Creator's Steam Fairy

The gray farthings are quarterpence, two for a bigger halfpenny, she doesn't know what to do with the penny, the threepence and sixpence are for snacks , a shiny shilling is twelvepence, you can buy a good cup of coffee and tell the waiter that you don't need to look for it, the florin is two shillings, and the half crown and crown are worth two shillings and sixpence and Five shillings... Loria felt sick, and she seemed to have found the reason why this land is rich in mathematicians.

Twenty shillings and four crowns can be exchanged for a shiny gold pound, but there is also a super obscure guinea worth 21 shillings.

You go to buy tea worth eight shillings, ninepence and three farthings, pass it a guinea to the clerk, and receive two crowns a florin and two pence and three farthings in change.

Did the clerk find the wrong money?

vomit!

Miss Luria, who had a throbbing brain, took out a crown and patted it on the little boy's hand, and said, "I will trouble you again this weekend, please come to my house at eight o'clock in the morning and take me to the neighborhood visit."

In fact, Miss Luria is not so crazy as to need a guide when wandering around.

"Didn't you have a little girlfriend named Paula? Come and play with her, and share some candy with her."

She smiled at the little boy who was stunned, and proudly puffed out her chest and said, "I'm going to work, see you again, kids."

Yes, Miss Loria is a mature adult with a serious job.

She walked through the park, and Mr. Russell was reading a mind-boggling math book today, saying hello, and Loria walked into the balloon basket by herself, and repeatedly confirmed that the sliding door of the basket was locked.

When the balloon rises into the sky.

Luria tightly grabbed the corner of her skirt and squatted down slowly, folding herself into a small ball, small enough to be stuffed into a suitcase.

As if this would give some sense of security.

When the balloon came to rest, Loria stepped out of the basket in a nonchalant manner. There was no sign of Ugarte, the watchdog cat, or even a moving figure nearby.

I went out at 06:30, and it took just an hour to connect to the balloon ride.

She came early.

The Natural History Society does not start work until nine o'clock in the morning.

Chapter 86 Letters

Loria was wandering around the overly large central courtyard with nothing to do. Most of the small buildings and shops hadn't opened yet, but the coffee and breakfast shop owners were open.

Looking at the delicious coffee with honey and milk and the golden hash browns, she regretted coming here after eating full at home... Tomorrow she must try the breakfast of the Naturalist Society.

Bought a good cup of coffee at twice the price of the outside room, and she carried the coffee into the lobby of the main building. Between the pillars on the wall, there was a portrait of the past presidents of the Natural Society—Sasha wearing a wig. , Flora, Sasha with another wig, Flora, Dorothy, Sasha without a wig, Flora with a wig...

"..."

Although the costumes, expressions and details of the people in the paintings are different...

The truth about the high-level changes in the huge supranational organization Naturalist Society that has survived for 300 years made Loria start complaining.

She doesn't need to think about these issues now, but after more than ten or twenty years, if she wants to live among mortals without getting old, maybe she has to change her appearance and live in another place, right?

She suddenly understood the reason why those seniors warned her not to have too many entanglements with mortals.

It's okay to be friends, but don't fall in love with mortals.

As Luria wandered around as if to pass the time, the number of people around gradually increased, and many of them cast curious glances at her.

hum.

It's a classically beautiful girl dressed solemnly for the first day of work, a lavender printed dress with mature black stockings.

Black stockings.

Miss Loria thought about it with some complacency, but she didn't notice that most people were just staring at her pink-haired head.

It was almost time, so she took out the iron badge with her name and June Rain pattern engraved on it from her small briefcase, pinned it on the chest of the dress, and walked towards the clock tower.

The gatekeeper glanced at her, and then opened the iron gate leading to the inside of the bell tower. Following Miss Dorothy's operation last time, she picked an elevator at random, and quickly came to the middle floor—just past the clockwork floor. s position.

Loria walked through the circular file room with dense file racks, and came to the small room at the end.

A bookcase, two desks and matching lamps and stationery, a door leading to other places, and two large iron baskets.

One of them was full of envelopes, and the other was full of neatly-sized portfolios.

Her job is to open the envelope, transcribe the content on the manuscript paper, and then transcribe according to the country and region, military, commodity prices, industry, commerce, agriculture, technology, intelligence, strange rumors and meaningless nonsense. Put the manuscript paper in the corresponding portfolio - and then someone else will take over the files.

