"Imprint?"
Outside the engraving room of Ming Pao Shop, the master craftsman was confused.
Printing and printing, do you think the word "brush" is called for nothing?
For many years, after engraving, the ink was applied first, and then the paper was applied. The gentle brush was the most skillful part of the printing process.
No matter how hard he tried, it was difficult for him to connect the word "press" with printing things - the paper and the typeface must not be damaged?
"Your Majesty is very concerned about this matter. The decree of the Yangxin Palace is that we must think about how to make such a machine. Novices do not need to practice for a long time. After being taught how to use the machine, they can Guaranteed to work.”
The two stared at each other, one was a management bureaucrat and the other was a master craftsman with many years of experience, but neither had a clue.
"After all, there is a way. Since His Majesty has shown mercy on the quality of printed newspaper words, you should think of a long-term plan and sharpen your sword before chopping wood."
The Engineering College of Huangming University also received this intention, and then they were also confused.
Knowing that this was the order issued by His Majesty after summoning Alfonso, the dean of the School of Engineering also went to visit.
But after he went there, he heard a quarrel inside. It was not good for him to cause trouble to others like this - no matter what, Alfonso's daughter remained in the palace and was His Majesty's woman.
"How can it be pressed?" Wu Erqi shook his head in the master craftsman training class, "The copper movable type and the hardwood movable type are fine, but the clay movable type will be crushed if you use too much force? Besides, paper can also be used. Crushed. Impossible, absolutely impossible!"
Zheng Kui didn't understand. He is just a green brick maker, and he has been watching this thing, unless they are making new clay movable type.
But the main trouble now seems not to be the problem of typefaces, type selection, and plate making, but that the printing process is too time-consuming and labor-intensive.
In the Forbidden City, Zhu Houcong was less concerned about the upcoming formal national policy meeting than he was about this matter.
In terms of vision and knowledge in this field, Daming is afraid that no one is broader than him.
Although he didn't understand these professional things, he knew that if he could point out practical ideas, he could save engineering talents like Daming a lot of time.
Juicing…
Carolina later hesitated to translate, and her mother only mentioned that the Duke told her that it seemed that Gutenberg was inspired by the tools used to press juice when making wine.
Alfonso probably knew very well that his wife could not understand this, so after a few arguments he forced his wife to reveal the name of a certain Duke. Probably a fun conversation while tasting wine or even doing some juicing? Anyway, Alfonso's wife felt that the emperor was very concerned about this matter, so she might as well exchange it for some rewards - she was thinking about her dear husband.
The juicer that Zhu Houcong is familiar with is naturally no longer the European method of juicing in this era, but squeezing is indeed often associated with pressing, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
I asked people who know how to extract oil, and they probably have an oil trench when extracting. After the oil is put in, it needs to be squeezed tightly with wooden wedges, and then hammered with a big mallet. The method is quite violent, and of course it cannot be used to print things.
What is important when printing is skill, which is just the right amount of precision: the ink will be applied, but the paper and typeface will not be damaged.
Zhu Houcong has actually realized the key here: precision.
He just didn't know what this precision had to do with pressing grape juice, so Zhu Houcong simply went to Wen Suyun and Carolina.
"A place where wine is brewed?" Carolina shook her head, "I haven't been there, I just drank it. How the grape juice is pressed, I don't know."
Zhu Houcong didn't gain anything and continued to think on his own for a while.
Huang Jin watched from the side and saw His Majesty looking at the door casually.
Is a small machine more important than a national policy meeting?
"Just move it to the wing over there and leave it there for now."
Faintly hearing Wen Suyun's voice outside the door, Huang Jin went out to take a look. When he came back, he heard Zhu Houcong ask: "What's the matter?"
"Your Majesty, these are some small items that Concubine Shu begged from Concubine Xian. The eldest prince played with them when he was a child."
