Chapter 457: Metal Typefaces for a One-Time Solution (Please vote and subscribe)

The first batch of clay movable type has been carved, which makes Luo Chong very happy. There are five or six thousand commonly used characters, and each character needs to be carved out more than ten times, and the most are dozens of times. This adds up to tens of thousands of characters. It took 300 people from the whole school to work together, and it took several months to carve the first set of characters.

Although it is only one model, and it is still relatively small, this font with a side length of eight millimeters is already very large compared to modern book printing. Its font area is about the same as the cross-sectional area of ​​an ordinary cigarette, because most cigarettes are eight millimeters in diameter.

"Burn, of course we have to burn it. Burn a batch first and try the printing effect. If it doesn't work, we will change to other materials.

But speaking of other materials, I have an idea that may be able to achieve a one-time solution." Luo Chong immediately made a decision.

"Chief, what is a one-time solution?" Bai Qi asked puzzled.

"Once and for all, we only need to do it once, and we won't have to carve characters again in the future. Moreover, we only need to carve one character, and then we can copy them in large quantities." Luo Chong smiled slightly, feeling very happy about the method he suddenly thought of.

"With clay movable type, characters can be printed continuously, but can the clay blocks of movable type also be copied?!"

Bai Qi looked shocked. He thought this was nonsense and insulted his intelligence. After all, he personally followed his classmates to carve characters for several months, and he deeply understood the hard work involved. However, when these words came from the mouth of the leader, he felt credible for no reason. After all, the leader was the omnipotent emperor, the son of God. "

That's right. With metal movable type, we can use tin-lead alloy to cast characters. Of course, if we want to do it once and for all, metal movable type alone is not enough. We must first make a batch of type molds. In this way, as long as we have a batch of type molds as standards, we can directly take out the mold and cast one when we want to cast movable type in the future. In this way, we will never have to carve characters again. Moreover, if the type mold is well maintained, it will be no problem to circulate for thousands of years." Luo Chong became more and more excited as he thought about it. Why didn't he think of this

earlier? Rabbit's printing technology world civilization, from early woodblock printing to later wood movable type, clay movable type, copper movable type, tin movable type, lead movable type, almost everything, but it has not been promoted. Of course, there are reasons for this, but these reasons are not a problem for Luo Chong. The ancestors have taken a detour for thousands of years and told him the most correct method. There is no reason for him to repeat the same mistakes.

The earliest woodblock printing was too labor-intensive, so movable type printing technology was derived. However, the material of movable type has been evolving, but it has never been promoted. Instead, the technology of woodblock printing has continued for thousands of years because our ancestors took too many detours.

The earliest wooden movable type, because the wood absorbs ink, it is easy to expand and deform, making the utilization rate extremely low. It will take a short time to re-carve the characters. In addition, due to the plate fixing technology invented by Bi Sheng, the wooden movable type is glued to the iron plate with pine branches and wax. It is very troublesome to disassemble the movable type after printing, and the pine resin and wax stuck on it must be scraped off little by little. The heavy workload is even more troublesome than the woodblock printing, which makes people have to stay away.

Later, clay movable type was used, and the problem of water absorption and deformation of the printing plate was solved, but the typesetting and fixing technology remained the same, still using glue, and it was still as troublesome to disassemble after printing.

Later, smart people improved the typesetting and binding technology, changing from gluing to squeezing with a wooden frame, putting all the movable type in the frame, stuffing it with something, and taking it out directly after use, which reduced the workload of decomposing the movable type and made movable type printing popular.

However, wooden movable type and clay movable type still have major disadvantages, that is, they are not durable, they will be broken after a short time, and they are not conducive to preservation, so someone came up with the idea of ​​casting metal movable type, hoping to increase the service life of the movable type.

But after changing to metal movable type, new problems arose. The first is the price. The early copper movable type was very expensive. After all, copper was the currency in ancient times. Casting movable type with money was generally something that only the emperor could afford with the whole country's strength. Who among ordinary people had the financial resources?

Later, in order to reduce the price, tin type appeared. However, tin and copper have one thing in common with metal movable type, that is, the printing effect is not good. The printing ink used in ancient times was all water-based ink, which is water-based ink formed by melting water and ink blocks. However, water will automatically condense into small water droplets on the metal surface, and it is impossible to evenly adsorb the ink on the metal movable type, so metal movable type has not been promoted. This is mainly related to the problem of metal surface stress.

