From Chief to Ball

After hammering, all kinds of materials have been completely sticky, and with a little force, they can be made into paste, and then the raw pulp of these papers is poured into the pool dug near the lake.

Use the previously woven bamboo curtain to scoop up the water mixed with the pulp. The water will emerge from the bamboo curtain, and the pulp raw materials will stick to each other and will not leak out, so they will condense into a layer underneath.

This is the most critical place, and the only place that requires a large number of craftsmen.If it is too thick, the paper will be thick; if it is too thin, the paper will be thin and brittle.Women can also do the fishing process, so Chen Jian used women and a small number of men.

After wasting a lot of paper pulp and finally mastering how much to scoop up, the bamboo curtain was turned over, and a piece of newly formed paper fell on the wooden board.After laying it layer by layer, put wooden planks on top, and press heavy objects such as stones to squeeze out the moisture inside.

After the water is squeezed out, the paper is carefully torn off bit by bit, and hung on the wall of the drying room. The wall is hollow, and a fire is lit inside to dry the paper.

It was the end of May when the first batch of molded paper was made. It was very rough and a little yellowish in color, but due to sufficient soaking and a long period of time, the color was still slightly white.Yellowing is unless better materials are used, but the cost will increase. Chen Jian once thought that if he tried to use a pottery tube to pass burning sulfur into the pulp to produce sulfur dioxide for bleaching, he did not try it because it would increase the cost.

This is a major event that he had ordered earlier, so Li Heyi carefully took the fragile-looking paper, sandwiched it with wooden boards, and went over the protection of two layers of personal guards to the newly built foundry workshop to tell Chen Jian this. good news.

After entering, I heard the sound of clanging and smashing iron in the distance. A group of people smashed the precious iron that can be exchanged for many things with a sledgehammer in a group. After practicing burning the iron red, smash it hard, smash it flat, roll it up and smash it again, and it goes back and forth.

In the distance, Li Heyi saw that Chen Jian was bare-chested. It was already June, and it was already hot. Coupled with the various small stoves and furs nearby, it made the place even more astonishingly hot.

Several people were drinking water there, and someone was adding salt to the water. From a distance, Li Heyi heard Chen Jian shouting something.

"We have to change this model again. I thought about it. The back is a little thicker, because the gunpowder is fried in the back, and the thicker ones are not easy to be broken. This will not work. This is for our own use, not as a gift. Yes, you have to do better."

"After the positive mold is finished, apply a layer of beeswax on the outside, and then use clay to mold the outer mold little by little on the outside of the beeswax, bake it to separate the inside and outside, and buckle the core. It should be almost the same. But you can only wait. Let the clay dry a little bit, don't worry, it will take two or three months."

Li Heyi took a look and found that surrounded by several departments that were previously called "buds" and belonged directly to the leader, they were considered to be the best batch of craftsmen in the entire Xia Kingdom system. Chen Jian led them to experience Liuli at the beginning. seen when.

Those people held a step-long log in their hands, with some straw rope and twine tightly wrapped around it, which seemed to be very thick, and a few people were carefully applying some clay mud on it, and it seemed that they were going to wait until Let dry naturally.

The wooden straw rope covered with clay was thin in the front and thick in the back, with a strange appearance, and there were several similar things that had been air-dried for several layers not far away.

Nearby is a clay cylinder about one step long, about two inches in size, and it has been completely dried. There is a strong and large clay cap on it. It seems that it is going to be fastened to something. It has been carefully carved. over the incision.

Li Heyi felt that this was obviously a mold of something, and after it was cast, it should have the weird appearance of being wrapped with straw rope and clay, which is thin at the front and thick at the back, but the inside is hollow, because the clay cylinder is obviously buckled inside. Wake up.

After looking at it for a few more times, I felt that I couldn't understand it, so I quietly walked to Chen Jian's side, and carefully handed the yellowed rough paper where sawdust could be seen to Chen Jian's hand.

Even though Chen Jian was mentally prepared, he knew that the paper should be ready in a few days.

But when this piece of yellowed and rough paper appeared in front of him, he was still stunned, not daring to ask for more, and carefully held the piece of paper in his hand, full of affection.

Chapter 1 Let the bird fly

Rolling up this piece of paper, I explained a few more words to those craftsmen, got dressed and returned to the place where I was handling government affairs with Li Heyi.

It is said to be a piece of paper, but it is actually quite large.The bamboo curtain used to scoop up paper cannot be as big as a book, it would take too much work, so this piece of paper is more than two feet wide.

Chen Jian studied some ink, picked up a brush and tried to write a few words. Although it was ugly, he could finally feel the feeling of writing with a penny. He didn't have to write the characters as small as possible to fit the not-so-large bamboo slips like before. .

The pine ink left thick ink stains on the rough paper. The quality of the paper is acceptable, and it has the basic function of writing.

No matter how bad paper is, it is still paper. The appearance of paper means that the possibility of culture and knowledge being monopolized by the aristocratic class has disappeared.Whether it is parchment or wooden slips, it is either expensive or troublesome. It is bound to be troublesome to spread culture, and the acquisition of knowledge has a great relationship with one's financial resources.

Now Xia Guo is still small, once it expands, an official may have to read a few wooden briefs every day, but if it is replaced by paper, it may only be a dozen.

Coupled with the education system that Chen Jian wants to establish with the lowest level of literacy and counting, it is impossible to support thousands of children in the future with wooden slips.

