Chapter 31 The Beauty of Machines
After Mr. Todd completely figured out Jing Yu's idea, he felt that he could make a prototype soon and then ignore the others. For Todd Scott, the primary goal was to build a prototype immediately.
After Jing Yu handled these things, he expressed his hope to visit the production situation of Herbert's factory. He was very curious about how big the gap between the factories in this era and the factories in his own era.
Accompanied by a foreman, Jing Yu visited how they produced differential extension machines from steel ingots. You should know that most factories in this era, except for the initial steel ingots and other materials that were not made by themselves, almost every other mechanical component was produced by themselves, which was very different from the subcontracting and processing in later generations.
As for Miss Herbert, she was not interested in production, and she completely believed in Todd Scott, and the factory workshop was not suitable for a lady.
When Jing Yu heard the foreman introduce their model, he thought that this era was not a strange thing, because the machines in each differential machine manufacturing factory had their own independent standards, so even machines with the same performance in the two factories could not be the same internal structure and parts, which would lead to the inability to use standardized and production lines for large-scale production.
Before Jing Yu arrived, he heard various low and sharp noises, which made people feel uncomfortable. There was no sign of protection in this era. Jing Yu saw in their factory that a huge steam engine was running with all his might. A young man in a black uniform was constantly shoveling coal into the boiler. The raging fire inside was heating the water in the boiler, and the steam generated "huffed" from reciprocating movement to circular motion.
The rotating flywheel drives the transmission shaft all the way to the sawing machine. The workers there wear protective clothing and use a high-speed rotating hacksaw to cut the cylindrical iron ingot into a disc of appropriate thickness, then clamp it on another lathe equipment, and pass it into a suitable shape through the car, then drill it into a special machine, and then carve the gear grooves with a gear hobbing machine. The whole process is cumbersome and time-consuming.
When the gear is produced, it must be tested and confirmed whether it meets the requirements. The error is within the allowable range. A differential machine that calculates ten-digit digit calculations requires at least two or three thousand parts, most of which are parts such as gears and transmission shafts.
Moreover, the gear sizes used by each model of machine are completely different, so there are many gear sizes and gear ratios required to be produced here.
When the parts here are produced, they will be packed and transferred to the warehouse according to their purpose.
In the assembly workshop, there is no such noise. Most of the sound of the steam engine and the sound of the gear cutting and polishing are blocked by the wall. The workers here need to place gears of different sizes in the correct position according to the drawings, and in the order of front and back, because if the work here is wrong, it may not be visible at the time, but when the machine is running, calculation errors or the jams cannot be run, so the workers need to repeatedly confirm before installing them carefully.
Therefore, the assembly speed is very slow. A large machine requires at least half a year to complete the assembly and commissioning work. Therefore, not only the Herbert factory, but the output of other differential machine factories is not very high, but the market for such things is not large.
Few people can afford such expensive machines. You should know that these machines are filled with a series of complex parts such as gears, connecting rods, paddles, eccentric wheels, but they are often assembled thousands or even tens of thousands of parts, and the cost is not low at all.
He saw that there were assembled machines next to them, with different sizes, because the number lengths and calculation methods that those machines could calculate were not working. The Herbert factory produced a total of three models of machines.
The smallest one is only as big as a small household A4 printer, just shake it with one hand; the other one is to perform more complex equation solving operations, and the volume is similar to a desk. If you want it to work, you need to hold the shaker with both hands to rotate it.
The largest machine is as big as a car. Such a large machine can calculate multiple equations of twenty-digit length numbers, and can save more than a dozen variables during the calculation process. Of course, such a large machine has so many gears that cannot be rotated by humans at all. Jing Yu knew that these machines will be connected to the transmission shaft of the steam engine and drive internal mechanical rotation.
It is not easy to operate this kind of machine. Jing Yu found that they had several arm-long handles on the large differential machine they tested, that is, a series of joysticks. According to the foreman, it was to choose the operation control mode. People in their own world easily pressed the switch button of the calculator, and someone needed to pull the handles with force.
As for the selection of digital input and calculation methods, it is through the card.
Jing Yu saw the test worker take out several different punch cards from a wooden box, pull the handle, put a card in an open opening, and then pull the handle again, the machine began to run "bang rumbling". The gears inside kept moving up and down, running clockwise and counterclockwise. After a while, the machine ran for several minutes and finally stopped. At this time, the test worker pulled another handle and took out the punch card that had just been stuffed in.
Jing Yu looked at the punch card curiously. The structure above was very simple. There were several tables on the cardboard sheet. Each one had 0-9 numbers on one side and top to form a 10*10 table. For example, to represent a 12345, you could punch a hole in the first position ‘1’, and another one in the second position ‘2’, and so on, and finally the number ‘12345’ was formed.
There are operation symbols next to the number. For example, if you want to perform addition operations, you can make a hole in the addition symbol position in the symbol table, which means you want to add the above number.
Then continue to select ‘54321’ in another number table, which ultimately means that the machine can calculate the result of ‘1234554321’.
As for the results, they are also expressed in the form of punching. There is an answer area table on the punching card, where there are no holes at the beginning, but when the machine operation is completed, the result holes will be punched on it to display.
This is the simplest mechanical operation. If more complex functions are involved, a more complex punch card is required. However, unless all machines are of the same model produced by the same factory, punch card is not universal at all.
However, for a liberal arts student like Jing Yu, he was completely shocked to see such complex machinery running and calculations. The beauty of this complex mechanical operation is far beyond the movement of a mechanical watch through the transparent bottom. At least he could roughly know the working principle before the watch was pawned. However, these machines made him feel that his IQ was not enough and he could not understand what kind of brain such a complex machine could be designed. In comparison, the mechanical structure of his typewriter was not worth mentioning at all.
However, in this way, Jing Yu had no worries about the production of his typewriter. A factory that could be built with such a complex machine was just like a factory that made a car engine intends to produce several bicycles, even without special equipment, there would be no problems.
Chapter completed!