clean white paper under the hinge, and then closing the upper half of the machine.

There is a piece of paper that has been dyed black on the hinge of the upper half of the page. The worker uses a suede roller to dip an appropriate amount of sticky ink into the ink pool next to it and rolls it against the black paper, and then rolls it on the black paper. After sweeping away the excess ink and opening the hinge, the original piece of white paper was already filled with patterns and text.

Wang Jingui and Deng Zhimo both stared, "What kind of printing method is this?"

The thing in front of me is the wax paper ink printing machine that every unit and primary and secondary school had before computer printing became popular in Wang Wenlong's previous life.

The assembly of this thing is extremely convenient and the principle is simple. In the previous life, Wang Wenlong was a child because his parents were transferred from work, so he studied in a rural primary school for a while. There was such a machine in the school at that time. Wang Wenlong also helped the teacher use this thing to print test papers. Yes This thing is still fresh in my memory.

The principle of the wax paper mimeograph machine is very simple, and anyone with basic manual skills can make it by themselves.

This printing method only needs a piece of engraved wax paper as a template. The engraver first puts an iron plate under the wax paper, and then uses a stylus to carve words on the wax paper.

Where the wax paper has been engraved by the stylus, the wax has been pushed away, leaving only sparse paper fibers. Ink can penetrate between the fibers, but the areas that have not been engraved are protected by wax, so the ink cannot penetrate.

Use the engraved wax paper as a printing template, put ordinary white paper underneath, smear the ink on the wax paper and then peel it off, and the printed product is finished.

The printing quality of this thing is quite inferior, but it is still much better than the original movable type printing of this era.

The difficult part of manufacturing is the ink and wax paper.

Chinese printing in this era basically used water-soluble ink, which would penetrate when applied to paper. It could only be used for letterpress printing and could not be used for wax paper printing at all.

Fortunately, the most classic Gutenberg ink formula has been recorded in many books. Wang Wenlong found the corresponding formula with a little recall in his mind, and the trial production was quickly successful.

As for the wax paper, it was unexpectedly troublesome.

Wang Wenlong first tried wax paper of this era, but found that it couldn't be carved through at all. After some research, he discovered the problem.

It turns out that in the light industry of this era, there was no distinction between oil and wax. At this time, the large red oil wax in candle shops was called wax, but it had a lot of fat added to it, so that such candles could burn easily.

Similarly, the wax paper of this era was also made of oil wax. During the wax dipping process, it was actually soaked by the oil. As a result, the wax paper was very waterproof, and even after the wax layer was scratched, it was completely impermeable.

After figuring this out, Wang Wenlong could only ask someone to buy pure beeswax and try to make wax paper himself.

But even if he used pure beeswax, the wax paper he made at the beginning was still very waterproof.

Wang Wenlong further improved.

He used paper with thinner fibers, and then tried applying alum, white ash and other release agents on the carton. After two days of research, he finally developed a qualified wax paper formula.

(End of this chapter)