Without paper, it is inevitable that some things will only circulate in certain small circles.Whether it is the explanation of theocracy or the dissemination of some technologies, they can only be limited to a small area, and ignorance may really rule for thousands of years without changing.

For this kind of invention of the previous generation, no matter what kind of praise, it is the foundation for the bottom to become a human, and most of the time before it was just a livestock.

The papermaking workshop must be perfected as soon as possible, but how many people need to be sent?What is the annual output?This again requires a plan to be worked out.Too much is a waste of manpower, but too little is not enough.

"Why, not counting the beating and boiling before, how many sheets of this kind of paper can one person get in a day?"

Li Heyi shook his head and said: "It's not too fast. One person can get [-] or [-] pieces a day, right? But it's getting faster gradually. Now the main thing is that you don't know how much you get when you get it. This thing can't be measured, it can only be a little bit." It depends on people to get familiar with it. I estimate that if you can get success every time, you can get about three or four hundred pieces a day, and it will be impossible sooner.”

Chen Jian snorted, and looked at the large piece of paper in front of him. If it was cut into sixteen pieces, it would be about the size of a book, maybe a little bigger.

I wrote a few words on the paper, took out the seal and stamped it, and handed it to Li Heyi, saying: "Send it to the Planning and Statistics Department, cut this paper into [-] pieces, and use it as a model. Tell them, count one Numbers. According to the children in the registered school plus sixty sheets of paper per year in textbooks, and then let the construction department report the number of new house windows this year, officials at all levels need to record, and some extra paper will be left.”

"After the statistics are finished, bring them to me for review. Tell them, this is the first time they plan something alone, make it beautiful, and remind me of any problems I haven't considered."

I thought about calculating the result by myself, but after thinking about it, I decided to let others do it. A bird should sharpen its wings slowly when it grows up.

Li Heyi took the stamped paper, which was the stamp of the Planning and Statistics Department, which belonged to Chen Jian's dictatorial department.

"Sir, don't you need to consider other cities to buy these papers?"

"Don't think about it for the time being. I can't write, so why buy paper? Go ahead, I'm going to Sucheng in a few days, let them calculate a result as soon as possible."

Li Heyi bid farewell to leave, took the piece of paper that replaced the previous writing with cloth, and came to the busy Planning and Statistics Department. More than 20 people were lying on the small wooden table, and some people kept getting up to go to the pile of wooden slips piled up next to them. Take out a roll.

The people inside were familiar with Li Heyi, they greeted him when he came in, and continued to be busy with their own affairs.

"This is the order Ji Xia asked me to bring..."

He briefly explained Chen Jian's request, and a group of people stopped what they were doing and surrounded them. They looked at the piece of writing paper and then at the wooden slip in their hands, and couldn't help but ask: "This is paper? Is it something from the new workshop?"

Several people looked at the ink that hadn't completely dried on it, felt the light weight in their hands, and were surprised.

They knew that a new workshop was being built by the lake, and they had heard of the name paper in advance, so they were very curious and walked around the workshop a few times during the ten-day break.

But after looking at it for a long time, I was disappointed again. I only saw all kinds of grass and wood being soaked and beaten into pulp. I really couldn't figure out how this thing could produce the kind of thing that Jixia said could write and paste windows.

They imagined what paper looked like, but never imagined it would look like this.

"Hey, that's great, we don't need to use wooden slips anymore. As long as we have paper, it's enough."

"Yeah, the wooden slips are too troublesome and heavy. It's not easy to find something."

Li Heyi smiled and said: "Yes, sir also said that in the future, we will use paper instead of wooden bamboo slips. That's why sir asked you to calculate the number of plans, so that you can get the manpower as soon as possible. It can't be too many, it will affect other things "It can't be too little, it's not enough."

The group asked nervously, "Jixia really doesn't care? Let us handle everything?"

"Yeah, it shouldn't be difficult, right?"

Li Heyi had never done such a thing before, but he only knew about it. He asked casually, but the person next to him sighed and said, "Isn't it difficult? It's really not difficult to count how many people there are, but the difficult thing is It’s difficult to estimate in advance how much these people will use.”

"Don't say that we officials are used for writing, and it is not used for pasting windows. It is only used by school children. This is a headache. Children need textbooks, and this paper can last for many years like wood. ? Or is it broken in a year or two? Even if it is not broken, it may be broken if you read it frequently."

"In addition to textbooks, the number of children who need to enter the Kaimeng Academy will suddenly increase from next year. After the establishment of our Xia City, more people were born and fewer died, and more people survived. Now those children have grown up. Now it is In Xia Guo, there are [-] to [-] men and women all of a sudden, and Ji Xia ordered that all children in five or six years must go to the Kaimeng School, and there will definitely be a large number of them by then."

"The workshop is easy to build, but the materials that need to be prepared in advance, the skilled workshop workers... that can't be done in a month. When those children go to school, they don't even have enough paper. Then we will be stupid Well, the kids are going to scold us."

"But if there are too many workshops, and it affects farming and other things, the paper is enough, but not so many people use it, so it won't work... Apart from our Xia Kingdom, no one else uses it. , This is not a copper and iron weapon, and paper can’t be exchanged for anything.”

Li Heyi nodded, understood somewhat, and sighed: "It's just a piece of paper, and we can see the difference between our Xia Kingdom. If you want to come to other cities, you won't spend money and people to build these things."

The man hummed: "It's always good to build. I just hope that those children understand how hard it is to get these papers. Don't play casually in the school, wasting the taxes paid by tens of thousands of people and everyone's money in the workshop." work."