Chapter 458 Table of Contents Picking Words (Please vote and subscribe)

Another week has passed, and the workshops in Hanyang City are still busy. Sangqiu in the spinning workshop has collected thousands of bundles of silk and is now trying to weave silk with Xiaodie. Although it is late autumn and the temperature is getting lower and lower, these textile workers are still working hard.

Dazui's metallurgical workshop is also not idle. In this week, he has cast five sets of lead-tin movable type of different sizes using bronze alloy metal molds. The movable type shining with dazzling silver light is like a seal. As long as it is brushed with ink, it can be used to print books at any time.

The wood processing factory of Mutong is even busier and has the most people. Some of them are constantly making tables and chairs needed for the teaching building, and there is a group of people who specialize in producing wooden boats. Another group is producing various utensils, such as wooden machinery, farm tools, buckets and other scattered things.

But none of this is important. What is important is that Luo Chong has asked them to make a batch of new things these days. There are several large cabinets on which movable type is placed, and there are also wooden frames, brushes, workbenches, and other tools for typesetting.

Luo Chong himself has not been idle either. In addition to continuing to teach students, he has also personally prepared some ink formulas. The ink is still pine soot ink, and the oil is vegetable oil, peanut oil, hemp seed oil, lacquer oil, and tung oil. Luo Chong has tried all four types, and finally mixed several oils to prepare the best ink.

After experimental analysis, tung oil, an oil similar to natural varnish, is not very suitable for printing, because tung oil paper is waterproof, so the fonts printed with ink are also waterproof, but it is very awkward compared to the surrounding blank space, and there is a strong smell of tung oil. Although the smell of tung oil is not toxic, it is not acceptable to ordinary people, so it was not used.

Then there is peanut oil, which has a good effect, but the ink dries slowly; sesame oil and lacquer oil also have their own characteristics. After some comparison, Luo Chong prepared a mixed ink, using 30% sesame oil, 60% lacquer grass seed oil, and 5% tung oil, and then mixed and ground evenly with pine soot ink.

The handwriting printed with this mixed ink will not smudge because it contains sesame oil, and the printed handwriting is not easy to spread on the paper, so the handwriting is clear;

and because it contains a large amount of lacquer grass seed oil, the ink has strong adhesion and is easy to be inked on the surface of the paper. It can be inked once, without turning it over and over again. Just lay the paper on the printing plate and brush it over it once to easily ink it, without rework, and reduce the occurrence rate of defective products.

Finally, because a small amount of tung oil is added, the ink can dry quickly, the ink has good volatility, dries quickly, and because of the addition of tung oil, the brightness of the ink can be increased, and the printed font ink is bright.

It may not be obvious when facing the sunlight during the day, but at night, when reading facing the not-so-bright oil lamp, this feature immediately stands out. Although the fonts printed on it are not as exaggerated as fluorescent characters, they can also be clearly highlighted on the surrounding white paper. This feature is particularly important in the era without electric lighting.

Finally, due to the addition of a large amount of pine smoke ink, the printed fonts are not only particularly black, but also smell like roasted pine wood. This feature makes the printed paper smell very good.

Ink, paper, metal movable type, typesetting tools, printing tools, shelves for picking up characters, workbenches, and various equipment are all available. Luo Chong couldn't help but want to print books. How could he not see the results after spending so much manpower and material resources?

The printing workshop finally selected was placed on the top floor of an empty teaching building, and two classrooms were specially vacated for printing.

The shelves were placed against the wall, and five types of metal characters were placed on them. In the middle were several large workbenches with various printing tools displayed on them. The other classroom next door was a warehouse, where white paper and ink, as well as printed books, were stored. There were also several tables here for binding new books.

Everything was ready, except for the start of work. There were not many people in the printing workshop, only five, and Bai Qi was the general manager. However, when they started working, they encountered difficulties, which was the most tedious part of checking characters.

