Dashi Country, Liusha City, the second laboratory, which is the mechanical laboratory.
A rather complex-looking machine was placed on the workbench, with several thick cables connected to the back.
There were a series of strange sounds coming from inside the machine, and a piece of paper placed on a copper plate slowly spit out.
Zheng Fuguang carefully picked up the copper plate and took a look at it, then turned to Zhu Jingyuan beside him:
"Your Highness, the reaction has been completed. The effect can only be said to be very good, the speed is also very fast, and the clarity is acceptable.
"This algorithm of yours is really good. In the future, photos and important document reports provided for newspapers can be directly sent by fax."
"Theoretically, faxes are completely synchronized. The information on the originator and receiver is exactly the same. It can even be used as evidence."
Zhu Jingyuan picked up the piece of paper and looked at it. On it was a black and white photo of the Yamen of the Ministry of Industry of the Capital.
At first glance it looks like an ordinary photo.
But if you look closely at it, you will find that the images are not whole, but composed of small dots.
Different dots have different color depths, resulting in a rather realistic photo.
Bitmap image fax.
Zhu Jingyuan's new invention.
The Ministry of Industry of the Capital completed the principle exploration and practical verification, completed the prototype machine production and the experiment was successful, and then sent the data to the mechanical laboratory of the Food Country.
The Mechanical Laboratory produced the same machine and then connected it to the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty to receive this photo fax for testing.
The world already has fax technology, but it is cumbersome and costly to use.
The development technology is a chemical mode similar to that used by a camera to develop photos, transmitting and printing all the contents of the entire picture.
It will only be used unless it is particularly important information and images must be transmitted.
For example, the photo of Zhu Jingyuan's first appearance in Xiyang Cape was sent back to the newspaper by traditional fax.
Although Zhu Jingyuan was confused as to why his photos were considered particularly important information, that was exactly what they did.
Other ordinary messages are basically text telegrams, explaining the problem in words.
The "lattice" design provided by Zhu Jingyuan historically appeared in the 1920s.
After dividing the image and text into a lattice, the actual amount of data that needs to be transmitted is reduced.
The most critical thing is that complex images and text with human intelligence information can be turned into simple and regular mechanical data.
By converting mechanical data into electrical signals, they can be sent directly to the other side of the world through cables, and then similar equipment can be used to reproduce the original form.
Dot matrix technology is the basis for the true popularization of fax equipment and the basis for various automated printers in future generations.
Even the underlying technology for all subsequent text-image devices.
The dot matrix design has been used throughout the entire fax era and the entire information age.
From now on, in the era that Zhu Jingyuan can think about, this design will never be outdated.
All the information I saw in my previous life, as long as it was printed or displayed on the screen, was basically processed through dot matrix. ….
The most rogue patent that Zhu Jingyuan knew in his previous life was "displaying text and images on an LCD screen through a dot matrix."
Zhu Jingyuan looked at the photo in his hand and nodded slightly:
"The problem of images is solved in this way, and it can be extended to the processing and transmission of text.
"According to a standard, commonly used Chinese characters are converted into dot matrix.
"Text is much simpler than images, and correct text can be expressed with very few points.
"The cost of sending text faxes should be further reduced in the future.
"Using electrical signals to transmit text dot matrix data to the other end, the text is printed directly at the other end.
"This way there is no need for the telegraph operator's handwriting... no need... um..."
At this point in Zhu Jingyuan's words, he had already discovered the problem.
The telegrams Zhu Jingyuan often saw were directly handwritten by the telegraph operator, rather than printed content.
Zhu Jingyuan subconsciously felt that this was written by hand after the telegraph operator received the code and translated it.
Therefore, Zhu Jingyuan subconsciously thought that with the advent of text matrix fax, after reducing the cost of text fax, there would be no need for manual translation by telegraph operators.
Connect the fax signal directly to the typing machine, and let the machine print out the content directly according to the signal.
However, the use of code plus translation was primarily for encryption.
Then, even if a mechanical computer can be made to directly decrypt, there is no machine in this era that can directly print Chinese characters.
Finally, even if there is a machine that prints Chinese characters or other characters, it is not dot matrix.
The traditional mechanical typewriter is essentially a real-time movable type printing machine.
Essentially, single-character seals are used to print characters.
Standardizing the Chinese character dot matrix is actually an advanced demand that will only appear in the computer age, even after the advent of laser phototypesetting, or when monitors are made.
Before this, simply for typing text, there was no need to create a standard lattice of Chinese characters.
In addition, this linkage plan or the idea itself, this kind of planning that will be taken for granted in later generations, in the current era, every link is whimsical, and at the same time, there are always difficult problems.
Not to mention the system difficulty of linking these devices, the automatic typewriter itself presents huge difficulties.
Typewriters were not popular in the Ming Dynasty, not only because the literati in the Ming Dynasty preferred writing, but also because Chinese character typewriters were too difficult to make.
Among the imperial court and large enterprises, mechanical typewriters have been basically popular in the past ten years.
