The most important equipment in the printing house is the high-speed mimeograph machine. As for the several Epson 24-pin printers, they were also very important in the early days - many wax paper printings used to be done with these printers, and later on, the first printing machine was trained.
After a group of female typists, the Chinese typewriters they brought finally came into play, and Zhou Dongtian basically relied on the Chinese typewriters to type wax paper.
Now, the Chinese typewriters brought from the old time and space have been cleaned and sealed together with several other dot matrix, inkjet and laser printers in better condition as stc-original standard equipment templates. They have been replaced by a few silly big black ones.
A thick local Chinese typewriter. Several female typists were working hard in front of the bright windows, and the sound of the typing head hitting the type plate echoed in the room.
In the next room, around a large table, some people are carving steel plates with stylus pens, and some are proofreading the proofs that have just been printed. Everyone is very busy - the printing factory is very busy in the Chuanchuan Group, not only
Responsible for the printing of thousands of copies of the two issues of "Lingao Times" every week, as well as the printing of a large number of textbooks, technical pamphlets, various manuals and countless documents. The task is very heavy. In addition to mimeograph machines, there are also imitation machines
Several hand-operated mimeograph machines are used for small-scale printing. Several workers are shaking the machines.
Here, the engraving workshop occupies the largest area. Zhou Dongtian went in and took a look. When these workshops were first built, great efforts were made in lighting. Chuan Chuan Group could not provide enough artificial light sources for workers, so it had to try to make the best use of daylight. Regarding lighting,
A lot of thought was put into the design. Not only are the windows in the workshop large, but most of the workshops also have skylights. Blinds and curtains are used to adjust the light and make it as soft as possible.
There were several old engravers sitting in front of the window, wearing their assigned reading glasses and concentrating on engraving printing plates. Engraving plates are mainly used to print various bills, blank documents, certificates and the like.
Lingao's currency - grain circulation coupons and other securities - are also printed here. Therefore, the engraving and printing workshop is particularly important. It is guarded by a dedicated person during work. All engraving plates, paper and ink must be counted and put back before get off work. In a dedicated warehouse.
The management system here is very strict. Not only are the engraving production, modifications and discards recorded, but there is also a registration system for each printing. It is clear for every printed sheet.
Zhou Dongtian went to the mimeograph machine workshop to find Tan Ming - this man was one of the few people in time travel who had ever operated a printing press, and he could also separate colors - but he was not used locally.
The high-speed mimeograph machine is placed in a separate workshop and locked when not in use. Zhou Dongtian originally brought a large number of spare parts and ink for it. It is estimated that it can be used for about seven or eight years if used more frugally. In order to serve this baby every time
When opening the seal, it was all done by the elders themselves, with only a few indigenous apprentices doing the work.
Tan Ming is washing his hands. He has just finished processing the latest order. It is the Ming Dynasty Mandarin Dictionary compiled by the Grand Library. The executive committee placed an order for one hundred copies.
Because Zhou Dongtian has too many part-time jobs, Tan Ming is now mainly responsible for the technical work of the printing house. Zhou Dongtian talked with him about setting up a printing house.
"I've never seen a movable type factory like the one you're talking about." Tan Ming shook his head, "I've operated an offset press and done laser typesetting. But I really don't understand the job of using lead movable type."
"It's not necessary for you to do it yourself." Zhou Dongtian said, "But my main focus in the future will be on the movable type printing factory. You can just take care of the printing office. I wrote a letter to the Organization Office, suggesting that the appointment be
You will be the director of Bairen Printing Factory. It will probably take a few days for you to be officially appointed."
"Of course...thank you..." Tan Ming said incoherently.
"You're welcome, you're the one who does what you do here! Besides, it's just a part-time job here." Zhou Dongtian waved his hand, "It's almost the same as not being a factory director. The key is that you have a name so that you can do things easily."