Zhu Houcong smiled slightly: "This girl did it on purpose, right? Since I'm here, I will naturally go to see her and yell so loudly."
Wen Suyun was already happy, and after getting acquainted with Carolina and the interpreter maid Qu Mei, the three of them lived together in Changle Palace.
Now Wen Suyun is also pregnant and is not far away from giving birth. Asking for toys for future children is not the educational toys that Zhu Houcong arranged for Zhu Zaiyan to make at that time, such as Luban locks and so on...
The smile on Zhu Houcong's face suddenly paused, and then he walked out of the side hall where Carolina lived, standing at the door and staring at the cornices and brackets under the main hall.
"……His Majesty?"
Seeing the happy and doubtful look on Zhu Houcong's face, Huang Jin asked.
"I figured it out!" Zhu Houcong suddenly burst out laughing, "No wonder, no wonder! Go and announce that Wang Wensu has entered the palace! Wang Wensu, Wen Suyun, hahahahaha."
The emperor was very happy, and Huang Jin suddenly felt much more relaxed: "Slave, go now!"
"Come here and tell me after you arrive at Yangxin Hall."
Zhu Houcong walked towards the main hall of Changle Palace, Wen Suyun was a little confused.
What have you figured out?
…
Wang Wensu is the dean of the School of Mathematics. In recent years, his main job has become book editing.
This time, I often consulted the emperor and compiled a textbook for teaching arithmetic.
At the same time, the School of Calculation naturally recruited some students, all of whom learned new calculation formulas.
Suddenly summoned by the emperor, Wen Suyun went to the study room of Yangxin Hall and waited for a while before seeing the emperor striding over.
He was about to salute when he heard the emperor say: "No need. Come here quickly. I'll draw something and see if I can understand the arithmetic behind it."
After saying that, he picked up a pen and started drawing on a piece of paper on the imperial table.
Wang Wensu leaned his head over and saw that what the emperor drew was like a stick, with lines that were both real and imaginary, circling around the surface of the stick.
"Your Majesty, what is this?"
"Spiral." After Zhu Houcong finished speaking, he said, "We must understand the mathematical principles of this thing so that craftsmen in the future can have a simple and clear way to make these spiral columns and nuts."
After a few new words came over, Wang Wensu just stared at what Zhu Houcong had drawn.
After hearing about Luban Lock, Zhu Houcong suddenly thought of a question: China has been using mortise and tenon structures to fix objects for thousands of years.
As for wine, Zhu Houcong then thought of the wine corkscrew. Among the various later objects he is familiar with, it is a common structure to use bolts and nuts to rotate to control precision, jam things, and apply pressure on the other end.
Zhu Houcong thought about it for several years and suddenly realized that Ming Dynasty had never seen anything like this with a screw-like structure.
The mortise and tenon structure is so easy to use that no one in the East has used other connection methods.
But now that he has figured out the secret to controlling accuracy and giving appropriate pressure, Zhu Houcong already has a picture in his mind.
After giving this assignment to Wang Wensu, and after talking with him in detail about the different thicknesses of the spirals on the pillars and many other points, Zhu Houcong continued to sit down and draw a rough sketch seriously.
This printing press can be made into a wooden frame, with a spiral column fixed vertically in the middle of the beam.
Underneath is a table on which the typefaces for making the boards can be placed.
The bottom end of the middle part of the spiral column is another flat plate with a nut on top. A rod can also be attached to this nut for easy twisting.
If the density of the spiral is designed well, then after the paper is placed under the typeface and the flat plate, you only need to rotate the nut from one designated position to another to drive the flat plate down, giving it almost the same Just the right amount of pressure.
Naturally, there will be a lot of room for experimentation and improvement, but the general structure can be determined.
It may be difficult to make spiral columns and nuts, but there are many carpenters who are very skillful. At worst, it is best to carve them out of special wood that is not easily deformed and try them out to see the effect.
Zhu Houcong has increasingly felt the need to get this thing out.
