In the next period of time, Zhu Jingyuan wrote design plans and drew simple design drawings in his room when he had time.
Although it is possible to send faxes, the design drawings should be kept as small as possible and sent as single as possible.
Use as many words as possible to describe.
After struggling like this for nearly ten days, Zhu Jingyuan felt that he had basically explained the typewriter plan clearly.
Yu Muxue checked it for herself, and then sent it to the telegraph office and sent it to the Ministry of Industry in the capital.
It is certainly more than enough for a top student who has graduated from university to serve as a clerk for himself.
Zhu Jingyuan continued to write the design plan for the mechanical computer.
Mechanical computers already exist, but Zhu Jingyuan plans to build a more mature one.
Even be prepared to experiment with binary, using light bulb switches to represent results.
However, the structure of mechanical computers is extremely complex, and large-scale computing computers are extremely heavy.
If you want to make it binary, it may make the structure simpler, but it will make it heavier.
If you still want to implement programmability and have enough computing power...
Input devices, memory, operators, controllers, output devices...
After scratching his hair for more than ten days, Zhu Jingyuan sealed his binary mechanical programmable computer solution.
No more mechanical ones, go directly to the electronic ones!
The first tube computer was not the Eniac, which was completed after the war.
In fact, someone designed it in the 1930s, and someone had already produced a small one in the early 1940s.
But it's still not an easy job...
Before Zhu Jing finished drawing the design of the tube computer, she suddenly received a message from the Ministry of Industry of the Capital.
Request for suggestions on typewriter design.
Zhu Jingyuan put down his work, picked up the telegram sent by Yu Muxue and read it carefully.
The first is the customary strong admiration for one's own design ideas.
Zhu Jingyuan knew that they were probably sincere, because after all, his designs copied the experience of the past era.
But if you see this kind of thing too much, you will become numb.
Zhu Jingyuan glanced at it, skipped the sincere nonsense, and went straight to the actual content.
Craftsmen from the Ministry of Industry put forward suggestions for improvements to their designs.
This made Zhu Jingyuan a little curious and surprised. He continued to carefully check the content of their improvement suggestions, and soon found that he had been affected by inertial thinking.
Referring to the input method design logic of later generations, I naturally equate typewriter keystrokes with computer keyboard keystrokes.
But in fact there is a big difference between the two.
Ming craftsmen did not have this kind of inertial thinking, so they quickly discovered more reasonable improved designs.
In the Wubi input method, four keys produce one character, and the keys must be pressed in a fixed order.
If the keystroke sequence changes, another word will be typed.
But on your own typewriter, you don't actually need to press keys in sequence.
Because the Wubi input method on the computer is equivalent to each key being an axis.
My typewriter has only four axes in total, and the relative positions of the four axes are fixed.
That is to say, there is already a physical internal order, and there is no way to exchange positions between the four axes.
The keyboard is actually divided into four groups accordingly.
Each group of keys controls an axis, and a key in each group corresponds to a face of the axis, or a traverse node.
The commands for each key are fixed.
The output results will not change due to different keystroke sequences.
Therefore, there is no need to distinguish the order of keys in different areas, and they can even be pressed at the same time.
Just like a piano chord, when four keys from four zones are pressed simultaneously, the four internal axes rotate simultaneously.
The correct target Chinese character will be selected directly.
If the keys are pressed in sequence, the previous keys can be modified at will between the last key.
When the last key is pressed, the location of the previous keys will officially take effect.
On the other hand, if the Wubi input method also physically partitions the keyboard, four keys can be pressed at the same time to directly write words.
This is actually the typing method of a stenorecorder.
Click multiple keys at the same time, one word at a time.
Even four keys on each hand of the left and right hands can be hit at the same time, two words at a time.
At the same time, the shortcoming of this design is also very obvious, that is, the theoretical encoding capacity will be greatly reduced.
The Wubi input method on later generations of computers used a total of twenty-five letter keys.
To distinguish the order between the four keys, the total number of codes that can be used is twenty-five to the fourth power, a total of more than 390,000.
If the twenty-five keys are divided into four physical partitions, the number of codes accommodated becomes the product of the number of keys in the four partitions.
Six multiplied by six, then multiplied by six, and finally multiplied by seven, there are a total of more than 1,500 codes.
This is absolutely not enough.
Zhu Jingyuan's design also has this problem.
Zhu Jingyuan made changes based on Lin Yutang's design, but ignored that Lin Yutang's typing method and machine design were integrated.
Lin Yutang's keyboard has a total of seventy-two keys, divided into thirty-six first codes, twenty-eight last codes, and eight character selection codes. Multiplied by the number of keys in the three areas, it can accommodate 8,064 coding.
Zhu Jingyuan only needs thirty-two keys, divided equally into four groups of eight keys, and the encoding capacity is 4,096.
More than four thousand numbers can accommodate all first-level commonly used Chinese characters and meet the daily needs of writing diaries and letters.
But the professionalism is still completely insufficient.
It is not enough for government offices and commercial environments, let alone literary creation and publishing-related institutions.
Therefore, the craftsmen from the Ministry of Industry made suggestions to increase the number of keys and the corresponding coding capacity.
