Short video spoiler history: The beginning of modern warfare

Chapter 85 Light Bulbs and Patents
Inside the Fengtian Hall, after a long meeting and some rest, most of the ministers were exhausted, but they still forced themselves to witness the telegraph experiment.

At this moment, most of the ministers were standing on the left side of the hall. In front of them was a desk with a strange device on it. It was different from the one demonstrated on the skylight, but in principle it was also a receiver.

On the right side of the hall, there were only Zhu Yuanzhang and Sun Chuanshi from the Science Department. This was to ensure the accuracy of the test telegraph as much as possible.

There is also a relay in the middle of the hall, and the power generation device has been moved outside the hall because it is a bit noisy.

"Your Majesty, we are ready!"

"Hmm!" Zhu Yuanzhang hummed, then whispered a number to Sun Chuanshi: 356.

Although he had rehearsed it many times beforehand, Sun Chuanshi was still a little trembling. He took a deep breath, looked at the improvised code, then pressed the buttons of the transmitter with his fingers and started operating quickly.

As the sounds of "beep beep", "beep beep", and "beep beep" rang out, Du Ping, who had just been chosen as the receiver, became flustered and began to record quickly.

They are: “—..”, “—.—”, and “——.”.

Zhu Biao, Liu Ji, Hu Weiyong and others standing behind Du Ping also became inexplicably nervous. Logically speaking, the telegraph machine could definitely transmit information, but when it came to the final step, everyone was still inexplicably nervous.

In order to test the accuracy as much as possible, His Majesty has rushed everyone here, so no one knows what number His Majesty is going to send.

Zhu Biao happened to be standing behind Du Ping. He could clearly see that Du Ping's back was soaked and his hands were shaking as he recorded the information.

At this time, the electrical signals recorded by the three receivers were translated into corresponding numbers, namely 356, 356, and 365, and then presented.

Zhu Yuanzhang took a look at the number, calmly said another number, and then the situation became chaotic again.

This was followed by a dozen or so telegrams in quick succession.

For a moment, no one in the Fengtian Hall dared to disturb the place except for the beeping sound of the telegraph.

Liu Ji was worried for his three colleagues in the Science Department, because this thing was temporarily made by the Ministry of Industry and was much cruder than the telegraph demonstrated on the sky screen.

The three people who received the telegrams were so sweaty in the dead of winter that they had no time to pay attention to the beads of sweat that fell on the desk. But gradually they reached a certain understanding with Sun Chuanshi on the other side of the strait and became more and more proficient in recording.

The Minister of Works An Ran had a very nervous look on his face. He felt very complicated as he watched the iron needle above the receiver constantly hitting the iron sheet. He didn't know whether this thing was useful or not.

Logically speaking, there is no problem, but this was something His Majesty came up with on a whim. He was afraid that the receiver was not sensitive enough or that the receiver could not accurately identify the information. The Ministry of Industry would at least bear part of the responsibility, so he was very worried.

Every time a telegram message was submitted, His Majesty showed neither joy nor frown, and even Zhu Biao could not guess what Zhu Yuanzhang was thinking.

In this almost frozen atmosphere, Zhu Yuanzhang waved his hand and announced the end of the experiment, and then all the ministers consciously lined up in two rows according to the civil and military officials.

Zhu Yuanzhang knew that except for the initial lack of proficiency, the next few telegrams could basically be translated accurately, with an accuracy rate of over 80%.

In other words, by training a group of skilled telegraph operators, it is indeed possible to transmit information through the telegraph.

He stood in the hall, took a deep breath and said, "My Lords, we have done it!"

Hu Weiyong and others were stunned for a moment before they reacted. It worked?
Become!

"Congratulations, Your Majesty!"

Zhu Yuanzhang sent twelve telegram messages back to the three receivers, all of which had His Majesty's markings on them, and it could be seen that the accuracy was improving.

"Let me see!" Zhu Biao also wanted to take a look. Although these papers contained meaningless information, they had important historical significance.

These papers quickly passed back and forth among the people, and everyone knew that the era of the telegraph was about to arrive.

Even when he walked out of the palace, Du Ping's hands were still shaking, at first out of nervousness, then out of excitement.

People in the streets and alleys of Jinling City were talking about it, and the most discussed topic was definitely: Voyager 1.

Many people may be able to understand electric motors, but far fewer people can understand telegraphs. However, these two are the most important technologies for the imperial court and they must be vigorously developed.

As for Voyager 1?
I don't understand the technology at all. How did it fly out? How did the battery last for 46 years? How did Voyager 1 explore Saturn and Jupiter? How did it send photos back? How did they control Voyager 1 from such a distance? After all, there were no wires on Voyager 1.

But all this is too far away. Although the sensory shock it brings is the strongest, its priority is the lowest. The two are not in conflict.

The excited atmosphere in Jinling City diluted the festive atmosphere, and pedestrians in the streets and alleys had smiles on their faces.

