Chapter 136 – Printing
Chapter 136 The Printing Press
After a discussion with the two female advisors, Paul presented his various new ideas at the regular meeting of the Council of State.
He emphasized two points: the health business and the printing industry.
Participating officials of the Council of State took turns to experience a microscope, and exclaimed incredulity, they did not realize that another world existed in the minutiae that could not be touched by the human eye.
Someone said to Paul, “This will create an earthquake in the academic world, and I suggest that you send your new discovery to the headquarters of the Council of Ministries, and they will surely erect a statue of you in the central square of the Holy Capital.”
“Haha, really?” Paul scratched his head a little embarrassed, after all, the microscope wasn’t really invented by him.
In addition to widely publicizing the concept of hygiene and popularizing disinfection, anti-bacteria and other scientific means of care, Paul also asked the Council of State to provide material and financial support for the two female advisors, in order to train a group of “professional” medical personnel, and set up a health clinic in every village and town, sending medical personnel to station there, but of course at this stage, still need to collect money.
But the officials were clearly more interested in the lucrative business of printing than in the scientific and technological aspects of microscopes and microorganisms.
Think about it, take a piece of worthless paper and print words and pictures on it, then bind it into a book, immediately become a book that used to require laborious transcription, the price difference between a book and a pile of paper can be huge.
Moreover, there are two huge advantages of printed books over hand-copied books:
First, the quality of the transcriptionist in the transcription of the book will often be typos, smearing and other defects, with printing, as long as there is no error on the printing plate, the text of the book will be no error. And then hire a master engraver with higher skills to make the printed words neat and beautiful, which will surely throw off the traditional hand-copied books by a long shot.
Second, the cost, the traditional book copying industry to hire the transcriber must write a good hand, their own cultural level can not be too low, in this know the word even if the talent of the era, employing such a large group of people can be said to be a huge cost. There is also the cost of time, the difference is even greater.
This is simply a means of money …… ah no, is a great progress in the history of human civilization ah.
“Gentlemen, we can now use the printing technology is only a very primary technology, I call it engraved printing, the current stage can only use it to respond to emergencies. Engraving is still very time consuming and labor intensive, and large books like the Canon may take a long time to engrave.”
Paul told the crowd about his plans for improvement, “My vision is to develop tools that can arrange words or letters in free combinations, which I call movable type printing.”
He explained the principles of movable type printing to the crowd, drawing another gasp from the officials.
Finally Paul took out a pile of paper and handed it to the official from the Ministry of Industry, which contained a detailed description of the principles of movable type printing and the structure of the original printing press, and instructed, “Give this to the craftsmen in the machine shop, mobilize the manpower to cast a batch of movable type, and come up with a printing press.”
Casting metal movable type was more troublesome, and if the movable type was not cast with enough regularity, it would seriously affect the typesetting of the text. Specialized printing inks also had to be developed, and in Paul’s memory, the printing ink invented by Gutenberg at the time appeared to be composed of linseed oil, lampblack, varnish, and other ingredients that would stick to both metal and paper.
If one were merely casting out metal movable type, one would still need to apply the ink and rub the paper by hand, and the nature of the ink made this not an easy task, but a printing press would have saved time and labor considerably.
The most primitive movable type printing press in the West appears to have been a conversion of the screw-down linen press, a simple machine with a heavy base, having two columns on the sides, and a crossbeam erected over it, through which there was a rotatable wooden screw which pressed down a reinforced platen or top plate capable of sliding between the columns, and it is probable that anyone who wished to apply an even pressure on a flat surface would think of utilizing Anyone wishing to apply pressure evenly on a flat surface is likely to think of utilizing this simple device.
Paul’s drawing of the press structure for the craftsmen followed this device.
He declared, “As soon as the printing press is successfully developed, we will build a printing press and extend this technology to the people, giving a great boost to the cultural and educational endeavors in the territory.”