The main purpose is to increase the number of Chinese characters arranged on each surface of the small roller, corresponding to the number of keys in the corresponding key area.
If the corresponding keys are increased to sixteen, there will be a total of 8192 codes.
It can also accommodate all the Chinese characters in the "Universal Standard Chinese Character List" appointed by Emperor Shizu.
After Emperor Shizu reunified the world, he once again carried out the Shutongwen operation.
Organize all Chinese characters in the world and determine the standard writing method of each character.
It was included in the "General List of Standard Chinese Characters of the Ming Dynasty" and the "Dictionary of the Ming Dynasty" containing all standard Chinese characters was compiled.
Then, on the basis of this general list and dictionary, various rare words with special and exclusive uses were eliminated.
Eight thousand Chinese characters that can meet most writing purposes were selected and included in the "General Standard Chinese Character List".
It also stipulated that in the future, the characters used in official documents, education and training, signboards and plaques, publishing and printing, literary creation and other places of all levels of the imperial court must use the standard Chinese characters in this table.
Only other rare and special characters can be used for other private calligraphy and other artistic purposes.
As long as it can fully accommodate the universal standard Chinese character table, this typewriter can meet most usage scenarios.
In addition, scholars from the Ministry of Rites suggested that we should continue to increase the number of codes on this basis.
Relatively common rare characters and various common variant characters are also included.
It is used by the Ministry of Rites to handle special historical books, record and prepare documents related to rare characters and variant characters.
The Ministry of Industry suggested that an enhanced version be specially made to increase the number of Chinese characters on each side of the small roller to thirty-two.
Double the number of codes to 16,384, which can basically meet the needs of the Ministry of Rites.
After reading it, Zhu Jingyuan realized that he had actually made a mistake in calculating the keystrokes and coding.
The craftsmen pointed it out to themselves, but did not say it directly, but made a suggestion for modification.
Zhu Jingyuan smiled and shook his head, and wrote a response himself:
"The great engineers from the Ministry of Industry and the gentlemen from the Ministry of Etiquette are very capable, so let's follow this plan.
"In the future, if everyone finds omissions and mistakes in my planning, they can point them out directly without being so tactful."
When Zhu Jingyuan's news was sent to the Ministry of Industry, a working group specially set up for typewriters was busy.
Zhu Jing himself did not take the typewriter too seriously, but the relevant departments of the imperial court did not think so.
Although the current Ming Dynasty was rebuilt by Emperor Shizu, it has completed in-depth transformation and modernization on a large scale.
However, he is still the leader of Eastern civilization in name and substance.
Although Zhu Cixiang elevated the status of military personnel, the Ming court was still essentially a court of scholars.
Technologies related to characters, writing, and recording are the most valued technologies in the Ming Dynasty.
The typewriter is the typical technology in this genre.
Although everyone thinks that writing Chinese characters is an art, there is also a need to industrialize and standardize it.
It’s not that no one designed typewriters in Ming Dynasty, nor does it mean they didn’t care about typewriters at all, it’s just that no one made a real typewriter.
The typewriter now designed by Zhu Jingyuan, its operating logic and the possible effects it imagined, made the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Industry and even the emperor feel bright.
If this thing is elevated to a political level, this invention can be elevated to the great merits of papermaking and printing.
Therefore, after Zhu Jingyuan's design was sent to the capital, it quickly became a key project of the cabinet, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Rites.
At the emperor's instruction, the cabinet led the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Rites to work together to promote research and development work.
When the craftsmen tried to draw the drawings, they discovered the omissions in Zhu Jingyuan's design.
So the officials were asked to carefully consider the language to tell Zhu Jingyuan, and at the same time, they directly made adjustments and modifications to the original design.
The Ministry of Rites found a large group of scholars to work with craftsmen to analyze and write coding rules.
Zhu Jingyuan's response was sent. The craftsmen and scholars breathed a sigh of relief after reading it, and then immediately continued their work.
Twenty days later, the first working typing machine was built.
Since it is a test, there is no cover at all, and all mechanical structures are directly exposed to the outside.
Behind the four rows of metal buttons, an eight-sided roller is installed in a cavity.
Since the encoding font library was not ready, the fonts on the drum were all blank. This time it was just a test of the machine structure.
Behind the roller is a paper clip, with a specially made ribbon separated between the paper clip and the roller.
There is a row of metal feet behind the paper clip that presses the paper forward.
Qi Yanhuai, the engineer in charge of machine design, pressed the buttons in the four areas in sequence, and the rollers in the cavity rotated accordingly.
After tapping the four keys, a metal foot on the back of the paper clip knocked forward, making a soft snapping sound.
If the encoding is completed and the font is installed, the first character will be typed.
"Looks okay..."
Qi Yanhuai breathed a sigh of relief and continued to press the metal buttons, watching the drum in the cavity continue to rotate.
The sound of bang, bang, bang was heard for more than ten times in a row, and then the machine suddenly stopped moving.
"It's a bit hard to press this button..."
Qi Yanhuai rubbed his numb fingers and lowered his head to inspect the structure in the cavity:
"Where is it stuck..."