"The New Year is almost here!" Du Ping sighed. The original soap trio have gone their separate ways. The tall Gao Chen went with the Ministry of Household Affairs to do a population census, the shorter and less confident Ji Changshou was chosen to do breeding work, and he is in the Science Department, where he is exposed to the most cutting-edge information and technology every day.

He works in the Science Department researching various subjects, and is the most mysterious and promising one in the eyes of the trio.

Du Ping has always been grateful. If it weren't for the emergence of the sky curtain that promoted the progress of science and technology, he would probably still be studying hard in the Imperial College and would not have the opportunity to be favored by His Majesty.

Nowadays, Jinling City undergoes a great change every month. In the next month, kerosene lamps will gradually appear on the market, and electric fans will not be far behind.

Time passed quickly, and this year's Spring Festival was more grand than ever before. Every household inside and outside Jinling City was filled with joy. Although life was almost the same as before and money was not enough as before, it felt like everyone had a very fulfilling and happy New Year, and had more hope for the future.

In the blink of an eye, the day of dawn has arrived again.

[Thomas Alva Edison, this is a household name inventor, I believe everyone is familiar with this name]

[When we were young, we all learned about the story of Edison in our Chinese textbooks. Different versions of textbooks describe Edison differently.

[For example, the People's Education Press version is about Edison saving his mother. In this text, it says that when Edison was 7 years old, he used the principle of mirror reflection to illuminate, so that the doctor could perform an emergency appendectomy surgery on his mother at home.]

[But in fact, the earliest discussion of appendicitis surgery in the world was in 1886. Edison was born in 1847. In 1886, Edison was already a 40-year-old man.]

[Another version says that Edison only went to school for three months when he was a child because his family was poor, but he loved science, and Edison decided early on to invent a better lighting lamp than kerosene lamps.]

[So he struggled to find materials that could emit light when electricity was turned on, but the effects of these materials for filaments were not ideal. In order to invent the light bulb, Edison tried more than 6000 materials and conducted more than 7000 experiments. Finally, he found a filament material that could last for 45 hours and made an electric light that everyone could use.]

[The above are all very far-fetched stories, just listen to them, because the light bulb was not invented by Edison at all. Many inventors had devoted themselves to it long before Edison. Today, I will take you to understand the history and principles of the light bulb.]

[We all know that the principle of light bulbs is that when current passes through a high-resistance filament, a large amount of heat energy is generated, which increases the temperature of the filament and generates light and heat.]

[Therefore, there are two main difficulties in making light bulbs. One is to find a high-resistance and high-melting-point filament, and the other is to create a vacuum environment.]

During the Hongwu reign, in Jinling City, many families who had just bought kerosene lamps were speechless. The kerosene lamps in their homes hadn't even been warmed up yet, and they were already being eliminated?
The key point is that this kerosene lamp is not cheap.

In front of the Fengtian Hall in the Imperial Palace.

Zhu Yuanzhang and others were not impressed by such far-fetched stories. In fact, any celebrity in history who was slightly famous had many stories imposed on them by their descendants, and many of them could not stand up to scrutiny.

So no one was discussing the content of the stories at this time. Everyone was frowning and thinking. The principle of the light bulb mentioned in the sky curtain was very simple, it could even be said to be brutal, and great force could make miracles happen. In comparison, steam engines, electric motors and other objects were much more ingenious.

A closer look reveals that it is somewhat complicated. To put it simply, the structure of a light bulb is a closed circuit, except that the material of the filament in the middle is different.

Copper wires will also become hot after being used for a long time, not to mention iron wires.

"Could it be that copper, iron and other wires also have resistance, and the resistance of copper is smaller than that of iron, right?"

"Tianmu said that the higher the resistance, the more severe the heat will be, and the more suitable it is to be the filament of a light bulb. So theoretically speaking, whoever generates more heat in the same period of time has a higher resistance." The scientific department and others gave a brief analysis, and everyone nodded frequently.

"Then, how do we measure the specific value of resistance?" Hu Weiyong and others also began to think about it. This problem can actually be classified into the same category as measuring current.

"Besides current and resistance, are there other components of electricity that we don't know about?"

"This..." Everyone in the Science Department looked thoughtful. How to measure it was a problem. Tianmu did not mention this part. Of course, this was also the meaning of their existence.

[Joseph Swan was a famous British chemist, physicist and inventor. Swan was most famous for obtaining the first patent for an incandescent lamp in the UK in 1878. His residence was the first private residence in the world to be illuminated by electric lights.]

[As early as 1848, when he was 20 years old, Swan began to develop electric lights and made a major breakthrough in the choice of filament materials. Edison was only one year old that year.]