“On top of that, I have long ago commissioned Quiller Foster to bring a large number of southern books from the south, poetry, essays, novels, and so on; we can print these books in large quantities, bind them beautifully, and then ship them to the south to sell them to those nobles and rich people who like to attach themselves to the nobility.”
That’s another source of wealth. At the regular meeting Paul’s also got three pieces of news that pleased him.
The first good news was that Hansel, who had traveled to the royal capital again, sent a letter saying that this time he had recruited more talents, including several alchemists, and that in addition to the talents, he had also gathered a large number of refugees and was preparing to send them to the Northwest Bay together.
The war in the south created a lot of refugees to the north, so that the lords of the north is a headache, can let their own people eat their stomachs is already very “effort”, which has “extra” food to receive these refugees, and the influx of refugees to the major territories of the security situation The influx of refugees has caused the law and order situation in the major territories to continue to deteriorate.
Now Hansel is recruiting stragglers under the banner of all the way, but also in a few major transportation routes set up shelters, large and small lords while holding the mindset of watching fools joke while organizing manpower to their own territory refugees tied up to send to his shelter.
“The letter says that the first batch of people coming over could be as many as six or seven hundred, do we have the capacity to receive this group of refugees?”
“The Council of State has already made preparations to take in the refugees, considering that because of customs and other reasons they are likely to clash with the locals in their lives, we’ve erected a group of temporary dwellings on the south bank of the Vise River for them to live in. Also the factory owners and farm owners from all over the civilization have been notified to come over and recruit people.”
Chief Steward Ford gave Paul a satisfactory answer on behalf of the Council of State.
The second piece of good news came when the ordnance factory improved the formula for gunpowder. In theory, the grouping ratio of nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal at 78.74%:11.84%:11.32% was the best gunpowder formula, that is, with this kind of gunpowder the most gases were generated, the most heat was released, the highest rising temperature was achieved, and the killing power was the strongest.
The craftsmen did not know this chemical knowledge, but they still relied on a lot of experiments to summarize the best gunpowder formula for musket and artillery respectively, the ratio of nitrate, sulfur and charcoal for gunpowder is 75%:10%:15%, and the ratio of nitrate, sulfur and charcoal for artillery gunpowder is 78%:8%:14%.
This improvement not only enhanced the power of gunpowder, but also prolonged the service life of guns.
The odd armourers also designed a set of gunpowder grinding and mixing equipment that utilized water-power drive, which made the generation of gunpowder much more efficient and finer, and saved a lot of manpower.
The third piece of good news was that the craftsmen of the ordnance factory had finally produced reliable springs, and the odd armors from the royal capital had brought advanced heat treatment technology, which made a great contribution in this regard. With the spring, the first flintlock pistol was assembled, and combined with the improved quality of gunpowder, the firing rate reached over 80%.
Paul ordered to continue to supervise the ordnance factory to improve the flintlock pistol. With the flintlock, the soldiers could line up more closely, thus greatly increasing the fire density, and could also avoid the interference of the weather factor to a certain extent; sooner or later, he wanted to have his entire army to be equipped with flintlocks.
Paul suddenly had a flash of light: “I suddenly thought of another idea to make money, since we have good springs, can we make a shock absorbing device for our carriages, the current carriages are really uncomfortable to sit in.”
Using springs to make a shock absorbing device for carriages is a wealth generating tool for people from all walks of life, how could he let it go.
Ministry of Industry officials said that they would immediately convey Paul’s idea to the craftsmen in the machine shop, in fact, shock absorption for carriages does not necessarily have to rely on springs, the world already has a variety of shock absorption measures.
After a series of things arranged, Paul decided to leave again to the port of Frankland, because there are two new sailing ships have been built, one of them will soon go south to open up a new route, he would like to go to see the lineup of the “Expedition”.
Surprisingly, this time the female counselor, Lardy, offered to go with him.
The female advisor said to Paul with a serious face:
“Lord Earl, you may encounter some bad things on your way.”
(End of chapter)