Chapter 457: National Geographic

Tan Weiming was very serious in writing an article, describing the various changes that had taken place along the canal under the Governor's Mansion of the Canal that he had visited over the years. Of course, as a prince rather than a scholar, he still has a lot of conveniences, such as whenever he thinks of something, he casually orders, and his staff members will consult various local chronicles for him, and those staff members are busy for a day, and in the end, it may only become a sentence in the prince's article. There is no doubt about the degree of solidity and cohesion of such an article. And several photographers around Ye Tao came all the way and took a lot of photos in the places mentioned in Tan Weiming's article. There is no doubt that the cost of taking pictures is still quite expensive for the time being, and now, it is those photographers who are even more expensive. Photographers are now a super rare job. Operating a camera is still complicated, and more importantly, almost all photographers now serve in the military. In the organizational system of the Northern Xinjiang Economic and Strategic Prefecture, there is a surveying and mapping team of more than 60 people, who have been carrying out all kinds of basic surveying and mapping and reconnaissance work under the guidance of the guards directly under the Economic and Strategic Prefecture, and they will also take a large number of humanistic photos. In Danyang, the Intelligence Bureau, the Inner Government, the Military Department, and the Blood Qi Army each have their own surveying and mapping teams, but the focus is different. Apart from these places, there are hardly any other photographers left. The price of a camera is 600 to 800 taels of silver, and the general normal maintenance, the consumption of use, about 100 taels of silver a month, now whether it is photo paper or chemical reagents for processing, the output is not generally low, the cost is not generally high. Photography, in all eras, is a job that burns money. And in this case, a few photographers were transferred to talk about Weiming, which made this thing more and more weird. What exactly does Ye Tao want to do? Could it be that what we got this time can be compared to increasing the accuracy and coverage area of mapping? What's even more incomprehensible is that after making such an arrangement, Ye Tao actually went to Danyang's workshop to study the color matching. What he needed was an extremely bright yellow.

A small team of editors was formed, most of whom were students seconded from Taixue, mainly those who had traveled extensively before entering Taixue, and the two officials of the Intelligence Bureau who had been in charge of censorship of books and the like. Before such a small editorial team could get an article from Tan Weiming, they had to start familiarizing themselves with the printing technology of the journal they were responsible for. Everyone knows that behind the Baowentang Bookstore stands the Ye Workshop, as well as the Inner House. Whether it is in the background or in terms of technical support, it is absolutely invincible in the world, although Ye Tao has a lot of things to deal with over the years, and may not pay enough attention to the bookstore, but the plate-making system established by Ye Tao for Baowentang Bookstore, as well as the team that studied printing technology, have been tenaciously constantly refreshing the pinnacle of technology in this area. The books produced by Baowentang Books, with their thick paper and more reliable hot-glue binding technology, have become a hallmark. The series of exquisite classics printed on watermark moire paper has also been enriched over the years, and more than 100 titles have been published in total. Although the circulation of this series of books is very low and only distributed to a small number of people in Dongping, this series of books has played the ultimate goal of "knowledge influencing society".

In terms of pure printing technology, two-color overprinting technology is not a difficult thing for Baowentang. The two-color overprint technology has long been widely used after the formation of a new type of printing machine. Illustrations made from metal etchings are now becoming more and more common in books of all kinds. Although the production of metal etching is still more cumbersome in terms of production, the cost is still reduced to the scope of the license, and it is profitable to let this kind of thing be used for general book publishing. But now they're challenged with a different technique: how to print photos.

Ye Tao has directly developed the photographic technology to the stage of using photographic paper, but at this time, the photographic paper is not as good as those silver plate and tin plate photographic technology. Fortunately, many of the senior members of the workshop, who are now very familiar with the various aspects of photographic technology, are well aware of the formation mechanism of photographic technology, and the craftsmen have developed the contents of the glass negative, in addition to the photographic paper, and developed the photograph directly on the tin plate. Then, the image presented on the surface of the tin plate becomes the best thing to make etched printing plates. After a lot of trial and error, and after hundreds of attempts, the workshop came up with a recipe that could etch the tin plate with minimal damage to the image. In this way, although the process is very repetitive, and the cost is very high, and no matter how much you toss, it is impossible to eliminate the loss of photo quality, but there is no problem at all in printing the original six-inch square negative to one-eighth of the size of the book. It's just that this method is a bit stupid.