The spiral seems to be related to the rifling in the barrel.
And this matter will also be a very typical matter related to accuracy and standards.
Zhu Houcong had not said anything about lead before, because in his concept, lead was poisonous.
But now, he is not sure whether the imprinting method used by the printing machine has something to do with the hardness of the typeface, etc.
After summoning the Baoyuan Bureau, which is responsible for coining, the Baojin Bureau, which is responsible for mining, as well as some master craftsmen from the military foundry departments such as the Military Warfare Bureau and the Ordnance Supervision, and asked about it, he discovered that lead is actually used in many places. .
Some of these things are called lapis lazuli, and some are called black tin. The lead mine in Fei Hong's hometown is actually because the mineral deposits there contain a lot of this stuff, but the main mining there is copper, using the copper leaching method.
And lead is very cheap now.
A new reason emerged that made Zhu Houcong feel that this was necessary: a large number of privately minted low-quality copper coins, which contained higher lead, so they were more profitable.
If a large number of lead type molds are cast in the future, it will at least hit these places and private money making among the people.
Zhu Houcong asked about it and finally understood the advantages of the lead type mold: it has a relatively low melting point. If it is melted and cast with tin or something, it will be hard enough, the finished product will be smooth, cheap, not easily damaged, and maybe even a little bit flexible.
Copper type is too expensive!
After everything had been clarified, Zhu Houcong did not alert others first. He just handed over the task to Huang Jin and asked him to coordinate the inner court craftsmen to trial production first.
The core thing still has to wait for Wang Wensu to figure out the mathematical principles, find the spiral density with suitable control accuracy, and find a simple method suitable for others to make studs and nuts.
This thing is not simple, after all, it is a three-dimensional thing.
There must be a spiral curve, there must be thread depth, and the nut and thread must fit smoothly.
Zhu Houcong himself is also studying it.
Making columns is very simple: look at how many perfectly smooth and standard columns there are in the palace?
But how to carve smooth, consistent, and accurately angled threads on a cylinder needs to be found.
He kept thinking about this matter in his mind. When he went to Sun Ming's place to rest in the evening, Zhu Houcong saw her undressing and suddenly looked at the collar around her neck in a daze.
Sun Ming was a little embarrassed: "Your Majesty...what are you staring at..."
Zhu Houcong slapped his head: "I thought of it again! Please wait for a while and I will do an experiment. Is there any scarf in Kunning Palace?"
The originally straight collar was folded around her neck. Wasn't it just a diagonal line?
If you unfold the sides of a cylinder, what appears to be a curved spiral will eventually become a straight line.
Naturally, there are scarves in Kunning Palace. If not, you can cut them out with scissors.
Sun Ming watched blankly as the emperor directed the palace maids to wrap the triangular scarves of different widths around the candles. The emperor looked at the stripes on them with excitement.
Zhu Houcong was really inspired again and again today and found the feeling of doing research.
As expected, the hypotenuse of the triangle formed a very coherent and smooth thread on the cylinder. Next, by simply controlling a triangle with the same height as the cylinder and another right-angled side with different lengths, you can get threads with different densities on the cylinder.
"It's done!" Zhu Houcong was very excited and finally walked towards Sun Ming with confidence.
…
After Wang Wensu was assigned this assignment, she stayed up all night facing this new gadget.
It is not that the ancients did not study geometry and solid geometry, but now the topic given by Zhu Houcong must have specific application significance. Although Wang Wensu has good mathematical literacy, he is not actually a genius in this field. He has just studied it all his life.
"Everyone, did you get anything?"
When he woke up early in the morning, Wang Wensu saw several other professors and worshipers from the arithmetic college who also had red eyes and had stayed up all night. They all smiled bitterly and shook their heads.
"This question is related to the circle, but its upper spiral is not a product. Even if I use the new calculation formula taught by Your Majesty, I have no clue, and I am really ashamed."
