Daming Military Empire

Chapter 232

It is not a simple matter to cover the entire Ming Dynasty or even all the vassal states with wired telegrams. Wires, steam generators, and wired telegraph sending and receiving devices are just the most basic hardware configurations, and a place is needed to place these things. It needs someone to operate, and it also needs a unified Chinese character encoding, etc., and so on.

As the emperor, Zhu Cijiong naturally didn't need to do everything himself. If he had to think about these issues alone, his head would explode. He didn't need to think about those details at all. As long as he explained the matter, someone would take care of it for him.

If electric wires, steam generators, and wired telegraph sending and receiving devices are the hardware foundation of wired telegrams, then the unified Chinese character encoding is the software foundation of wired telegrams. With hardware and software, human beings can operate, so Zhu Cijiong is going to solve Chinese characters first. Encoding problem.

The encoding of Chinese characters is simple and simple. Anyway, if you arrange the characters one by one, you can give each character a number, but it is also very complicated. The Chinese characters are extensive and profound. If you list all the characters, there may be tens of thousands or even There are tens of thousands of them. There is no pinyin search or stroke search at the moment. If all telegraph operators are to memorize all Chinese characters and codes, I am afraid that one year of training will not be enough, so common Chinese characters must be picked out. , only commonly used Chinese characters are coded, and the uncommonly used ones are put aside first.

The job of selecting commonly used Chinese characters is naturally none other than the Hanlin Academy. In the Ming Dynasty, the Hanlin Academy was an authority on literature. It is not wrong to find them for the job of commonly used Chinese characters.

It is good to be an emperor. He only needs to go down with an imperial decree, and the Imperial Academy will select [-] commonly used Chinese characters within a month, edit them into a book, and hand them in. It will be done.As for how they choose, it doesn't matter if they count according to the frequency of appearance in various books, sort according to the frequency of daily expressions, or even wrangling and fighting. Anyway, there will be a result in a month, so he doesn't have to worry about it at all.

As for the encoding, it is simpler. Just pick out the commonly used words and hand them over to Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi to edit them. It may be a bit tight to finish editing [-] words in a day, but there is absolutely no problem within three days. Zhu Cijiong even changed the format. It is set for them, each character occupies a large square, and the large square is divided into three lines, with a large Chinese character in the middle, a thin Chinese character number on the upper line, and a thin binary code on the lower line. Ten lines, five grids per line, [-] characters and [-] pages are enough, and it is a thin book, which is very convenient to read.He even asked Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi to contact the printing workshop to prepare tiny typefaces and squares, and then they just need to add the selected Chinese characters to them.

After arranging the problem of Chinese character encoding, the next step is the problem of venue and personnel. This venue is fine. At this moment, instead of abolishing the post station like the Chongzhen Dynasty, it has been improved into a post office, and the post offices in various places have been rebuilt. Steam generators and telegraph transmitters and receivers were out of the question.However, this person is a big problem. If you want to be able to send a report, you must first be able to read, learn some simple circuit knowledge, and learn binary coding. Thousands of commonly used Chinese characters are incredible!

There is no other way to solve this problem, but to select first, select the literate postmen, and then gather them together for training and teach them relevant knowledge.

Now the post offices in various places, that is, the post offices, have been assigned to the department of the General Political Envoy. Zhu Cijiong invited Wu Meicun, the General Political Envoy, to discuss for a while, and then issued an imperial decree: "Let all parts of the Ming Dynasty begin to select postmen, requiring flexibility, Able to read and write, each Xuancheng chief envoy selects ten, each prefecture selects five, and each county selects two, and the selected postmen are sent to the capital for training in batches, and the salary is doubled after the training is passed! "

Although this postman is not a sweet pastry, he is also an iron rice bowl that eats the emperor's grain. It is not a problem for ordinary postmen to support themselves. Therefore, there are rumors that Li Zicheng had to rebel because he lost his job as a postman and had no way to survive. , although this reason is a bit far-fetched, it at least proves that the professional treatment of postmen in the Ming Dynasty was still acceptable.

The postman is a good job, but now it is possible to double the salary, that is to say, as long as you save some money, you can even support a family. Isn't ordinary people living a lifetime to support their families? Drilling in with a sharp head, this postman instantly became a popular job.

But now the officialdom of Ming Dynasty has been almost rectified by Zhu Cijiong. The officials in the counties and even the prefectures basically dare not make any fools. They all claim that the Chief Secretary is capable of tampering with such trivial matters, but It is not worth it to provoke the emperor for this benefit, so the selection of postmen is relatively fair. Not to mention that the selected postmen have the level of students, at least they have learned the thousand-character prose, and they can basically read and write. .

