"Embossing?"

Outside the engraving room of Ming Pao, the master craftsman was confused.

Printing printing, do you think this "brush" word is called in vain?

For many years, after engraving, the ink is brushed first, and then the paper is brushed, and the gentle brush is the most capable part of the printing process.

In any case, it is difficult for him to associate pressing with printing - paper and lettering must not be broken?

"Your Majesty is very concerned about this matter. The purpose of the Heart Cultivation Temple is that we have to figure out how to make such a machine, and it doesn't take a long time to practice for the new hands, and after teaching how to use the machine, it can be guaranteed to work. ”

The two stared at each other, one was a management bureaucrat and the other was a master craftsman for many years, but they had no clue.

"There's a way. Since Your Majesty has shown mercy to the quality of the printed newspaper words, you should think about the long-term plan, sharpen your knife and not chop wood. ”

The engineering faculty of Huangming University also got this will, and then it was also confused.

Knowing that this was the will of His Majesty after he had summoned Alfonso, the dean of the Faculty of Engineering also went to visit.

It's just that when he went and heard the quarrel inside, he didn't want to make trouble for others like this - anyway, Alfonso's daughter stayed in the palace and was His Majesty's woman.

"How is it possible to press?" In the master craftsman training class, Wu Erqi shook his head, "The copper movable type and hardwood movable type are fine, but the clay movable type, if you use too much force, won't it be crushed?" Besides, the paper will be crushed. Impossible, impossible! ”

Zheng Kui didn't know what to do. He's just a brick burner, and he's been watching this thing, unless they're going to fire new clay movable type.

But the main trouble now seems not to be the problem of font molding, word selection, and plate making, but that the printing process is too time-consuming and labor-intensive.

In the Forbidden City, Zhu Houxi was not as concerned about the upcoming formal national policy meeting as he was about it.

In terms of vision and knowledge in this field, Da Ming is only afraid that no one is wider than him.

Although he didn't understand these professional things, he knew that if he could point out practical ideas, he could save a lot of time for engineering talents like Daming.

Juicing ......

Carolina later translated it at a great length, and her mother only mentioned that the duke told her that Gutenberg had been inspired by the tools used to press the juice in making wine.

Alfonso probably knew very well that his wife could not understand this, and it took a few quarrels to force his wife to say the name of a certain duke. Probably a fun conversation while tasting wine or even some juicing action? Anyway, Alfonso's wife felt that the emperor cared about this matter, and might as well exchange it for some reward—she was thinking about her dear husband.

The juicer that Zhu Houxi is familiar with is naturally not the European juice method in this era, but squeezing is indeed often associated with pressing, squeezing and pressing.

I asked someone who knows how to press oil, and there was probably an oil trench when pressing. After the oil is put in, it is squeezed tightly with a wooden wedge, and then it is hammered with a large wooden mallet, which is quite violent, and of course it cannot be used to print things.

When printing, it is necessary to be ingenious, to be just right: when the ink is applied, the paper and the lettering will not be crushed.

Zhu Houxi has actually realized the key to this: precision.

He just didn't know what this precision had to do with squeezing grape juice, so Zhu Houxi simply went to Wen Suyun and Carolina.

"Where wine is made?" Carolina shook her head, "I haven't been, I've just drank." How the grape juice is squeezed, I don't know. ”

Zhu Houxi didn't gain anything, and continued to think about it by himself for a while.

Huang Jin watched from the sidelines, only to see His Majesty's gaze looking at the door casually.

Is a small machine more important than a national focus meeting?

"Move to the wing over there and put it in first."

Faintly hearing Wen Suyun's voice outside the door, Huang Jin went out to take a look, and when he came back, he heard Zhu Houxi ask, "What's the matter?" ”

"Your Majesty, it is some small objects that Concubine Shuniang asked from Concubine Xian, and His Royal Highness the Great Prince played with when he was a child."

Zhu Houxi smiled slightly: "This girl is deliberate, right?" Since I came, I would naturally go to see her, and shout so loudly. ”

Wen Suyun was already happy, and after getting acquainted with Carolina and the interpreter palace maid Qu Mei, the three of them lived together in Changle Palace.

Now Wen Suyun is also pregnant, and she is not far from giving birth. begging for toys for future children, that is not the educational toys that Zhu Houxi arranged for Zhu Zaiyun to make at that time, Luban lock or something......

The smile on Zhu Houxi'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 arches under the main hall.

“…… Your Majesty? ”

Seeing the happy and suspicious look on Zhu Houxi's face, Huang Jin asked.

"I figured it out!" Zhu Houxi suddenly laughed, "No wonder, no wonder!" Go to Xuanwang Wensu to enter the palace! Wang Wensu, Wen Suyun, hahahahaha. ”

The emperor was very happy, and Huang Jin suddenly became much more relaxed: "Slave and maid, let's go!" ”

"When you get to the Heart Cultivation Palace, come here and tell me."

Zhu Houxi walked towards the main hall of Changle Palace, and Wen Suyun was a little confused.

What do you figure out?