Checking characters is not difficult, but it is not easy for someone like Bai Qi who has not learned many characters, let alone finding the characters he needs one by one in the ocean of Chinese characters.

Luo Chong was a person who had received modern education. He had learned pinyin and radicals, but Bai Qi had not learned them. Therefore, Luo Chong was the only one who could check characters at present. This was the huge pit of movable type printing, because the job of checking characters could only be done by people who knew how to read.

Actually, checking characters is similar to input method. Luo Chong first used the most familiar Pinyin checking method, arranged all movable characters according to Pinyin, and then pasted Pinyin notes on the shelf. He held a tray with a page of manuscript on it, and then looked for each character one by one, first finding the corresponding initial consonant, and then looking for the following final vowel. It was easy to find, but after looking for two pages of books, Luo Chong cried. He was the only one who knew Pinyin in this special brew. If he was to type a book, how long would it take him to finish it?

Later, Luo Chong tried the Wubi input method, looking for it according to the radical strokes, and felt that this was even more troublesome. The most important thing was that he was the only one who knew Pinyin and radicals. Without Luo Chong, they still couldn't do anything. But if he taught them Pinyin, he didn't know when they would learn it. Finally, Luo Chong came up with a stupid way to deal with this situation, which was to compile a catalog for all movable characters.

More than 10,000 movable characters were all written in a booklet according to the radicals. This was equivalent to a dictionary, except that each character was not followed by an annotation, but by the cabinet, layer, and grid where the character was located

. In this way, Luo Chong only needed to find the location of the character by looking at the catalog, and then call someone to get it from that cabinet. This greatly increased the efficiency of checking characters.

Luo Chong and Bai Qi sat behind the workbench, holding the manuscript in their hands and began to flip through the catalog. After finding the location, they called someone to ask them to go to the cabinet, layer, and grid to get the character. After hearing this, the checker went straight to the point and checked whether the movable type was correct after getting it. If there was no problem, he would proceed to the next one. When a page of the book was collected, it would be sent to Luo Chong, who would check it again.

After two checks, it was sent to another table for typesetting. The metal movable type was arranged according to the format of the book page, and the blank spaces were fixed with small wooden blocks. After completing this step, the typesetter checked the manuscript for the third time, and sent it to the printing table after there was no problem.

After the printing table receives the plate, it needs to be checked for the fourth time. First, check for any typos, and then check whether the typesetter has placed the characters correctly, and whether any characters appear horizontally or upside down. After the fourth check, it can be inked and printed.

Following this work procedure, the efficiency is indeed improved. This is much faster than checking the characters by oneself, and there will be basically no mistakes, reducing the probability of printing errors to the lowest point.

Since Bai Qi is the person in charge, Luo Chong put him in the most important link of checking characters, and let him learn how to turn the catalog with him. This catalog is written in Chinese characters, and the sorting method is based on radicals. Since Luo Chong taught them to write according to radicals, they can now read this catalog without any obstacles.

When Bai Qi and Luo Chong had picked up more than a dozen pages of books, Luo Chong began to give up and sat beside him to watch Bai Qi find words by himself.

After he finished finding them, he checked with Luo Chong and found that there were no mistakes. This stupid method allowed several people in the printing department to start working independently and no longer needed Luo Chong's help. This was a good thing. Finally, it was a relief. Luo Chong couldn't help but think comfortably.

The first book printed by the printing house was some manuscripts written by Luo Chong. This book was called "Selected Poems". On each page was a poem copied by Luo Chong. Finally, he changed it, summarized it, and put it together to become a book.

There was a poem on each page, using size 3 font, and below the poem was the annotation of the ancient poem, using the smallest size 1 font.

Each edition had to be printed three thousand times, and the pages were accumulated together, and finally cut, sorted, and bound, and a book was completed.

Considering the technology of this era and the production cost, the final binding method chosen was thread-bound books, which only required a piece of wool. It was cheap and fast, much faster than gluing. Although gluing was indeed more exquisite, what was the use? In a word, the cost was too high.