Zhou Dongtian explained various matters to him one by one in the office. Tan Ming seemed a little unsure. He suddenly had to be responsible for everything, which made him feel a little scared.
Zhou Dongtian finished his work and hurried to the Ministry of Industry to discuss equipment issues.
Movable type printing sounds very modern, but it is almost invisible in the modern printing industry. Even small printing plants no longer use it. Zhou Dongtian has been in contact with movable type printing plants in the past and has some knowledge of this system.
Movable type printing is of course much more efficient than block printing. However, in a traditional society with no industrial foundation, its cost is much higher than that of block printing. The technology is also much more difficult. This is why movable type printing has not been popularized in China.
The reason. There have been only a few large-scale movable type printing of books in Chinese history, and they were all officially organized. Private movable type printing has always been used in small-scale, simple and low-level printing. It is rarely used to print books.
Of course Zhou Dongtian knows this reason. First of all, casting movable type is a technical job, and printing a book requires a large amount of movable type, which must be made in advance. The materials of movable type are very particular. Bi Sheng made pottery movable type, which is the least difficult to manufacture.
The cost is minimal. Therefore, pottery movable type was still useful in the 19th century. Diplomas in various places were printed with pottery movable type. Because the adhesion of the printing ink was not good, the printed documents were blurred.
Official documents printed in the Qing Dynasty used copper movable type, and the printing effect was good. However, the cost of copper movable type was high - only the royal family could afford it. The value of copper itself made the emperor unable to resist the idea of copper movable type. Wuying Palace of the Qing Dynasty
The surviving copper movable type was transformed into royal furnishings during the reign of Emperor Qianlong.
Printing craftsmen also tried to use other materials to make movable type, including wooden movable type and tin movable type. The results were not good. The requirements for movable type are very high. They must be wear-resistant, not too hard, and be able to adhere to ink well.
The price must be cheap and can be used in large quantities. Only lead can meet this requirement. However, the effect of simple lead type is still not ideal, and antimony must be added.
Another problem with movable type printing is ink, which has never been solved in the traditional Chinese printing industry - traditional woodblock printing uses water-based ink - water-soluble ink with smoked ink as pigment. Water-soluble ink is used on wooden
It can perform very well on engraving, but it can easily turn into ink beads on metal movable type. And it cannot be transferred through simple imprinting like engraving printing. Rubbing is a very slow process, in order to ensure that it can be effective
For printing, you must also use highly absorbent paper. As a result, there will be ink marks on the back of the paper, making it impossible to print on both sides, which virtually increases the cost of printing.
These factors combined have resulted in movable type printing never being the mainstream of the printing industry in China.
New technologies and new concepts cannot become productive forces until suitable technical means are found. After Zhou Dongtian learned a little about the development history of printing out of interest, he had this emotion - Chinese people have proposed countless ideas ahead of the times in history. New technologies and new concepts have emerged, but many of them have remained in their primitive stages: the pottery movable type workshops that printed newspapers in various places in the mid-19th century were no different from Bi Sheng's era.
Zhou Dongtian knew that in order to use metal movable type, he had to first solve the problem of large-scale self-production of printing ink - he remembered that the key was to use oil-based ink, that is, to use oil to mix the printing ink.
According to the technical information, boiled linseed oil is the best. It has excellent adhesion and is easy to dry. Therefore, it is still used to prepare oil paints. However, Zhou Dongtian went to the Planning Institute once. I checked all the material catalog lists. Inventory and production availability, there is no such thing as flax oil in the purchased materials. As for other vegetable oils, including rapeseed oil, castor oil, coconut oil, and peanut oil, they are not suitable.
"I want linseed oil." He went to Fa Shilu of the Agricultural Committee. As the chief agronomist, he should have some ideas. "I know there is no linseed oil in Lingao, but you can definitely think of some substitute oil that can be produced locally."
