The last step in sending stamps is to stamp them, which Shangluo has always had. He has a small seal for himself, as big as a fingernail, to stamp his name.
After being stamped, the effect is similar to that of the post office. These stamps are considered used.
"Okay, now you can send it out. Let me tell you, it's super fun."
Wen Yuan took the stamped sheets from his hand, put them all into the transfer bottle, and then pointed them at the mouth of the pneumatic pipe:
"Bo"
The bottle was sucked into it.
"This sound seems to be inexplicably touching."
"Yeah, it's this 'bang' sound. You only need to turn a handle to control a huge system to rotate for you for a moment. Ah~~ It's so tax-evasive. It's a pity that you can only play it once a month, and you can play ten games at a time. Copper."
"Isn't this thing expensive?"
This thing is very useful at first sight. Because it is the only transportation system so far that can deliver "items" "almost instantly" between "customers".
There are three elements here: customer to customer, almost instantaneous, and items.
Water and electricity pipes and the like transfer electricity, not objects. Water and electricity are not from customer to customer. Obviously, it is impossible for two neighbors to use wires to generate electricity for each other. Although telephones can establish connections between everyone, telephones can only transfer information, not items. Another example is running errands. This can deliver items from customer to customer, but the speed of running errands is too slow.
The closest thing to this system is actually a fax machine. If you are delivering documents, a fax machine is an almost perfect replacement for a pneumatic transmission system. But what the fax machine cannot cover is the function of transmitting "original documents" and "other items".
Among them, the purpose of transmitting the "original document" is mainly for encryption and mutual authentication. However, after electronic certificates and biometric identification technology have covered most of them, the pneumatic transmission system only has a marginal function of "delivery" that cannot be replaced.
However, the process of eliminating pneumatic transmission systems is far less complicated. There is no such thing as replacing each other or competing with each other. Almost as soon as it started, it reached the end of its technical life. Only a period of reverie about the "steampunk" era is left in human history.
Shangluo felt that the most critical reason here was that it was too expensive. Just the fact that it is "expensive" can make the entire system unable to operate.
In the "early modern period" it was not uncommon for such immature yet ambitious projects to be undertaken. Such as seaplanes, airships, etc. These technologies have been in operation for more than ten years, or even after a golden period of only a few years, they quickly withdrew from the stage of history. The reason was not only because the technology at that time was changing with each passing day, but also because human engineering was generally not that developed at that time, and there was a lack of reasonable estimates for the subsequent budget of a project.
The same goes for this pneumatic transmission system. When it was first established, its construction cost could be relied on to build new buildings, etc., so it did not appear to be that expensive. But over time, its maintenance costs become quite outrageous and unacceptably expensive.
Then, it was gone.
"Hmm" Wen Yuan thought for a while, "Is it expensive? It seems to be quite expensive."
“Does this project roughly break even?”
"It seems so. But we only use the incidental functions. The real big customer of the pneumatic transmission system is the section from the telegraph office to the stock exchange. Well, in recent years, there have been more and more private calls. This is an interesting system. It will probably shrink slowly - never mind, I have already played with it, and this system has been in service for decades. It is not a bad thing to retire them all after the service life is up. My grandma is here Deploy new switches."
"Switch?" Shangluo caught this key word, "Didn't there already be a phone number before? Isn't that a switch?"
"No, those before were actually flying signals, which completely used the spirit network to communicate. Think about it, does your home have a landline? No? I have one at home. That thing is very expensive, because each phone line requires Maintain a manual interface at the post and telecommunications office, and then transfer it level by level. Sometimes a long-distance call requires the coordination of several stations. But just last year, we found a way to use phone numbers to dial outside the spiritual network."
"Oh? How?"
"Well, I heard from my grandma that it's called a 'stepping switch.' I've never seen it, but I heard it's a machine about the same size as a room. By dialing the dial, you can find the number you want to call. The principle of that company is this: the phone requires a rotary dial, and when dialing 0 to 9, the angle and time of the rotary dial are different. Then when you go to the switch, you can identify the numbers and then switch to dialing."
"Identify the number. How to read it after that?"
"It's so complicated, but it's not incomprehensible. It's a 'step-by-step' machine - have you ever played a small steel ball machine? Just like that. It goes down layer by layer, but it's fixed here. For example, the area code of Yujing is 01 , Fengjing is 02, and only these two numbers start with 0. Then when dialing 0, the switch will only screen the number options in Yujing and Fengjing. The next level, 1 is Yujing, and 2 is Fengjing. After that, there are one level of confirmation. The first one to dial 4 will screen out numbers starting with 01-4. The second dialing 5 will screen out numbers other than 01-45. Then one level at a time. 'Step' backward step by step until you confirm the only number, such as 01-456789. This is a step-by-step switch. Why do you suddenly ask this?"
"Didn't you say you had an office before?"
"Oh, Dongchang, right?"
"If you ask Dongchang again, believe it or not, I'll be in a hurry."
"Okay, okay, let's not call it Dongchang anymore. What kind of factory is here?"
"It's not a factory. The current main task of our office is to build a many-to-many information network for more than a thousand Qi practitioners across the country. Then..."
Shangluo paused. What is more important after that is that this many-to-many communication network will establish an outpost for the Internet that will be rolled out across the country in the future, allowing everyone to do some "psychological construction", and then the "Pure Land" will come.
"So that's it." Wen Yuan nodded, "Then our task is quite important. But I'm afraid the step-by-step switch won't be of much help. It's too basic. The Internet you describe seems to be 'many-to-many' ' connection? But the step-by-step switch is still only a one-to-one switching, because it cannot connect multiple telephone lines together, it only leaves one dialing time."
"Well, it seems, there is still a long way to go."
"Do you have any ready-made plans?"
"Yes, yes. But if it's just step exchange, it will occupy an entire room, and there's nothing else to talk about. We need something that can actually increase the 'computing power'. Do you have any clues?"
(End of chapter)