……

Wang Wensu is the dean of the School of Computing, and in the past few years, his main job has become compiling books.

This time, I often consulted the emperor and compiled a textbook for teaching arithmetic.

At the same time, the arithmetic college naturally recruited some students to learn the new arithmetic.

Suddenly summoned by the emperor, Wen Suyun went to the study of the Heart Cultivation Hall and waited for a while, and saw the emperor striding over.

He was about to salute when the emperor said, "Excuse me." Come here, I'll draw something and see if I can figure out the arithmetic in it. ”

With that, he picked up a pen and drew on a piece of paper on the top of the imperial case.

Wang Wensu leaned his head over, only to see that the emperor had drawn the shape of a stick, and the lines on it were real and imaginary, spiraling around the surface of the stick.

"Your Majesty, what is this?"

"Spiral." After Zhu Houxi finished speaking, he said, "This thing must be understood in the arithmetic, so that the craftsmen can have a simple and clear way to make this spiral column and nut in the future." ”

A few new words came over, and Wang Wensu just stared at the thing painted by Zhu Houxi for the time being.

Hearing the Luban lock, Zhu Houxi suddenly thought of a problem: for thousands of years in China, the mortise and tenon structure has always been used to fix objects.

As for wine, Zhu Houxi then remembered the wine opener. In the various objects of later life that he was familiar with, it was a common structure to use bolts and nuts to rotate to control precision, jam things, and apply pressure at the other end.

Zhu Houxi thought back for a few years, and suddenly realized that Da Ming had never seen this kind of screw-like structure now.

The mortise and tenon structure is so easy to use that no one has ever used another connection method in the East.

But now that he has figured out the control accuracy and the trick of giving the right pressure, Zhu Houxi already has a picture in his mind.

After handing over this homework to Wang Wensu and chatting with him about the thickness of the spiral on the pillar can be different and many other points, Zhu Houxi continued to sit down and carefully drew a rough sketch.

The press could be made into a wooden shelf with a spiral column fixed vertically in the middle of the beam.

At the bottom is a table on which you can put the typewriting of the board.

At the bottom end of the spiral column in the middle part is another flat plate with a nut on top of the flat plate. The nut can also be attached to a rod for easy twisting.

If the density of the spiral is designed, then after the paper is placed under the typeface and the plate, the nut can be rotated from one designated position to another, and the plate can be driven down to almost the right pressure.

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 really skillful, so it's a big deal to use special wood carving that is not easy to deform to see the effect.

Zhu Houxi has become more and more aware of the need to get this thing out.

The spiral, it seems, is also related to the rifling in the barrel.

And this thing will also be a very typical thing related to accuracy and standards.

Zhu Houxi didn't say anything about lead before, because in his concept, lead is poisonous.

But now, he is not sure whether the method of embossing used by the printing press is related to the hardness of the character mold and so on.

After summoning the Baoyuan Bureau, which is responsible for coinage, the Baojin Bureau, which is responsible for mining, as well as some masters of the military casting department such as the War Bureau and the Ordnance Supervision Bureau, he found that in fact, lead is used in many places now.

This thing, some are called green gold, and some are called Wuxi. The lead mountain field in Fei Hong's hometown is actually because there are a lot of these things in the mineral deposits there, but the main thing there is copper mining, and the copper immersion method is used.

And lead is cheap now.

A new reason has emerged that makes Zhu Houxi feel that this matter is very necessary: a large number of privately minted inferior copper coins, among which the lead content is higher, so it is more profitable.

If a large number of lead molds are cast later, it will at least hit these places and private coins.

Zhu Houxi asked, and finally understood the benefits of the lead mold: its melting point is relatively low, if it is cast with tin or something, the hardness is enough, the finished product is smooth, cheap, not easy to damage, and maybe a little flexible.

Copper movable type is too expensive!

After asking everything clearly, Zhu Houxi didn't alarm others first, but just handed over the task to Huang Jin and asked him to coordinate the craftsmen in the inner court to try out the production first.

The most core thing is to wait for Wang Wensu to figure out the mathematical principles, find the appropriate spiral density to control the accuracy, and find a simple way for others to manufacture studs and nuts.

This thing is not simple, after all, it is a three-dimensional thing.

There should be a spiral curve, there should be thread depth, and the nut and thread should fit smoothly.

Zhu Houxi himself is also researching.

It's easy to make a column: look at how many columns are in the palace that are very clean and standard?

But how to carve a smooth, coherent, and angled thread on a cylinder, this method needs to be found.

I have been thinking about this in my heart, and when I went to Sun Ming's side at night to rest, Zhu Houxi saw her undressing, and suddenly looked at the collar around her neck in a daze.

Sun Ming was a little ashamed: "Your Majesty...... What are you staring at......"

Zhu Houxi patted his head: "I thought about it again!" You wait a while, and I'll do an experiment. Does Kunning Palace have horn scarves? ”

The collar that was originally very straight, overlapping around her neck, wasn't that just a diagonal line?

If you unfold the sides of the cylinder, it looks like a spiral of curves, and it ends up in a straight line.