Most countries in Thailand and Western countries use alphabetic scripts, usually with only twenty or thirty letters in total.
Each letter is placed on a metal strip, and a metal strip is connected to a button.
Just like piano keys, when a key is pressed, the corresponding metal bar lifts.
The head of the metal strip can be used to print a letter like a seal by smashing the ribbon on the white paper.
Twenty or thirty letters, twenty or thirty keys, and twenty or thirty metal bars can solve the typewriter problem.
The structural principle of alphabetic typewriters is so simple that mature typewriters can even be made "portable". ….
Chinese characters are ideograms, and each single character is actually equivalent to a word composed of multiple letters.
There are thousands of commonly used Chinese characters and tens of thousands of standard Chinese characters. If you include various variants, no one knows how many there are.
The number of words is also very large, and it is still growing.
Even if these Chinese characters are used to filter commonly used characters, they cannot be written on a typewriter as easily as the Thai and Western alphabet.
In Zhu Jingyuan's previous life, the fact that Chinese characters could not be easily made into typewriters was once a reason for some people to call for abandoning Chinese characters and switching to Latin alphabet pinyin.
This incident made European and American intellectuals laugh at it and drew various cartoons to ridicule it.
This may have made the masters of certain eras feel inferior.
But the Ming people in this world don't seem to care about this matter.
The unique Chinese characters can better reflect the uniqueness of the cultural personality of the Ming Dynasty.
Calligraphy, which is rich in meaning and usage and can be regarded as an art, is highly praised by Thai and Western intellectuals.
Even if someone occasionally criticizes the inconvenience of Chinese character printing on mechanical printing, there is no need for Ming people to defend and align themselves.
Intellectuals in Western countries who like Ming culture can scold such people out of the circle.
"If you feel bad about it, it must be because you don't understand appreciation."
According to Zhu Jingyuan's experience, a relatively flexible Chinese character typewriter can actually be made.
Before the advent of laser phototypesetting technology, after the advent of electronic computers, computer
To directly type Chinese characters under computer control, you need to create a structure for printing Chinese characters.
This structure was also purely mechanical in the early days, and he was a mechanic himself on the Chinese character typewriter.
That was something that was developed in the late 1940s, just after World War II.
Make this structure independently and design a set of coding rules similar to the input method to enable typing.
Connected with mechanical computer and fax machine signals, it should be possible to print out faxes analyzed by the computer.
But considering the complexity of the entire system and the difficulty of achieving these functions with purely mechanical structures...
Zhu Jingyuan felt that the entire system might not be able to run smoothly even after ten or eight years.
So Zhu Jingyuan stopped when he said this.
Zheng Fuguang and the craftsmen here were also obviously stunned for a moment, as if they were trying hard to digest Zhu Jingyuan's idea.
"Your Highness, this idea of yours is really unimaginable. If it is realized, it will be very convenient.
"However, the difficulty of realizing it... now seems to be undoubtedly very high.
"This requires automatic computer decryption, linkage of fax machines and typewriters, and controlled automatic typewriters...
“We craftsmen probably can’t solve this kind of project.
"My subordinate's suggestion is to let the Rites Department take the lead and coordinate with the Works Department to organize a specialized department to do it slowly."
Zhu Jingyuan also nodded slightly:
"Well, I'll go back and write a relatively simple plan to make a Chinese character typewriter and mechanical computer that are flexible enough, and let the Ministry of Rites and Work work together to make them."
Zheng Fuguang and other craftsmen had strange expressions, and at the same time they began to look forward to it.
If someone else, even a relatively advanced craftsman, was suddenly in a new field, and it was an obviously extremely difficult field, and said that they wanted to create a mature and simple design, most people would laugh it off.
But his boss, His Royal Highness Prince Dashi, cannot be said to be a genius, but can only be said to be a genius at a heaven-defying level.
There was basically nothing he couldn't accomplish in the past.
Although not without failure, for example, the assault rifle was not accepted by the troops.
But that was actually limited by the production process, and the things designed and produced did not meet His Highness's standards.
The submachine gun, invented at the same time as the assault rifle, has proven to be a very useful weapon.
Even under the high pressure of bullet supply, the Governor's Office has already begun large-scale ordering.
In the eastern and southern parts of Mozhou, as well as in the rainforest of Nanyinzhou, they are very useful in relatively close combat.
In the accepted Thai-Chinese colonies, in the camps where the aborigines live, it is also an absolute weapon in indoor battles.
When encountering an enemy in a small space, when the grown-up rifle cannot be turned around, the enemy has already been killed with a submachine gun.
Now that His Highness wants to develop faxes, mechanical computers, and electronically controlled Chinese character typewriters, no one will doubt that he can't do it.
[To be honest, I have been using @@ recently to read and catch up on updates, change sources, and have many reading sounds. It can be used on both Android and Apple. 】
I'm just curious about what he can do, what level he can reach, and whether he can use it quickly. .
Wang Zixu