[Swan had been improving his electric light for 12 years, but due to the backward development of other technologies at the time, such as vacuum technology, Swan's electric light could not break through the bottleneck of durability, so he completely gave up his experimental work in 1860]

[In 1854, German Henry Goebbels used a carbonized bamboo filament and placed it in a vacuum glass bottle to generate light. At that time, the light bulb in Goebbels' experiment could maintain lighting for more than 400 hours, but Goebbels did not apply for a design patent in time]

[In 1874, two Canadian electrical technicians invented a technology that filled a glass bulb with nitrogen and used an electrified carbon rod to emit light, but they ran out of money and couldn't continue. Then they did something and sold the patent to Edison in 1875]

[It was at this time that Edison began to challenge the electric light. In 1878, one year before Edison invented the electric light, Swan had developed a light bulb that used carbon filaments to power a vacuum and immediately applied for a British patent.]

【.】

[So why do we need to pump out the air inside the bulb to create a vacuum environment? This is because the vacuum environment can prevent the filament from burning or oxidizing too quickly while heating and shining.]

[Of course, it can also be filled with inert gas, such as the headlights of cars, which are filled with xenon, and tungsten filament lamps, which are filled with nitrogen]

During the Zhenguan period, Chang'an City.

Li Shimin chuckled. Edison was really unlucky when it came to the light bulb. He entered the market too late. Every time he worked hard to come up with a filament material, he found out that others had discovered it more than ten or twenty years ago.

"Carbonized bamboo filaments can be used as light bulb filaments?" Even Fang Xuanling was surprised. From the words "carbonized" and "bamboo filaments", we can imagine how many experiments people in later generations have done to find the right filament material.
This thing is completely different from metal wire, which is really unexpected. Before this, everyone's thoughts were focused on metal wire.

The vacuum environment was something that had never been thought of before. Of course, there were people in the Science Department who had been tinkering with this thing, but they had never been going in the right direction.

Direction is really important, otherwise it would be like looking for a needle in the ocean.

Li Jing, Li Ji, Cheng Yaojin and others also yearned for it. They had seen the Tang Dynasty City that never sleeps in Xi'an in later generations, with dancing jade dragons, lanterns lit at night, people coming and going, lantern riddles, various performances and special snacks. What a grand occasion it was.

Li Shimin did not care much about such technical details. He handed down the main things and believed that the people below could handle it.

At this moment, he kept repeating the word "patent". From what Tianmu said, it can be understood that this is a system established to protect the interests of inventors and indirectly promote everyone's enthusiasm for invention.

If there were no "patent" constraint, then as soon as the light bulb was invented, there would definitely be imitations. In the long run, no one would be willing to suffer the loss by inventing something.

It is undoubtedly most appropriate for the government to manage these patents and protect the interests of patent holders when someone infringes on their patents.

This is actually a simple matter. We can just set up a department dedicated to the management of patents, write the relevant regulations into the Tang Shu Law, and then act in accordance with the law.

The most controversial issue may be the "duplicate invention". It is really hard to say whether it is a duplicate invention or not. Although there is a telegraph machine, and patent offices in various places can report and manage it in a unified manner, it will take a very long time to lay out this thing, and it is not suitable for the transmission of such large information.

Jinling City.

Zhu Yuanzhang also noticed the word "patent" and understood its meaning after a little thought.

Throughout history, various technologies have been discriminated against as gimmicks and clever tricks. One of the main reasons is that inventions cannot be profitable. There are many reasons for this, including the national policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, and the lack of support from public opinion and environment.

If ordinary people can benefit from inventions, it will undoubtedly greatly boost everyone's enthusiasm for invention.

As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers, and it is possible that this will also promote the advancement of science and technology.

From the current perspective, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and it is worth doing.

[Although the electric light was not invented by Edison first, the phonograph and sound film invented by Edison are still great inventions in human history. Edison is still an entrepreneur and inventor who has made important contributions to human history.]

[Things that we have been accustomed to since childhood, when we grow up, we will take them for granted and they are not surprising. 】

[But the advent of the phonograph was as astonishing as a magician's magic at the time. Before that, no one had ever seen such a thing in the history.]

[This is also true for photography, which can record images exactly as they are, including the faces of loved ones and the scenes of the past. These inventions are full of imagination and have greatly changed people's lifestyles.]

[Because of their existence, today we can go to war, experience scenery that we can never visit, see the voices and smiles of deceased great men, and even "visit" distant planets. ]

[In order to commemorate Edison, the US government once ordered a nationwide power outage for one minute. During this one minute, the United States seemed to have returned to the era of kerosene lamps. One minute later, the lights were bright from the east coast to the west coast again.]

"As long as primary school students can get high scores when writing essays with it, then the light bulb was invented by Edison [狗头]"

"In our school's last Science Week Knowledge Contest, there was a question about who invented the light bulb. Of all the contestants, I was the only one who didn't choose Edison, so I was eliminated."

"Edison invented the first incandescent light bulb that could be used in commercial applications. Who came up with this question? It's not rigorous at all."

"The version I watched was that Edison was blind, and then he invented the light bulb. Fuck you [covering face]"

(End of this chapter)