There are naturally horn scarves in Kunning Palace, and if you don't have them, you can cut them out with scissors.

Sun Ming watched blankly as the emperor instructed the palace maid to wrap the triangular scarves of different widths around the round candles, and the emperor looked at the stripes on it with excitement in his eyes.

Zhu Houxi was really inspired today and found the feeling of doing research.

The hypotenuse of the triangle really forms a coherent and smooth thread on the cylinder. Next, by controlling a triangle of the same height as a cylinder and another with different lengths of right-angled sides, you can get threads of different densities on the cylinder.

"That's it!" Zhu Houxi was very excited, and finally walked towards Sun Ming with confidence.

……

After Wang Wensu was assigned this homework, he stayed up all night facing this new gadget.

The ancients did not study geometry and three-dimensional geometry, but now the topic given by Zhu Houxi is of specific application significance, although Wang Wensu has good mathematical literacy, he is actually not a genius in this field, but he has studied it all his life.

"Guys, do you have any gains?"

When he got up early in the morning, he looked at the other professors and worshippers of the School of Mathematics who were also red-eyed and had stayed up all night, Wang Wensu saw that they all smiled bitterly and shook their heads.

This question is related to the round mound, but its upper spiral line is not a product. Even if I used the new equation taught by His Majesty, I had no clue and was ashamed. ”

"The main difficulty is that the twist is thick, how can this be calculated?"

"Look, everyone, I tried to draw on the candle last night, and I stared at it for more than an hour, and my eyes were a little dizzy."

"I use a paper scroll as a circle, and then spread it out after painting, it looks like this, how can this be calculated?"

A few people were discussing it here, and they did see one person roll a cylinder out of paper yesterday and draw a spiral line on it. When the paper is spread out, there are lines in sections.

Maybe it's because he doesn't draw well, some are straight, some are a little curved. The distance and angle between each other are also different.

But after all, they are all a few experts here, and after they got together and discussed for a while, they finally saw some clues.

"If you draw it well enough, these spirals are really straight lines, but are they? Ladies and gentlemen, how much is the difference between these two sections, and this is the key to coarseness, right? ”

"If you draw a line again, flat at the bottom of the circle, there is an angle, and it should be the same."

After brainstorming, they gradually got closer to the truth.

However, before they could come up with the final result, the palace sent someone to deliver a piece of paper.

"Your Majesty realized the truth last night. Dean Wang, Your Majesty has a decree, and then only need to calculate how much height difference will be caused by the triangular hypotenuse of different angles corresponding to the previous week of this cylinder. ”

Wang Wensu and the others looked at this piece of paper blankly.

A triangle, a cylinder. Conformal height, but the other right-angled side of the triangle is much larger than the circumference of the cylinder. If it is wrapped, it naturally becomes an extremely coherent spiral.

The rest of the question is simpler.

“…… In fact, if you look at how many times the circumference of this Guitian is round, how many times can you rotate in total, right? Isn't the height of each circle the height of each circle divided by the number of laps? If you want to have different thicknesses of the spiral line, I will multiply the number of circles by the circumference to get the geometry of the long side of the Guitian, and calculate it backwards, and we can get the size of the small angle of the Guitian, right? ”

“…… Your Majesty realized this truth overnight, and he is really a god and a man. It's just that this question is so simple, Your Majesty seems to have waited for me to take the test......"

They all felt that the emperor himself had figured out the reasoning, why didn't the simplest question in the end be calculated by dividing it by two?

It must be them!

So the academy quickly sent the results back to the palace.

After Zhu Houxi finished another preparatory meeting for the national policy meeting, he returned to the Heart Cultivation Hall and saw the results.

He was also stunned for a moment.

yes, why didn't you think of it?

Then he laughed dumbly.

Anyway, I found a way.

Next, the principle and machine sketches were sent to Ming Pao and the Institute of Engineering respectively.

The connecting rod on the nut is turned half a turn to get a clear distance of how far it is pressed down.

Master this distance, so that the paper and the font are just enough to touch, you can quickly print a piece of paper without very careful brushing.

Then rotate the connecting rod to free up the gap, take out the plate where the character mold is placed, and hand it to another person to connect the printed paper to see if you want to fill the mold with ink.

As long as you prepare several plates of the same type, and several people around this printing press, you can work in an assembly line, and one person is responsible for one thing.

Zou Shouyi looked at the sketch of the machine, and his hands trembled a little.

"Hurry up and try to make it! If this machine could be built, how many newspapers and books could the newspaper print in a year? ”

He was a man of letters, and he could see what would happen when printing things faster, easier, and cheaper.

Many folk engraving merchants in the world will go crazy!

The emperor personally fed the cakes, and the students of the master craftsman training class were boiling.

Zheng Kui's face was full of blood: "Dean, I will burn the kiln!" Burn that lead mold, let me do it! ”

The School of Engineering naturally wanted to rely on the professors and worshippers of the Huangming University to try out the best of this latest printing press.

After all, it is only a drawing, and there is still a lot of manufacturing and craftsmanship to be practical.

And there are young masters from all walks of life in the master craftsman training class!

(End of chapter)