The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 95 From Telegraph to Telephone
The simplest telegraph has a hardware system that is extremely streamlined, and may only have a flexible switch left.

The biggest difficulty in inventing the telegraph was actually making the coding table.

Convert text and symbol information into a series of long and short electrical signals.

There are only 26 Latin letters, and encoding them is basically not difficult, requiring only 5 long and short signals.

However, there are thousands of commonly used Chinese characters. How to send Chinese characters easily and quickly requires the development of a more complex code table.

The craftsmen were experienced and the students were talented. The eight groups of craftsmen and students discussed with each other and soon came up with several plans.

After the eight groups came together to discuss, they eliminated several less reasonable plans on their own.

Finally, there were two options presented to Zhu Jianxuan.

The first option uses groups of thirteen long and short signals, which are arranged and combined to form 8192 numbers.

This code table can accommodate eight thousand commonly used Chinese characters, plus all Latin letters and various special symbols.

The second option is to use a group of four long and short signals to represent a number.

Then use four numbers to combine to represent a Chinese character.

Zhu Jianxuan’s students generally support the first option, believing that this option has the highest overall efficiency.

They think the second option is a waste of keystrokes.

They have to use sixteen keystrokes to accomplish what could have been accomplished with thirteen keystrokes.

Most craftsmen support the second option, believing that it is easier to implement and more convenient for practical operation.

After reading it, Zhu Jianxuan asked the students directly:

"Can you remember the thirteen long and short symbols at a glance, and arrange them in the correct order?"

All the students immediately said that they could definitely do it.

It really does look easy.

Faced with this answer, Zhu Jianxuan suddenly felt a little helpless.

There may be hundreds of thousands of students in Yingtian Prefecture and the surrounding prefectures and counties, and at least hundreds of thousands of primary and secondary school students.

The Ministry of Rites first selected 10,000 students with outstanding performance based on their school mathematics scores from a total of more than 100,000 people to take part in its own apprenticeship examination.

I then selected thirty-two children with the best performance in mathematics from these ten thousand children with excellent academic performance.

Therefore, if these 32 students of his were placed in their original schools, they would definitely all be top math geniuses.

They think it is normal to memorize thirteen digits in seconds.

Zhu Jianxuan thinks that sometimes it is not a good thing for students to be too smart.

They don't realize that when ordinary people see thirteen characters, they have to divide them into at least three parts to remember.

Zhu Jianxuan could only guide them to think from their perspective:
"When you were in school, you should have realized that the classmates around you were basically not as smart as you, right?
"Then, think about your former classmates. Can they remember the thirteen symbols at a glance?"

The students hesitated for a moment, then began to shake their heads:

"Probably not."

"Of course those idiots can't do that..."

“Not many people can do that.”

Zhu Jianxuan continued to guide:
"Our telegraph sending equipment will not only be used by geniuses like you in the future.

“It is also for ordinary soldiers in the army and ordinary apprentices in the business.

"If we want to make sure that all these people can use it normally, isn't it too much to ask to see all thirteen at a glance?"

I can only say that they are indeed the smartest kids and they quickly understood what Zhu Jianxuan wanted to remind them.

"Then our plan is indeed a bit difficult."

"Master, you are right. I forgot to consider those classmates."

"Then let's use the plan of the master craftsmen."

“Although it wastes space on the code table, but if you can memorize four numbers at a time, even a fool can use it.”

Zhu Jianxuan smiled and reminded them of the engineering problem:

“So in the future, when everyone’s research results come out and they are ready to transform theoretical results into physical objects, they must consider their feasibility among ordinary people.

“Only when ordinary people can use it can it become a widely popular hot product and an important tool for national and industry development.

“If only geniuses can learn to use an invention, it can only become a niche toy or work of art.”

After hearing Zhu Jianxuan's teaching, a group of smart children immediately agreed seriously:

"Follow Master's teachings."

Zhu Jianxuan smiled and nodded, then continued to guide them to think:
“But on the other hand, if we are at the research level, we still need to consider maximizing efficiency.

“You can now think about how to make use of the wasted space of the four-bit signal, and make use of it in extreme cases.

"There should actually be 65536 numbers for four groups of four-digit symbol codes, right?