This is one of the jobs that Miss Dorothy gave her before. As a trainee clerk of the Naturalist Society, she processes and transcribes letters here every weekday from 9:12 am to [-]:[-] am.

In the afternoon, she will go to the nearby Londinian University or another college funded by the Natural History Society to take a class until she passes the academic certification of the academicians.

The weekly salary is 1 pound and 12 shillings, and the annual salary is 83 pounds with a fraction. At the end of the year, according to the number of years of employment, an additional bonus of 5 pounds multiplied by the length of service is added.

The Natural Society encourages its employees to serve the Society for life.

If you work for 20 years, even a clerk can get an annual salary of up to 180 pounds, which is almost equal to the annual income of four dock workers—lower than bank employees with the same working years, and lower than government employees with the same working years Be taller.

A solid middle-class decent job, and a decent salary enough to support a family of five and hire a servant.

Of course, that was after enough years... 80 pounds a year in Londinian, where the prices and rent are extremely expensive, is only enough for one person to maintain a comfortable life after paying the rent and fixed expenses.

Fortunately, she doesn't have to pay rent.

Of course, this little money is not enough for her to spend.

Luo Liya has no plan to slowly save her qualifications and annuities, so she can only be promoted as soon as possible-first of all, she must pass the academic qualification certification of the academician of the academy.

Miss Dorothy suggested that she choose the most popular classics—most people who aspire to literature, philosophy, history, theological research and political activities will choose this major, and the most difficult part of it, Loria has long been Over-mastered in the sanctuary.

Because she took advantage of her time and position, she was actually able to give lectures to academicians on etiquette, ancient Chinese and theology.

She has to master history and contemporary politics as soon as possible, and learn some small subjects that cultivate sentiment along the way.

In this era, not everyone studies in universities, and there are also many people who hire tutors at home to study by themselves.

Like them, after passing the exam, Loria can get a certified degree.

In this way, she can meet the conditions for the first promotion and salary increase.

Before it was time to go to work, Luo Liya took out a stack of envelopes from the big blue bag, laid out special manuscript paper, and prepared to copy.

'On July 7, the price of beef in the surrounding area of ​​Moore was about 11 shilling and 1 pence per pound...the price of agricultural products did not see any significant fluctuations...the major pig iron factories and steel factories outside the city have expanded to varying degrees. I got unconfirmed news from the local newspaper—last year, the pig iron production of the Bolasia Kingdom increased significantly to 1 million long tons, and the coal production reached 107 million long tons... If the newspaper statistics are true, the output of its main industrial products may have already Gradually approaching the level of one-twentieth to one-tenth of our country.I hereby suggest...'

Long tons?Loria thought for a moment before remembering the damned Breton unit... just a little over a metric ton, more or less the same.

Loria finished copying the letter, and marked P and the mark of prices and industries on the header. She still remembered seeing the tension between the Bolasia Kingdom and that so-and-so United Empire in the morning... from Bolasia Judging from the price fluctuations in Lasia, it may be far from the time of war.

Alarmist newspapers.

The next letter came from Zambia, and it was mostly commonplace and useless nonsense, but it said that the local residents were raising funds to build a small bronze statue for a little girl.

Why do you want to repair the bronze statue for the little girl?Loria couldn't figure it out, but that didn't stop her from marking the transcript of the letter as nonsense.

The third letter was a local rumor from Londinian. It was said that someone had witnessed a shirtless man wearing black leather pants many times in the middle of the night stabbing people with a spear in a remote street.

"..."

After copying a few more letters, she found that different people spelled certain words differently—although the meaning could be guessed based on the context, if she was really uncertain, she could also take ancient and modern dictionaries from the bookcase Come out and check.

Is it for this reason that she, who is proficient in ancient spelling methods, was asked to transcribe?

In order to transcribe all correspondence into documents of uniform format and spelling.

So what is the use of this?

Why bother?

Chapter 87 Old Man Charles' Dream

Luria felt that her handwriting was not bad, thanks to the strict education of the church.

Speaking of which... She thought that Sasha would even take care of her poor handwriting. Is this guy a born boss?Since then, have you planned to squeeze her labor?

But thinking of the pale blond girl's almost confessional words that day and the weak words that promised to never bully her again.

Miss Loria blushed rarely.

She covered her face and wriggled on the chair, saying that Sasha also looked good, but she was a little short.

