In the next period of time, Zhu Jingyuan had time to write design plans and draw simple design drawings in the room.

Although it is possible to send a fax, the design drawings are still as few as possible, and a single sheet is sent as much as possible.

Describe it in as many words as possible.

After tossing like this for nearly ten days, Zhu Jingyuan felt that he had basically explained the plan of the typewriter.

Yu Duxue checked it for herself, and then sent it to the telegraph room and sent it to the Beijing Division.

For high-achieving students who have graduated from college, it is certainly more than enough to be an essay for themselves.

Zhu Jingyuan continued to write the design scheme of the mechanical computer.

Mechanical computers have been available for a long time, but Zhu Jingyuan is ready to make a more mature one.

Even ready to try binary, using a bulb switch to indicate the result.

However, the structure of a mechanical computer is inherently extremely complex, and a large computing computer is extremely heavy.

If you want to make binary, you might make the structure a little simpler, but it will make it heavier.

If you want to be programmable, there is enough computing power......

Input devices, memory, combinators, controllers, output devices......

After grabbing his hair for more than ten days, Zhu Jingyuan sealed his binary mechanical programmable computer scheme.

Don't be mechanical, just go straight to the tube!

The first tube computer was not Eniac, which was completed after the war.

In fact, someone designed it in the thirties, and someone already made a small one in the early forties.

But it's still not an easy job......

Before Zhu Jing finished the design and drawing of the tube computer, she suddenly received a message from the Ministry of Engineering of Beijing Division.

Request for advice about the design of the typewriter.

Zhu Jingyuan put down the work in his hand, picked up the telegram sent by Yu Duxue and read it carefully.

The first is the conventional strong admiration for his own design ideas.

Zhu Jingyuan knew that most of them were sincere, because after all, their designs were copied from cross-era experience.

But if you see too much of this kind of thing, you will become numb.

Zhu Jingyuan glanced at it, and directly skipped those sincere nonsense and went directly to the actual content.

The craftsmen of the Ministry of Industry suggested improvements to their designs.

This made Zhu Jingyuan a little curious and surprised, and continued to carefully check the content of their improvement suggestions, but soon found that he had been affected by habitual thinking before.

I refer to the input method design logic of later generations, and naturally equate typewriter keystrokes with computer keyboard keystrokes.

But in reality, there is a big difference between the two.

The craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty did not have this kind of inertial thinking, so they soon found a more reasonable and improved design.

In the five-stroke input method, four keys come out of a word, and the keys must be clicked in a fixed order.

The order of the keystrokes changes, and the type is a different word.

But on your own typewriter, you don't really need to make keystrokes in order.

Because of the five-stroke input method on the computer, it is equivalent to that each button is an axis.

His own typewriter had only four axes in total, and the relative positions of the four axes were fixed.

That is, there is already a physical internal order, and there is no way to swap positions between the four axes.

The keyboard is actually divided into four groups.

Each set of keys controls an axis, and a key in each group corresponds to a face of the axis, or a traversing node.

The instructions for each key are fixed.

The output does not change due to the different order of keystrokes.

Therefore, there is no need to distinguish the order between the keys in different areas, and you can even press them at the same time.

Just like a piano chord, when four keys from the four zones are pressed at the same time, the four axes inside rotate at the same time.

The correct target kanji will be selected directly.

If you hit the keys in order, you can modify the previous keys at will between the last keys.

When the last key is pressed, the position of the previous button will take effect.

On the other hand, if the Wubi input method is also physically partitioned on the keyboard, you can also click four keys at the same time to directly produce words.

This is actually the typing method of a stenographer.

Tap multiple keys at the same time, one word at a time.

Even the left and right hands each four keys at the same time, two words at a time.

At the same time, the disadvantage of this design is also very obvious, that is, the theoretical encoding capacity will be greatly reduced.

The five input methods on later computers use a total of twenty-five letter keys.

The total number of encodings that can be used is twenty-five to the fourth power, a total of more than 390,000.

If you divide the twenty-five keys into four physical partitions, the number of codes contained becomes the product of the number of keys in the four zones.

Six times six, then six, and finally seven, for 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 with reference to 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 tail codes, and eight word selection codes, and the number of keys in the three areas is multiplied to accommodate 8,064 codes.

Zhu Jingyuan only needs 32 keys, which are evenly divided into four groups, each group of eight keys, and the encoding capacity is 4,096.

With more than 4,000 figures, it can hold all the commonly used Chinese characters at the first level, and can meet the daily needs of writing diaries and letters.

But professionalism is still completely insufficient.

It is not enough in the office and business environment of the yamen, let alone the institutions related to literary creation and publishing.

Therefore, the craftsmen of the Ministry of Industry made suggestions to increase the number of keys and the corresponding coding capacity.

The main thing is to increase the number of Chinese characters arranged on each side of the small roller, and the number of keys corresponding to the key area to which it belongs.