"Cannabis oil." It only took Fa Shilu thirty seconds to give him the answer, "There is cannabis in Lingao - to be honest, there are not many places without cannabis. But we have not grown it - the Li people should have grown it. "Last time, the trade team in Li District brought back hemp rope and coarse cloth."
So Zhou Dongtian went to the Planning Institute again. But there was no such thing in the Planning Institute's inventory - cannabis oil has a slight hallucinogenic effect after consumption and cannot be eaten. The local cannabis has not been grown on a large scale, so the Planning Institute did not care about collecting it at all. .
Under his relentless pursuit, Wu De couldn't stand it anymore and finally agreed to put the collection of hemp seeds on his urgent agenda.
"I will ask the remote exploration team and the trading department to collect it as soon as possible." Wu De said, "But I don't know if the cannabis will be knotted - you have to have a schedule, you can't just say you want it..."
"Then the executive committee should not suddenly issue instructions to expand exports."
"Okay, okay, it's our fault." Wu De said helplessly, "The key point is that it's too weird for you to get this thing. I still have hemp fiber in stock. No one has ever thought about the seeds."
After solving the ink problem, Zhou Dongtian went to the machinery factory and directly found Zhan Wuya. He asked him to gather all the people who participated in the last time he made Chinese typewriters - these people had made the type on the typepad last time, so they were considered to have some experience. Experienced.
Lead type needs to be manufactured in large quantities, and the simplest and cheapest mass manufacturing method is of course casting. The specific method is to use hard metal, such as steel, and have an engraver carve a reverse convex character - a male mold, and then use a positive mold The mold punches out a female mold on soft brass. Then lead water is poured into the female mold to cast the characters.
This is just a simple principle. In fact, there is a series of detailed processes: the type must be of the same size, and the type base parts must be able to match each other completely so that they can be arranged neatly on the typesetting board. This requires special process equipment to ensure, and also
There are specialized type repair workers for grinding and grinding. Since the amount of lead type used is very large, casting lead type must be a continuous large-scale work, and the type mold must have a special process for rapid demoulding... The complete set of type casting technology starts from
Starting from the 15th century, it was gradually improved and perfected, and by the 18th century it had reached a very high level.
Zhou Dongtian plans to build on the existing industrial standards of Chuan Chuan Group and manufacture equipment according to the printing factory standards of the 18th century.
Several technicians gathered around the technical materials copied by Zhou Dongtian from the big library, and reviewed them. Obviously, to mass-produce lead type, it is not enough to carve a steel mold for each character. This thing wears out very quickly, and the steel molds must be constantly replenished.
That's it. This puts everyone in a bit of trouble: engraving steel lettering is a very boring thing, quite boring.
"I remember that the number of commonly used characters is eight hundred. If you want to print, you still need to prepare three thousand characters." Jiang Ye calculated, "Each character requires an average of four or five steel molds. Just make steel molds.
It would take tens of thousands of them. This would last for years and months."
"More than that." Sun Li shook his head, "The printed book must use both simplified and traditional Chinese characters. Adding the two together, the number of characters used must be at least five to six thousand. Moreover, there are many rare characters in ancient books, and these rare characters must also be created.
Two steel molds are ready."
"Carvers can recruit engraving masters, who are engravers themselves," Zhou Dongtian said.
"But this efficiency is very low." Sun Li looked at it for a long time and said, "I don't know how many lettering molds an engraver can carve out in a day, but the efficiency will not be too high, and the casting of the stamped concave mold must be done manually.
――You also need to add the work of demoulding and filing. If it is all done by hand, it may not be reliable to be able to form printing capabilities in three or four months." He asked: "How does a modern movable type printing factory operate?
have to?"
"There is a special all-in-one casting and typesetting machine. Type casting, typesetting, and typesetting are all done automatically and can be operated by one person. Of course, electricity or steam must be used." Zhou Dongtian said and took out a few drawings, "But this machine
It's quite complex, almost at the level of the early 20th century."