The temper is also fierce.

If you get married, will you be beaten every day?Speaking of which, the holy scriptures are different from the common customs. God neither encourages nor forbids same-sex marriage. Why is that?

Alas!

What are you thinking about?

It's all because the little man said some things that he didn't have.

Never fall in love before [-] years old!

Sorry!Salsa! After 29984, I will consider your thoughts again!

Luo Liya shook her head to refill the ink pen, and shook her slightly sore hands. She realized that she was a little hungry, and looked at the small pocket watch on the necklace, only to find that it was half past eleven.

Although it is a relatively unskilled job (literacy and proficiency in ancient Chinese is already very remarkable in this era), it is unexpectedly not boring. Letters sent by various people from various countries contain various contents, some of which are interesting and some It was boring, but it also helped her a lot in understanding the mortal world today.

In just one morning, she had a rough understanding of the prices of agricultural products in Bolasia and Pasta, and also learned a little about the customs and culture of the Southern Continent, and even learned the unique vocabulary of the Northland countries. .

However, what is the purpose of the naturalist society to collect so much unrelated information?

What Luria didn't know was that just downstairs, a large group of bald young men were burying their heads on the table and 'copying' the content on the manuscript paper in the file bag.

It's just that they rewrite the words according to certain unique rules-then through a machine made of metal with many buttons, they punch rolls of paper tape with small holes.

Often one page of manuscript paper will be transcribed into a large strip of paper.

After that, the rolls of punched paper tapes were stacked in different categories and placed in different carts, and these carts would be sent directly to the bottom of the bell tower through a special elevator—below.

Under the ground, countless delicate brass parts are connected to each other to form huge machines of unknown purpose. No one can count how many small metal parts these machines have, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or tens of thousands. million?

The steam engines that can be seen or not seen in the clock tower provide powerful power for these machines, and countless small parts work. Rolls of punched paper tape are drawn into it by the machine, and new paper is spit out from it. bring.

They are too large.

So that no one has ever understood their full picture.

Each of the limited workers can only understand a small part of it, and even so, their work is very busy.

This is the complete Babbage Analytical Engine.

There has never been a real thing, and no one has ever tried to make it, just a machine that exists only in the imagination of a genius.

Decades ago, Britannia had attempted to manufacture a fraction of them, what might be called the Difference Engine, but they were unsuccessful due to poor precision parts technology.

The government of Brittany finally gave up the plan to support the manufacture of the difference engine, and even scoffed at Babbage's later concept of 'analytical engine'.

Perhaps the concept of the Analytical Engine was too advanced, and Babbage himself finally gave up his plan to realize it—he turned to improve the idea of ​​the Difference Engine and designed the second-generation Difference Engine—it’s not that no one supported his great idea , but no one wants to pour countless dollars into an experiment with no clear future.

After all, attempts to build the first Difference Engine had failed.

Simply, Babbage continued to study and perfect his larger idea - the Analytical Engine.

Since it's all a dream, it's better to make it bigger.

Since no one is willing to invest in him, he will dissipate all his wealth and only hope that in his lifetime, he can produce a small part of the tens of thousands of design drawings...

……

second lower floor.

Old man Charles, who is nearly seventy years old, likes to hide in this drowsy underground space every day. Like other old men who have nothing to do, he drinks cup after cup of tea, wears reading glasses, and half-closes his eyes to read newspapers.

But he is not like other idle old men who always close their eyes and meditate. He frowns from time to time, writes and draws in the air with his fingers, and looks like he is thinking about something all the time.

The sound of countless mechanical parts running together formed the most beautiful movement in the world, which made the old man in the small room feel comfortable.

If he could listen to it for a few hours a day, he thinks he can live another 30 years.

However, I always feel a little boring.

You said, how about hollowing out the moon, building an analytical machine that fills the entire moon, and then using the sun to supply energy?

Boring, boring.

How about turning all the other planets in orbit into components of the analytical machine... Well, the sun is a qualified power source.

As soon as he thought of it, he picked up the ink pen with slightly trembling hands, and started to write and draw on the drawings spread out on the table with the help of tools.

'Galaxy Analysis Machine'

On the first track of the day, it's the input side and the preprocessing side...

Didn’t the branch of the Pasta Kingdom send back news that the research on the wireless transmission signal device they funded has made significant progress, and the test machine may be available soon.