If the number of corresponding keys is increased to sixteen, there will be a total of 8,192 codecs.

It will also be able to accommodate all the Chinese characters in the "General Standard Chinese Character List" approved by Emperor Shizu.

After Emperor Shizu reunified the world, he once again carried out a book and text action.

Organize all the Chinese characters in the world and determine the standard writing method for each character.

It was included in the "General List of Daming Standard Chinese Characters", and the "Daming Dictionary" containing all standard Chinese characters was compiled.

Then, on the basis of this general table and dictionary, all kinds of rare words for special and exclusive purposes are eliminated.

Eight thousand Chinese characters that can meet the needs of most characters were selected and included in the "General Standard Chinese Character List".

It also stipulates that in the future, the official documents of the yamen at all levels of the imperial court, education and training, signboards, publishing and printing, literary creation, and other places must be the standard Chinese characters in this table.

Only for other artistic purposes such as private calligraphy, other rare and special characters can be used.

As long as it can fully accommodate the common standard Chinese character list, this typewriter can meet most use cases.

In addition, scholars from the Ministry of Rites suggested that the number of codes should continue to be increased on a secondary basis.

Relatively common rare characters and various common variants are also included.

Meet the requirements of the Ministry of Rites to deal with special historical classics, record and compile rare characters, variant characters related to the use of documents.

The Ministry of Industry suggested that a reinforced version be made to increase the number of Chinese characters on each side of the small drum to thirty-two.

The number of codes has been doubled to 16,384, which can basically meet the needs of the Ministry of Rites.

After reading it, Zhu Jingyuan realized that he had actually miscalculated a data in terms of keys and encoding.

The craftsmen pointed it out to themselves, but instead of saying it directly, they suggested a change.

Zhu Jingyuan smiled and shook his head, and personally wrote a response:

"The big workers of the Ministry of Works and the gentlemen of the Ministry of Rites are very capable, so let's do it according to this plan.

"In the future, if you find out that my planning omissions and mistakes are made, you can directly bring them up without being so tactful."

When Zhu Jingyuan's news reached the Ministry of Industry, the working group set up for typewriters here was busy.

Zhu Jing herself didn't regard the typewriter too seriously, but the relevant departments of the imperial court did not.

Although the current Ming Dynasty was rebuilt by Emperor Shizu, it has completed in-depth transformation and modernization in a large range.

But nominally and substantially, he remains the leader of Eastern civilization.

Although Zhu Cihong promoted the status of soldiers, the Ming court was still essentially a literati court.

Techniques related to writing, writing, and recording are the most valued technologies in the Ming Dynasty.

And the typewriter is a typical technology in this genre.

Although people think that Chinese character writing is an art, there is also a need to industrialize and standardize it.

It's not that no one has designed typewriters, and it's not that they don't care about typewriters at all, it's just that no one has made real typewriters.

The typewriter that Zhu Jingyuan is designing now, the logic of its operation and the possible effects of the envisioned are all bright in the eyes of the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Industry, and even the emperor.

If this thing is raised to a political level, this invention can be elevated to the great merit of papermaking and printing.

Therefore, after Zhu Jingyuan's design was sent to Beijing, it soon became a key project of the cabinet, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Rites.

Under the emperor's instructions, the cabinet led the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Rites to cooperate and work together to promote research and development.

When the craftsmen tried to draw the drawings, they discovered the omissions in Zhu Jingyuan's design.

So let the officials tell Zhu Jingyuan in the language, and at the same time directly adjust and modify the original design.

The Ministry of Rites hired a large group of scholars to work with the craftsmen to analyze and write coding rules.

Zhu Jingyuan's response arrived, and the craftsmen and scholars breathed a sigh of relief after reading it, and then immediately continued to work.

Twenty days later, the first movable typing machine was made.

Since it was a test, there was no lid at all, and all mechanical structures were directly exposed.

Behind the four rows of metal buttons, an eight-sided drum is mounted in a cavity.

Since the coding font library is not done, the font on the drum is blank, and this time it is only to test the structure of the machine.

Behind the drum is a paper clip with a specially made ribbon between the paper clip and the roller.

There is a full row of metal feet behind the paper clip to press the paper forward.

Qi Yanhuai, a master worker in charge of the design of the machine, pressed the buttons of the four zones in turn, and the drum in the cavity rotated accordingly.

After the four keys were struck, a metal foot on the back of the paper clip struck forward with a soft snapping sound.

If the encoding is completed and the font is installed, then the first word is typed.

"Looks okay......"

Qi Yanhuai also breathed a sigh of relief in his heart, and continued to press those metal buttons, watching the drum in the cavity continue to rotate.

The sound of slap, snap, snap sounded a dozen times in a row, and then the machine suddenly stopped moving.

"It's a bit of a stretch to press the keys......"

Qi Yanhuai rubbed his fingers, which were a little numb, and lowered his head to check the structure in the cavity:

"Where is this stuck......"