"Because a set of four-bit long and short signals can form sixteen different combinations..."

Sure enough, a student soon figured it out. Li Rui, who had been asked a question by Zhu Jianxuan before, was the first to raise his hand and say:

"Master, I think that this kind of coding is essentially to create small grids and then put things in the grids.

“So from the eleventh to the sixteenth square, it’s just that you can’t use numbers from one to ten to represent them, but in fact the squares themselves are used to hold things.

“We can draw boxes on the coding table and write eleven to sixteen inside them and treat it as a number.

"When you send, you'll see the squares and know how to press the buttons."

Zhu Jianxuan smiled and reminded:
"Do you know that before the Chongzhen period, one catty among the common people was actually sixteen taels, which is equivalent to hexadecimal.

"In the decimal system, you carry when you reach ten, and in the hexadecimal system, you carry when you reach sixteen.

“When we write Chinese characters, we can use the Heavenly Stems to represent ten to sixteen.

“When using Chongzhen numerals, Latin letters can be used to represent ten to sixteen.

"This makes it easy to mark hexadecimal numbers."

After Zhu Jianxuan gave some guidance, the students immediately understood that this was the point of changing a carry.

By simply changing the carry method, all the extra encoding space can be utilized.

The Chongzhen numerals are the Arabic numerals of Zhu Jianxuan’s previous life.

Anyway, it was not invented by the Arabs. Chongzhen named it after his status as emperor.

Emperor Chongzhen personally guided the way and used the numbers he invented, Latin letters, and a hard pen to perform mathematical calculations.

At the same time, the Latin alphabet was used to create the phonetic notation of Chinese characters. The Latin alphabet is actually not the English alphabet, and it should be said that the English alphabet does not exist in the world.

It's just that European countries, including the British, generally borrowed the Latin alphabet from the Romans to record and write their own languages.

Just like the ancient neighboring countries of Shenzhou, they also often used Chinese characters to write their own languages.

Latin, like classical Chinese, has no punctuation marks.

European countries don't accuse each other of stealing their words.

Because everyone is "borrowing".

The most crucial reason is that the real owner of this letter has died.

However, the upper classes in European countries are still proud of being able to use the Latin language left by Rome.

Just like Koreans and Japanese are proud of being able to use Chinese characters directly.

However, the Latin alphabet is not original either, but comes from the Greek alphabet, which in turn comes from the Phoenician alphabet.

The Phoenician alphabet was created based on Egyptian hieroglyphs, using hieroglyphs to represent sounds.

It is somewhat similar to the fact that Cantonese can also be written phonetically using Chinese characters.

In Zhu Jianxuan's view, the biggest advantage of using Chongzhen numerals and Latin letters to study mathematics is that it is easy to distinguish formula symbols from Chinese character descriptions.

When two completely different texts are placed together, learners can find the key points of the text at a glance.

This effect will not occur if descriptions and operations are performed entirely in Chinese characters or entirely in Latin letters.

If the calculation process of pure letters and numbers is too long, ordinary people will find it uncomfortable to watch.

But conversely, if Latin letters are used for descriptions and Chinese characters for operation symbols, the situation is not much better.

Because symbols should be simple and intuitive, and Chinese characters are a type of writing that contains a lot of information.

When Chinese characters are used as operation symbols, "redundant information" will occur

Each Chinese character has its own meaning, but Latin letters themselves have no meaning and only become meaningful when combined into words.

Chinese characters are naturally suitable for describing situations, and Latin letters are naturally suitable for being symbols.

Chongzhen had never learned Latin, but he still used Latin letters as pinyin and operation symbols, which was in line with the objective principle of borrowing from others.

Zhu Jianxuan, together with the craftsmen and students, clarified the hexadecimal standard scheme for the new era on site.

Then he led the students to continue to think divergently on the spot and found a reasonable use of hexadecimal in the current telegraph scheme.

First, use three hexadecimal numbers to form 4096 codes to accommodate the corresponding number of Chinese characters and symbols.

Excluding commonly used characters with highly similar meanings, a range of regular telegraphic characters is drawn up.