After solving this epoch-making technology, Ye Tao finally officially began to produce this publication. Ye Tao announced that this is a magazine, and he will try to produce three trial issues starting this month, and will publish one issue every month in the future. The name of the publication is National Geographic. The cover of the first issue of the trial issue is a very representative photograph of several boats of various sizes leaning together on the edge of the canal, and the people on board are chatting happily and conducting basic transactions, while behind them are the castle towers of the Wind Retroside. The main manuscript of the first issue is the 40-page "Why the Canal?" written by Tan Weiming himself. Although this manuscript describes the improvement of those lives, it does not avoid the migration and change of customs, the inconvenience caused to people's lives by the transformation of those peaceful villages into lush and disturbed places, and the awakening of some of the dark sides of human nature with the development of the economy, people's prosperity. Even in later generations, the solidity and strength of this article are enough for people to reminisce for a long time, let alone now. The pictures that accompany the article are concise captions that get to the heart of the matter, as well as illustrations and maps made using four-color overprinting technology.

This is a ninety-six-page publication, and the quality of other manuscripts is also quite good, such as the "Summer of Snow Wolf Lake" describes Snow Wolf Lake in summer, the life of many biological populations, and among those photos, the most striking is a photo of a bison giving birth, the baby bison that cries on the ground first, and the second half of the body is still in the mother's body, this photo is the result of a crazy photographer and the bison herd for a whole summer. Another example is those relatively short articles, some about the various situations in several different places in Dongping, some talk about geography, some talk about humanities, and so on. The magazine uses four-color overprinting to print most of the illustrations and charts, and the layout of the whole magazine is not too dense, and many of the page margins are left enough for about a quarter of the width, where are the places for various annotation materials, most of these annotations are annotated by the editor, and with these annotations, Ye Tao is actually cultivating a professional editorial team, a professional editorial team that can provide more content for readers. These red-letter prints, not at all verbose notes, are equally fascinating.

As National Geographic, attach the map that is for sure. Attached to this issue is a map of the territory under the jurisdiction of the Canal Governor's Palace, although it is only a brief indication of the terrain, but the accurate scale of the map is more accurate and detailed than the military map in the hands of the generals of any country other than Dongping. The map is accurate to the county-level units. The censor of the intelligence bureau reported the matter, but Nie Rui muttered: "It's very accurate, but others can't use it, to see who has the ability to hit the canal area." "It's easy to get this map away. This map is very handy for travellers and caravans, and shows all the docks, bazaars and warehouses in the Canal District, as well as some of the famous inns. And this map made Du Fengchi invest 100,000 taels of silver in advertising, listing the location of all the Homeinn chain hotels in the canal area, and each location was specially printed with bright yellow and red markers. Speaking of advertisements, this first issue of the trial issue actually has a total of twelve pages, including the back cover, which are all related to travel, such as Tissot Watch Company's pocket watch with temperature measurement function; Luggage made of leather and thick canvas by a company owned by Seven Seas Trading Company; field tools from Bosch Tools; The small binoculars that are being reorganized and withdrawn from the optical equipment department of Yip's Workshop, which will be renamed "Ricoh Hong"; FedEx passenger services and a luxury resort built by the Inner Government on a scenic hill near Chunnan...... This combination of advertising ratios is a classic.

Almost on the day of publication, this cover with a bright yellow frame conquered the entire Danyang. The first batch of 5,000 copies was sold out in less than a day. The whole of Danyang is immersed in the perception of various curiosities in the canal area. Some anxious guys even put on their luggage directly, carried the first issue of the "National Geographic" trial issue in their arms and set off, to experience the folk customs of the canal area, and to see with their own eyes whether what the book said is true. And this is also something that Ye Tao, Tan Weiming and others never thought of.