Later, lead movable type was brought back from overseas after the printing technology spread to Europe. As for why metal movable type is so widely used in the West, one is because their characters are all letters, and there are only a few dozen letters, so the workload of checking characters is very easy and the work efficiency is high. The second is because the ink used by Europeans is oil-based ink, which can be easily and evenly adsorbed on the metal surface. The integration of the advantages of both parties has made the Western metal movable type printing technology a success.

However, the above problems are not a problem for Luo Chong. First of all, the currency set by Luo Chong is copper and silver, while the movable type is made of tin and lead. This does not require the use of money to cast characters, and the cost is greatly reduced. Moreover, the melting points of tin and lead are only 200 to 300 degrees, so the cost of smelting and casting is greatly reduced. After all, it does not need to melt more than 1,000 degrees like copper and iron. You can melt tin and lead by burning firewood in an iron pot, and you don’t even need charcoal. The cost is so low.

In addition, Luo Chong already knows the correct ink for metal movable type printing, which is ink. However, ink is simply too much for the current Han tribe. Not to mention animal oils such as lard, beef tallow and mutton fat, there are more than five kinds of vegetable oils such as tung oil, lacquer oil, peanut oil, soybean oil and hemp seed oil. Even pine seeds picked from the mountains can be pressed for oil, but the yield is too low.

Now, as long as oil is used instead of water, and then the ink block is ground in the oil, the simplest ink can be obtained. As for which one has the best effect, it can be known with a little experiment. It is not a problem for Luo Chong at all.

As for the ink stick, the ink kiln on the mountain has been burning continuously. The output of an ink kiln is now enough to support the use of the entire Han tribe. After all, among the tens of thousands of people in the entire Han tribe, there are no more than two thousand who can write, and there are not even five hundred people who can write thousands of words. With such a small number of educated people, how much ink can be used.

Finally, there is the once-and-for-all method mentioned by Luo Chong, which is to make a set of fonts and then cast them in batches. After all, after the promotion of literature, after a hundred or eighty years, the new culture of the Han tribe will definitely be born. At that time, it is impossible for the government to print books and so on. There will definitely be private printing houses, but how will they print at that time? Making movable type by yourself is too time-consuming and wastes manpower and material resources. At this time, Luo Chong's font molds come in handy.

If someone wants to open a private printing house, they can directly apply to the government. At that time, the government will use the type mold to directly cast a set of lead-tin movable type. The private printing house only needs to pay the money. In this way, they can directly buy a set of national standard metal movable type printing plates. It can be said that it is both cost-effective and convenient.

As for whether private individuals have the financial resources to purchase movable type printing plates from the government, Luo Chong thinks there is no problem. The metals used are lead and tin. These two things are valuable if you say they are valuable, and worthless if you say they are worthless. Copper and silver are currency, iron can be used to make tools and weapons, and lead and tin can only be used as small additives to bronze alloys, and are almost useless if taken out alone.

In addition to tin being used as solder for welding, especially lead, what else can it be used for in this era? It is useless except for making movable type. Moreover, due to its ultra-low melting point, the smelting cost of lead and tin is so low, so even if it is used to make movable type, except for the labor cost, the cost of materials will not exceed the labor cost.

In this way, low-priced metal movable type can be promoted on a large scale. There will be more printing houses in the private sector, and more books will be available. More books will be very cheap, which will be conducive to the spread of culture and the popularization of education. It will allow everyone to buy books and go to school. Only when people have knowledge can they have insights and make the country rich and strong.

Therefore, this idea is really a benevolent policy that benefits the country and the people. The more Luo Chong thought about it, the more excited he became, and he couldn't help but implement this plan immediately.

Luo Chong immediately sent Bai Qi to send the first batch of clay movable type to the lame man to burn it first, and then asked Da Zui to prepare a batch of wax ingots and carve out a set of character molds using the lost wax method. After that, he would recycle the early bronzes of the Han tribe, such as bronze farm tools, axes, etc., and replace them all with iron ones.

The task was quickly issued, and Da Zui was very efficient. He sent a large number of wax ingots that day. It was said that the Han tribe had not used the lost wax method to cast things for a long time, so these waxes had been idle, so Da Zui could take them out quickly.