It is required that in the future, when sending regular telegrams, only Chinese characters on this character table can be used to improve the overall efficiency of telegram sending and receiving.

Then, on this basis, the character list was expanded, while retaining commonly used characters with repeated meanings, and a standard character list of 8,000 Chinese characters was developed for use by the army and the court.

Finally, we use the complete four-digit hexadecimal number, a total of 65536 codes, to create a general table that can accommodate most Chinese characters.

This work of selecting suitable Chinese characters according to the standards does not need to be done by on-site craftsmen and students.

Zhu Jianxuan wrote an order and asked the guards to deliver it to the accompanying officials from the Ministry of Rites, asking them to complete the three-level Chinese character code table.

These people are professionals and this is a piece of cake for them.

Zhu Jianxuan didn't need to tell them that it was used for telegrams, he just needed to give the screening criteria and he could get to work.

After they have completed the basic screening work, they will let the craftsmen make some minor repairs and arrangements according to the principles of telegraph sending and receiving and it can be used.

Decades or hundreds of years later, when electronic computers come out, these three alphabets will naturally become the alphabets used in computers.

Because the storage and computing space of early computers were very limited, it was impossible to cram all the required Chinese characters into them at once.

We must also increase the scope of computer word tables step by step, just like we control the scope of telegraph words now.

After Zhu Jianxuan gave the work instructions, he continued to lead the craftsmen and disciples to inspect and accept the newly invented simple telegraph machine.

Now, this kind of acceptance in the form of classroom assignments only requires them to achieve basic functions.

When he arrives in America, Zhu Jianxuan will deal with American affairs and will ask the craftsmen to design and produce practical finished products on the ground.

After completing the verification of the basic telegraph machine, Zhu Jianxuan started a new round of courses - sound waves.

First, tell the craftsmen and students the nature of sound waves, and then directly guide them to think about converting sound waves and electric current changes into each other.

The homework after this class became making a simple wired telephone, or making a microphone and a speaker.

Zhu Jianxuan directly gave the basic design idea, which was to sandwich carbon particles between two copper sheets to make a pickup, converting sound waves into changing electric current.

Then use the principle of electromagnetic induction to make a speaker, connect the electromagnetic ring to the vibrating basin membrane, and place a magnet behind it.

When the electromagnetic ring is energized, it generates magnetic force, which attracts the magnet behind it, pulling the entire pelvic membrane backwards and causing it to vibrate.

If the current input is variable and is converted from sound wave vibrations, the electromagnetic ring will drive the pelvic membrane to restore vibration and convert the current changes into sound waves again.

The telegraph machines before this used the connection and disconnection of electric current to transmit information, which was directly derived from the basic theory of electricity.

After Zhu Jianxuan explained the principle of the generator, most of the craftsmen and students immediately realized that they could make a telegraph as long as there was a stable power supply.

In the original history, Morse made the wired telegraph in 1835.

Now Zhu Jianxuan's operation of linking electric current and sound waves is as eye-opening as his previous connection between electricity and magnetism.

In the original history, the feasibility of the telephone was discovered by accident.

An Italian-American named Antonio Meucci originally studied "electrophysiology", which is the use of electric shock to treat diseases.

Around 1849, when he was treating a friend, he asked the friend to bite a copper sheet connected to a coil, which should be his newly designed electric shock connection device.

He went to another room to operate the generator, and heard the voice of his friend talking in the next room through the coil of the generator.

Meucci then began to study how to transmit sound using electric current and produced a finished product around 1860.

However, Meucci could hardly speak English and was too poor to afford patent protection, so he ultimately did not obtain a patent for the telephone.

It wasn't until 1876 that Canadian Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone.

Thomas Edison invented the carbon pickup in 1877, which gave the sound transmitted by the telephone a basic clarity, making the telephone sufficiently practical.

Throughout the entire process of exploring the invention of the telephone, there were actually only a few truly useful ideas.

After all, the principle of the most basic telephone is actually very simple.

As a time traveler, Zhu Jianxuan skipped the long exploration stage and brought out the mature principles and directions.

After having the guiding ideology, the craftsmen immediately led the students to work.

In the end, it only took a dozen days to make a basic principle verification machine, or a simple telephone prototype.

(End of this chapter)