What he took out was the Linotype typecasting machine invented by the Americans. This machine was used from 1890 to 1940. Although it was mainly used to print newspapers and magazines, it was also widely used to print books in the United States.
A few of them studied together for a long time.
"There is no problem with imitating the machine, but the structural strength and tolerance of the material are difficult to control. This machine is quite precise." Xiao Gui said, "It can be made, but the quality cannot be guaranteed."
"What I mean is to make things simple first and then make them difficult. The integrated casting and rowing machine is difficult to manufacture, so we should build it later. First sacrifice efficiency and use simple processes." Sun Li said, "Industrial upgrading is not a matter of one or two days."
"I have an idea," said Liang Xin, who had been silent. "Let's think about it the other way around - we have precise stamping technology that people in this era don't have. We might as well use stamping to make typefaces."
His idea was to use high-strength steel to make a concave mold, and then use the concave mold as a punching head to directly punch a lead plate of a certain thickness, and punch the lead characters directly from the lead plate.
"In this way, we can save the casting process, and one stamping die can produce hundreds of words at a time. The efficiency is much higher." Liang Xin said, "The stamped workpiece also requires much less post-processing work. It doesn't require so much
Repair file."
"Then you have to make thousands of stamping dies." Jiang Ye frowned, "Besides, you used high-strength steel to make the concave mold. What material did you use to make the punch? Do you want the engraving workers to directly carve the high-strength steel?"
"I think it's possible. This is what they eat. Even diamonds, jade and glass can be carved. Why can't steel be carved?" Liang Xin said, "It just seems a little too late in terms of speed. Or just use a machining center to make the lettering molds."
"Your idea is good, but it doesn't work." Zhou Dongtian shook his head, "The characters you write out like this are just one character. Without a character base, it is impossible to arrange them neatly on the typesetting board. And there are no characters with side radicals on the base.
what to do?"
Liang Xin scratched his head in disappointment. He didn't expect this question.
"If speed is required, the first batch of embossing molds can be made directly using a machining center. A few days of work is enough." Sun Li said, "It only takes one stage, and then the engravers can gradually become familiar with it."
."
"It's a pity that we are too far away from Europe," Zhou Dongtian said. "The Dutch already have professional letter casting workshops that can produce various standardized letters and symbols for use by printing plants."
"The Dutch are making letters. Is it okay to ask them to make Chinese characters?" Jiang Ye touched his chin, "Why don't we talk to the executive committee and recruit a group of Dutch lettersmiths - we just don't have enough time."
"It should be possible, he just thinks of it as doing graphics." Zhou Dongtian said with regret, "But it's such a long distance, even if we send people to wait for them to arrive in Lingao now, it will be at least two years later."
Sun Li said: "Aren't the Dutch in Batavia? Since the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company is there, they have to print something, right? There must be a printing workshop. According to you, character casting must be done all the time.
Yes, there must be a few typewriters. Why don’t we kidnap them and bring them back with their equipment, and lock them up to help us print.”
"I always feel that this method is too backward." Jiang Ye looked at it for a long time, "There should be a simple method - we must know that we are standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, and with so many inventions and creations, we can always choose the right one.
Come on, let’s think about the craftsmanship again.”
"The sooner this is done, the better." Zhou Dongtian said. If he could recruit skilled typewriters, it would be much better than a half-hearted person like himself who trained the workers himself. After all, he had only seen how to type and print. He really wanted to
I still feel a little confused when I ask myself to guide the work from start to finish.
Zhou Dongtian continued his departmental travel and official document applications. He found the Ministry of Colonization and Trade and submitted documents about going to Batavia to recruit Dutch printing workers. The document emphasized that whether it was forced or voluntary, anyway,
It would be good if we can bring people here. It would be best if we can bring equipment together.
Si Kaide was organizing a trade expedition team to Southeast Asia. Zhou Dongtian's request was incidental, and he immediately agreed. He said that as long as there are local people, he will do everything possible to get them.