Daming now has two capitals and thirteen provinces and one Fengtian Zhili Mansion. The number of postmen selected is quite a lot. There are more than 100 at the provincial level, at least five or six hundred at the state level, and two at the county level. Three thousand, there are at least more than 3000 people in total, and this is only local. The military is the key unit equipped with telegraphs. Therefore, there are more than 3000 people in total. It is definitely impossible to train them all at once, and it is imperative to train them in batches.

Thousands of sets of electric wires, steam generators, and wired telegraph sending and receiving devices cannot be produced at once. Zhu Cijiong reckons that next year it will be good to equip each of the ministers, commanders, and legions. Yes, so he plans to open two classes first, Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi are the professors respectively, and each class is selected by the Xuancheng Buzheng Envoy and each Du Commanding Envoy. There are about 200 people, and each legion first selects 20 people to form it. A class, probably more than 200 people, will recruit a few larger lecture professors at the Daming Institute of Technology, and after these professors are finished, they will be assigned to the state capitals and health centers, and finally consider the communication issues of the various counties.

Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi were terrified when they heard that they were going to be teachers, and they had to teach more than 200 students at once. Although they had also attended private schools, an old man in a private school would only take a dozen students at a time at most, even in the current Daming In the Institute of Science and Technology, a teacher can only lead 200 to [-] students at most, how can he lead more than [-] students, how can he teach them!

Fortunately, Zhu Cijiong went to university and has experience in this field. In a university, there are only a few classes of two to 300 people, and the entire lecture hall will do. As for the blackboard, there is no need for it. Anyway, for these postmen and the military For our correspondents, the culture class is to learn the [-] commonly used characters, memorize their codes, and read the big characters written with a brush more clearly.

As for the teaching material, it is also very simple, just use the newly compiled "Encyclopedia of Commonly Used Chinese Character Codes", which has numbers and codes. As long as the binary codes are taught to them, there will be no problem of incomprehension.And this book will also be a reference book that they must use in the future. The sooner they get in touch, the better. They are not required to memorize the codes of all Chinese characters at once, but at least they must memorize the approximate codes, otherwise they will not know the codes when the time comes. If you can't even turn it over, it will delay the matter.

In fact, the most troublesome thing is the experimental class. The main job of these postmen and correspondents in the future is to receive and send telegrams. You can practice sending and receiving telegrams, otherwise it will be useless even if you can recite the "Encyclopedia of Commonly Used Chinese Characters" backwards and forwards.

It took more than a month to select local postmen and military correspondents. During this time, the Ministry of Industry was also working hard to develop the wire drawing machine. Although it was not finally successful, the extrusion part of the main body was almost done. It can extrude a section of copper wire. These copper wires are several feet long, several feet or even inches short. If they are to be used to produce formal steam generators and wired telegraph sending and receiving devices, it will definitely not work. The wiring is even worse, but it is still enough to be used as experimental equipment.

It just so happened that Zhu Cijiong wanted Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi to learn how to make steam generators and wired telegraph sending and receiving devices. He simply drew the sketches of these two things and explained them to them so that they could figure out how to use the existing ones. How to produce formal steam generators and cable telegraph sending and receiving devices after the production of experimental equipment.

To say that Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi really made the right choice. They are the kind of geniuses in science and engineering. Zhu Cijiong explained the sketches to them. It is used for experiments, but cannot be put into practical use.

For example, steam generators, bearings and steam pistons are all ready-made, so it goes without saying.The shell is also very simple. Daming has a lot of skilled craftsmen in this area, as long as you describe it to them, even if you want to cast a flower, they can cast it for you.The rotor is also easy to say, as long as the magnet is processed.The only trouble is the stator coils.At this moment, even the insulating material has not been found, let alone the enameled wire. Without the insulating layer, the wire and wire or the wire and the shell cannot be contacted. Xu Fuyuan and Xia Yunyi came up with a way to wind the wire directly on the wooden post. , wind it thinly, prevent the wires from touching, and then put a wooden case on the outside, otherwise the wires will touch the casing. This is done, but the electricity, voltage and current generated are very small, so close-up This experiment is okay, but if it is lost at a long distance, the current will be so weak that the thin iron sheet can't absorb it, so it can't be put into practical use.

The wired telegraph sending and receiving device can be stronger. The sending device is just a switch button with a shrapnel. The structure is extremely simple. The receiving device can be more complicated. The main problem is the signal display. There is no photodiode, and the signal can only be transmitted by sound, which requires a sophisticated sound generating device. This part is also time-consuming, so it can only be replaced by a bell first.

After the experimental equipment was finalized, Zhu Cijiong immediately ordered that the couriers and legions selected by the chief envoys and the commanding envoys of each capital should first select correspondents to go to Beijing and start learning telegraph communication. As for the lack of experimental equipment, let them Learn while doing, so the impression is more profound.

(End of this chapter)