Not only was Su Shi frightened, but Lu Yao was also frightened. He had not slept for several days before he became like this.
The old mason stepped forward and held Lu Yao's hand, and said excitedly: "My lord, I have finally completed the task you gave me. It's just that the characters you want to carve are too small. It's really not a human job.
My disciples and I only sleep two hours a day to barely meet your requirements."
Of course, the smaller the characters on the newspaper, the better. The smaller the characters, the more words can be printed on a newspaper. This is not a disguised cost saving. He did not expect that it would be so difficult to carve characters three millimeters square on stone.
Only when Lu Yao actually saw the real thing did he realize how serious this project was. If someone with trypophobia saw it, they would faint instantly.
A thousand small stone carvings are placed on a one-square-foot wooden board. There are ten such wooden boards in total, with a total of ten thousand characters.
Lu Yao sorted out 2,000 commonly used characters and carved five sets of them together. For frequently used characters such as '与,是,之', Lu Yao also requested that a hundred more characters be engraved.
This ensures that multiple workers can print at the same time.
Lu Yao is not worried about the sales of newspapers. This new type of product will definitely attract the attention of Bianliang literati. Sales will only increase, not less. When sales increase, Lu Yao will also ask to increase the number of movable type stone carvings.
The old stonemason not only carved these small characters, but also carved some large characters used as titles. The large characters were much easier to carve than the small characters. It took the old mason two days to almost finish carving, but it took five days to carve the small characters.
Lu Yao felt that the calibration symbols should be pushed out at this time.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, articles were written with many words and sentences, and each person had his or her own habit of segmenting sentences. This would lead to two people reading an article reading two completely different meanings. Lu Yao took out the punctuation marks and it was determined that every sentence was broken.
The meaning of the sentence will also save the long time of interpreting the meaning of the sentence when reading the newspaper.
In order to make up for the old stonemason's hard work, Lu Yao gave the old stonemason fifty more coins on top of the previously agreed wages.
The old stonemason who got the money smiled so much that his wrinkled face turned into a chrysanthemum shape.
If you want a horse to run, you have to feed it.
Besides, Lu Yao was not short of the fifty pieces. In the future, he would still have to find more old stonemasons to do the carving. He searched all over Bianliang City and found that the old stonemason was the best at carving. This was why Lu Yao looked for the old stonemason.
reason.
The two brothers Su Shi didn't know what Lu Yao was doing by carving so many small characters. In their impression, only seals could be engraved in such a large size, and printed books were all engravings.
Although engraving can make fonts more flexible, one engraving can only print one kind of book, which is quite expensive and does not have the convenience of movable type.
Lu Yao rented a carriage and took all the movable type to the printing factory.
When he saw the workers beating weeds, grass roots and branches into paste, Su Shi had already guessed what Lu Yao was going to take him to see.
Years ago, Lu Yao once told him that he would reduce the price of books to a very low level and would also produce the newspapers he mentioned. Unexpectedly, Lu Yao would move so quickly and start making paper before the first month of the year was even out.
The factory is ready.
Seeing that the workers could fish out a piece of white paper from the pool in just a few seconds, Su Shi became more and more excited, and the idea that everyone could read became more and more longing for him.
Of course Lu Yao didn't take Su Shi to see how to make paper, nor was he afraid that Su Shi would learn these techniques.
Firstly, Su Shi did not have such a large start-up capital, and secondly, the papermaking process was not complicated. Lu Yao would only improve on the raw materials. Although it is not a bad thing to be imitated by others, as long as more and more people make paper,
Then the price of paper on the market will become lower and lower.
After walking for about a stick of incense, Lu Yao finally brought Su Shi to the destination of the trip - the printing factory.
As soon as Lu Yao walked in, there were many people waiting for him.
When he returned to Bianliang yesterday, he told these people that he would come today and the printing factory would officially open from today.
There are not many workers in the printing factory, only about fifty people.
Printing and binding do not require literate people, but typesetting people must be readers.
It can be said that Lu Yao worked hard for these ten scholars.
In this era when everything is inferior and only education is high, few scholars will come to work in this kind of factory.
Lu Yao recruited these people with his affection, rationality and huge salary.
Five of them are scholars whose families are relatively poor. The salary given by Lu Yao will make their family's life better, and the other five are people who Lu Yao dragged and pulled from the Lu family.
Initially they were still resentful, but after Lu Yao explained the benefits of movable type printing, they readily accepted it.
The most important thing is that Lu Yao also said that if the price of books can be reduced to the point where people can buy them at will, they will definitely leave their name in history.
There is nothing more tempting than leaving a name in history.
Lu Yao asked these people to unload the stone movable type from the carriage, and then they sorted them into categories according to the different types of characters. This would make it much easier to find characters, as there would be no need to pick randomly among a bunch of characters, and the printing speed would be much faster.
.