"The main difficulty is that the spiral lines are thick and dense. How can we figure out the reason for this?"
"Everyone, please see, I tried to draw a pattern on the candle last night. I stared at it for more than an hour, and my eyes were a little dizzy."
"I used the paper roll as a circle. After drawing it, I spread it out. It looks like this. How do I calculate it?"
Several people were discussing here, and I did see that one person rolled a cylinder out of paper yesterday, and then drew a spiral on it. After the paper was spread out, there were sections of lines.
Maybe it's because he doesn't draw well, some are straight and some are curved. The distance and angle between each other are also different.
But after all, they are all experts in this area. After discussing it for a while, they finally saw some clues.
"If the drawing is good enough, these spiral lines are actually straight lines, right? Everyone, can you measure the height difference between these two sections? This is the key to roughness, right?"
"If we draw another line, it should be flat on the bottom of the circle and have an included angle, so they should be equal."
After brainstorming, they gradually got closer to the truth.
However, before they could come up with the final result, someone from the palace sent a piece of paper.
"Your Majesty realized the truth last night. Dean Wang, Your Majesty has a purpose. Next, you only need to calculate how much height difference there will be if the hypotenuse of the triangle with different angles corresponds to the cylinder."
Wang Wensu and others stared blankly at the paper.
A triangle, a cylinder. The heights are the same, but the other right-angled side of the triangle is much larger than the circumference of the cylinder. If it is wrapped up, it will naturally become an extremely coherent spiral line.
The next question is quite simple.
"...Actually, if you look at how many times the long side of the circle is the circumference of the circle, how many turns can it make in total? The height of the circle minus the number of turns is the height of each turn. If you want the thickness of the twist to be different, let's wait. Multiply the circumference by the number of circles to get the geometry of Keitian's long side, and by inverse calculation, we can get the size of Keitian's small corner, right?"
"...Your Majesty realized this truth overnight, he is truly a genius. But this question is so simple, Your Majesty seems to be testing me..."
They all felt that the emperor himself had figured out the truth. Why didn't the last simplest question be solved by dividing it by three, five, and two?
It must be a test for them!
So the calculation academy quickly sent the results back to the palace.
After Zhu Houcong concluded another preparatory meeting for the national policy conference, he returned to the Yangxin Hall and saw the results.
He was also stunned for a moment.
Yes, why didn't you think of that?
Then he burst into laughter.
Anyway, the solution has been found.
Next, the principle and machine sketches were sent to Ming Pao Bank and the Institute of Engineering respectively.
By turning the connecting rod on the nut half a turn, you can get a clear distance of how far to press down.
By mastering this distance so that there is just enough contact between the paper and the typeface, you can quickly print a piece of paper without brushing the paper very carefully.
Then counter-rotate the connecting rod to clear the gap, take out the plate on which the font is placed, and give it to another person to pick up the printed paper and see if it is necessary to add ink to the font.
As long as several font plates of the same version are prepared and several people surround the printing press, they can work in an assembly line style, with each person responsible for one thing.
Zou Shouyi looked at the sketch of the machine, his hands shaking a little.
"Hurry up and try it! If this machine can be built, how many newspapers and books can the newspaper company print in a year?"
He was a culture-minded man, and he could see what would happen when printing became faster, easier, and cheaper.
Many folk engraving merchants in the world will go crazy!
The emperor personally fed the cakes, and now the students in the master craftsman training class were excited.
Zheng Kui asked Ying with a bloodshot face: "Dean, I know how to burn the kiln! Let me bake the type molds!"
The College of Engineering naturally wants to rely on the knowledgeable professors and worshipers at Huangming University to trial-produce the best version of the latest printing press.
After all, it is still just a drawing, and there is still a long way to go in terms of manufacturing and craftsmanship before it is finally practical.
There are young master craftsmen from all walks of life in the master craftsman training class!
(End of chapter)