After having the wax blocks, Luo Chong began to lead 300 students to carve characters the next day. This time, they carved character molds, so it was completely different from the previous clay movable type. What is a character mold? It is a model. After it is made, it can be used repeatedly, so only one is needed for each character.

That day, Luo Chong used a pencil to mark the grid on the paper, and then used a brush to write out 10,000 characters, and none of them were repeated. It is also worth noting that all the characters engraved this time are regular characters, that is, the characters are regular, and the characters printed are reversed, because this is mainly used for casting, not for printing.

The previous set of clay movable type was used for printing, so each character needed to be engraved at least ten times, and more than dozens of times. Thousands of commonly used characters increased the workload by more than ten times. In addition, the students did not know how to write yet, and the engraving technique was unfamiliar, so the progress was very slow, but this time was different.

Luo Chong gave 35 characters to each of the 300 students, which added up to more than 10,000 characters, and each character was different. He asked them to carve them in two classes, which was more than two hours. Since they had a lot of experience in carving clay movable type before, they were skilled in the technique. In addition, the wax ingots were relatively soft, which made it very convenient to carve. Moreover, the characters they carved were upright, which made them work more smoothly. Some students with quick hands completed the task in half an hour, which made Luo Chong very happy.

This is equivalent to completing a set of fonts in just one day, and the progress was very fast.

The next day, Luo Chong asked Da Zui to take away the wax ingots, and then use white refractory kaolin to make a viscous and easy-to-flow paste, and then insert all the wax ingots into it. After drying, heat it again to pour out the melted wax liquid, and then cut the solidified wax block into ingots again, change it to another font size, and send it to Luo Chong and others again.

Luo Chong, who got the new wax ingots, organized 300 students to carve more than 10,000 characters that day, but the size of the characters carved this time was different from yesterday.

Da Zui, who got the molds, was not idle either. He started smelting lead ore that day and casting the first batch of lead ingots. After the molds were completely dry on the third day, this guy followed Luo Chong's instructions and melted the previous bronze farm tools back into the furnace, and then melted the alloy in a ratio of bronze to lead, lowering the melting point of the alloy to about 600 degrees, and then used these lead-bronze alloys to cast the molds. It was completed that day, and Luo Chong had already led the students to carve three types of molds.

After getting these molds, Da Zui was able to cast a batch of lead-bronze molds every day, greatly improving efficiency.

A week later, Luo Chong had already obtained five types of metal typefaces. The smallest batch had a side length of 5 millimeters, which was about the same size as the fonts on modern books. This type could be used to print books, and could also be used in conjunction with large characters. Large characters could print the main text, and small characters could print annotations. Together, they could print dictionaries. This kind of reference book would definitely have the highest sales volume, and any number of them could be sold.

There were five types: national standard No. 1 typeface, 5 millimeters long and wide, national standard No. 2 typeface, 8 millimeters, No. 3 typeface, 1 centimeter, No. 4 typeface, 1.5 centimeters, and No. 5 typeface, 2 centimeters. From small dictionary annotations to large printed notices, these five types could basically meet all needs.

Of course, this was not the most important thing, because these typefaces were all upright characters and could not be used for printing, so these typefaces were also used to cast reverse characters, which was the real purpose.

First, make a wooden box, then mix the refractory clay into soft mud and put it in the box. Take out a corresponding typeface mold for the character you need to cast, and then poke the character into the mud with the character facing down, and a reverse character mold would come out.

If you want to cast more than a dozen characters of a character, just use the same character mold to poke it a few more times, and finally cast the mold full of holes with lead-tin alloy, and then more than a dozen identical reverse characters will come out at once. This is the metal movable type used for printing.

In this way, Luo Chong and 300 students completed the task of thousands of years in just one week. With these bronze alloy character molds, they will no longer need to carve characters. When they need to cast new printing plates, they just need to take out the character molds and put them in the refractory mud to press a few pits.

After use, wash the character molds, put them in a wooden box, pad them with woolen cloth, pour tung oil on them, and finally seal them. As long as this metal thing is kept with oil, it will be no problem to preserve it for a thousand years. In this way, Luo Chong's wish will be fulfilled.

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Comrades, I will collect monthly tickets at the end of the month. With the support of monthly tickets (≧ω≦)

(End of this chapter)