The classification alone took a full hour of work, and of course Su Shi and Su Che also helped.
After all, workers who don't know how to read can't do this job.
Next is printing.
Lu Yao took out the Analects from Su Shi's home and tore them open page by page.
Seeing his book reduced to pieces, Su Shi felt a little distressed. Since it was Lu Yao who did it, he would definitely ask him to give him a new one as compensation.
Lu Yao placed different pages of the Analects in front of different people, and found these in wooden frames that had been prepared beforehand.
The inside of this wooden box is exactly the size of a piece of paper. One piece of paper can print seventy-five characters. Lu Yao had calculated it in advance. The old stonemason also carved the characters according to Lu Yao's request. Such a wooden box
The box allows the stone movable type to be placed inside without leaving any gaps.
The scholar who got the pages of the book tied a cloth bag around his waist to look for the words, put all the words behind the cloth bag at all times, then came to the wooden box and arranged them in order.
After arranging, they handed the wooden box with the words on it to the illiterate printer, who then looked for the words on the second page to arrange.
Workers rubbed a layer of ink on the movable type and then covered it with a book-sized piece of paper.
Then use a wooden roller wrapped with silk cloth to roll it four times on the white paper, and the text will be clearly engraved on the white paper.
Then set the white paper aside to dry.
At first, workers couldn't adapt to it, but as they became more skilled, the printing speed became faster and faster.
Under Su Shi's astonishment, a thousand volumes of the Analects of Confucius had been bound.
Only two hours have passed, and at least three thousand Analects of Confucius can be printed in one day.
If the printing house printed the Analects for half a year, then every household in the Song Dynasty would have a copy of the Analects.
The speed is so terrifying.
When Lu Yao came to Su Shi with a brand new Analects of Confucius, he was pulled out of his immersive mood.
Su Shi grabbed the Analects and read it carefully page by page.
Except for some slight flaws, the handwriting of each word is very clear and the font size is consistent. It is indescribably beautiful and it is very pleasing to the eye.
If these books were released to the market, those scholars who make a living by copying books would probably lose their jobs.
There is nothing Lu Yao can do about this kind of thing. The replacement of old and new people in the industry is necessary. It is impossible to give up this kind of thing that benefits all people for the benefit of some scholars.
Su Shi asked with a trembling voice: "I wonder how much Lu Erlang would charge for such a book of Analects?"
He looked at Lu Yao with burning eyes, hoping to get a figure he was satisfied with.
In the market, a book with more than 10,000 words like The Analects of Confucius will definitely sell for about 500 words.
It is difficult for poor people to buy a book with a year's savings. This is why there are so few scholars. Reading is too expensive.
A scholar who takes the scientific examination needs to study for at least ten years. Not to mention that the family has lost a labor force in the past ten years, and the cost of dozens of books alone makes it prohibitive for many people.
Twenty or thirty dollars is an astronomical number for an ordinary family.
Lu Yao raised two fingers, "The lowest price I can sell for this Analects of Confucius is twenty yuan per book. You also know the price of ink, and the labor I hired is not cheap. Plus the paper and store rent,
The cost has also reached eighteen cents, and I only earn two cents per copy, which is already very little."
"That's enough. A copy of The Analects of Confucius only sells for 20 liters. I don't know how many students cheered for it." Lu Yao's price was completely beyond his imagination.
In his opinion, it is not easy for Lu Yao to quote a price of one hundred or ninety cents, which is a full 80% less than the market price.
But Lu Yao only quoted a price of 20 cents. In the past, he could buy 25 books for the same price as one.
Twenty pennies is not much, and a poor family can save it in a few days. There is no need for the whole family to live frugally in order to train a scholar.
The time when everyone can read is not far away.
Su Shi held the Analects of Confucius in his hand tightly and bowed deeply to Lu Yao. Su Che next to him saluted Lu Yao at the same time. He couldn't imagine what kind of changes Lu Yao's papermaking and printing factory would bring to the whole world.
"On behalf of all the scholars and people, I would like to thank Lu Erlang for his great kindness."
Lu Yao quickly helped Su Shi up and said with a smile: "What's the big favor or not? I'm running a factory now and doing business. I just want to make money. As long as you can sell more books I print."
, allowing me to make money is the greatest thank you to me."
"No matter what you think, Erlang, as long as someone can read a cheap book, they will remember your kindness in their heart."
Lu Yao asked Su Shi to come over because there was another thing to do, and that was the article.
The first page of the newspaper does not have enough content. The two Tang and Song dynasties in front of me are good at writing articles. Let them write two articles at will, which will definitely add a lot of color to the newspaper.
After having the article, Lu Yao only needed to add the current events that happened in Bianliang City and two episodes of Dream of Red Mansions, and a two-page newspaper was almost ready.
Lu Yao is already looking forward to the boom in newspaper sales tomorrow.