In this way, the work of the printing department became more and more skilled, and the quality and speed of printing were getting better and better. Basically, Luo Chong didn't have to worry about it. However, when Luo Chong was printing books, Xiaodie also received good news that the trial production of silk was successful.

This is really a good thing. At least the Han tribe has another project that benefits the people. In the future, it will not only bring a large amount of output to the Han Dynasty, but also promote foreign trade. The most important thing is that it can also bring taxes to the Han regime and become an important item of fiscal revenue.

Luo Chong was invited to visit the silk weaving. After watching for a while, he was stunned. Since this was undyed raw silk, the silk made was naturally white. It looked like the white silk used for hanging in TV dramas. It was so exciting.

After observing for a while, in addition to silk, Luo Chong also found several places on the machine that needed improvement. Then he called the wooden barrel to tell him how to change it. Finally, it was modified and tried. Once the experiment was OK, it could be mass-produced.

But this is not very urgent. After all, it is still in the trial stage. Let's think more about how to optimize the equipment. It will take one or two years for the batch to form a scale.

In the following days, the Han tribe was building the four directions, and Luo Chong was honestly printing his books in Hanyang City. The big tree in Liuyang County also sent Luo Chong letters these days, reporting how many new people had come, how many acres of land these new people had reclaimed, and finally reporting the 100 acres of corn in Liuyang County, saying that the corn grew very well. Let's not talk about where the grain is. Just such big leaves and such long stems are perfect for feeding livestock. Unknowingly

, it was mid-October. The weather was getting colder and colder. Only at noon could it feel a little warm. The corn in Liuyang County was about to be harvested, but the corn was not growing well now. Although it was barely ripe, due to the lower and lower temperatures and the short planting time, the yield was naturally not good enough. Not to mention a good harvest, even the normal per-acre yield might not be achieved.

But it didn't matter. The grain in this season was planted in a hurry. It was better to harvest more grain than to let the land go barren.

At the same time, on the southwest coast, a dozen people were walking hard. They were wrapped in rough animal skins that were casually peeled off, and they might not even have been treated with saltpeter.

They were the caravan of the Xin tribe.

The caravan that once dominated the entire grassland and delivered sea salt to countless herdsmen.

The caravan that crossed the hidden road in the sea and brought countless livestock to Zhudao.

The caravan that brought countless grain seeds and tried to buy an ox cart from the Han tribe.

The caravan that was refused to trade and was destroyed by heavy cavalry.

The caravan that was chased by snow wolves on the way back. The caravan

that was so hungry that its eyes were dizzy and had to eat its mounts and walk thousands of miles to go home.

They looked like beggars, well, no, beggars were richer than them. This group of more than a dozen people had dull eyes and were crazy. They had experienced two pursuits and robberies, and there were wolves on the grassland. The team originally had 20 to 30 people, but they kept losing people on the way back. Everyone was about to collapse, but the obsession of going home was still holding them up. Finally, they saw the bamboo building standing by the sea, and then everyone cried.

Elder Shang was lying on a simple stretcher, and he had fallen into a coma. He was not young to begin with, and after experiencing a series of blows, he finally fell down.

A group of people entered the bamboo building and saw the supplies stored here, including dried meat, corn, and a pottery jar, which was used to cook food.

Coming to the bamboo building is like standing at the door of home, but it is still the middle of the month, and the reef bridge in the sea has not yet emerged, otherwise they can go home immediately, but the current situation is that they can only wait here until the end of October when the two months meet, when the tides fall and the sky road emerges.

But it's better this way. They were already exhausted, and there are still a lot of supplies here.   They might as well rest here for half a month.

Two days later, Elder Shang, who was unconscious before, finally woke up after being fed hot soup by the team members for two days.   "Ah! Damn Han tribe, why did you rob us? Why don't you let   us sell   salt? We just want to buy a car, why do you beat   us, wu   ...