Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 352 Optical Communication System
From Transjordan to Antioch, going north, the straight-line distance is 500 kilometers, and the actual distance is about 600 kilometers.

This number, in later times, would be no more than half a day's journey by car, or a two-hour direct high-speed train ride.

But nowadays, it would take nearly two months of long journey.

This is bound to be a chore.

Fortunately, the Kingdom of Jerusalem has made considerable progress in various construction projects over the past decade.

Whether it is the information transmission system, the road infrastructure, or the post stations along the way, they are all quite complete. In addition, it is a coastal country, so it will not really take two months.

According to Lorian and his men's plan, they would board a ship at the port of Tyre, then take a two-day boat ride to the port of Latakia in the Governorate of Antioch, land there, and then walk to the city of Antioch.

The actual walking distance along the way is only about 200 kilometers.

Therefore, they could reach Antioch in less than a month.

This journey was quite new to Raymonding.

He saw many things that he had only heard of but never seen before, or even things he had never even heard of.

Take today for example, he saw a very strange tower.

The tower is cylindrical, and the things on it look like windmill blades, but much smaller.

It simply does not have the ability to be moved by the wind.

It should not be a mill. Judging from the materials it is built with, it must have been newly built not long ago.

Raymondin didn't say anything, just looked at his father, the "I'm curious" expression on his face was self-evident.

Faced with his son's request for help, Lorian scratched the back of his head and gasped.

It’s over, he doesn’t recognize it either!

Over the years, he has been staying on the border and often confronted the Egyptian army. He is actually not very familiar with the development of the country's interior.

So Lorian took his son and found Amadeus.

After listening to Lorian's description, Amadeus was not unable to answer.

He gave a phrase that Lorian and Raymondin had never heard of: "optical communication system"

This was obviously a newly coined phrase, long and ugly, but at least it gave Lorian some understanding of its purpose.

Simply put, over the past decade, through the technical cooperation with the Venetian, coupled with the talents of Gérice.

The telescope is mature.

In addition to providing long-distance vision, telescopes also directly help the military.

It also plays a significant role in long-distance communications.

"In simple terms, the 'optical communication system' is an advanced version of the beacon tower."

"This is not difficult to answer. Just know a little bit of math. It involves an octal or septenary system..."

Then Raymondine felt humiliated.

Raymondin, who had not even graduated from elementary school, found that he could understand what Amadeo said separately, but once they were put together, what did they mean?
As for Lorian on the side, as a senior military officer, he had received systematic university education and only then understood what an "optical communication system" was.

To put it simply, the two towers are several kilometers apart, and the two sides can use telescopes to observe each other, the two sub-blades on the towers, and the main pole that holds the two blades.

The sub-blades point in eight directions at an angle of 45 degrees. The two blades actually form a simple octal two-digit number.

Of course, for the sake of efficiency and reliability, and to reduce misjudgment, when the sub-blade points upward, it means it is stationary, invalid, and does not need to be recorded. That is, a two-digit number in 7 plus the main stem of the blade can point to four directions.

Therefore, a total of 7 symbols can be expressed at most 7*4*196.

If these 196 symbols are used twice in succession, they will correspond to 38416 possibilities, enough to cover all the words.

Of course, if we simply use the "optical communication system" to express words, the efficiency is very low, and only one word can be displayed in one minute on average.

But it can be greatly improved if the messages are limited to a special code book.

For example:

First round: main stem directly above, sub-blade No. 1 on the upper right, sub-blade No. 2 directly on the right.

Second round: the main stem is directly above, sub-leaf No. 1 is directly below, and sub-leaf No. 2 is directly to the left.

代表的数字便是1-1-2以及1-4-6
In the Jerusalem Army code book that is about to be implemented, it can be interpreted as enemy forces from the Egyptian direction, advancing towards Gaza along the coastline of the Sinai Peninsula.

His army consisted of 3,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, led by Robert himself.

Because telescope technology was not yet developed, the kingdom adopted a setting of one station per league.

From Gaza to Jerusalem is 15 stops, to Tyre is 25 stops, and to Antioch is 100 stops.

Even though the kingdom was more than 500 kilometers long from north to south, it only took less than half an hour to transmit the message, and the Governor of Antioch would receive the order to enter a state of combat readiness.

In addition, such efficient information transmission will also cause the news in newspapers to change from "what happened last week" or "what happened last month" to "what happened yesterday."

For an individual, it is as if he or she is empathizing with people from all over the world at the same time, feeling sad and angry together.

The country and society have become a real "life" and have begun to have their own breath and pulse.

We must no longer be the blind and foolish things of the past, but open our eyes from the chaos.

The late Balian had a feeling that one day human society would merge into one living organism, with everyone closely connected to each other.

However, history is developing faster than Balian had imagined.

[To be united as one is God, to be scattered and to dwell in the four directions is the Son.]

The "optical communication system" was not a secret, so Amedee casually introduced a lot of it to Lorian and his son.

In fact, the Kingdom of Jerusalem had never considered keeping this technology highly confidential.

The main reason is that there are so many people involved in this project that it is impossible to keep it secret.

On the other hand, in this era, even if other countries understand this technology, they cannot replicate it.

Because those countries can neither find so many qualified signal operators nor pay salaries to so many people.

As it happens, Gillis meets both of these conditions.

The benefits of attaching importance to education began to slowly emerge, and the ever-increasing productivity laid a solid material foundation for this.

After saying all this, Lorian also had some words to teach his son.

"Well, so don't think that school is useless, think about skipping classes, not studying, and aiming too high."

"Look, you haven't even graduated from elementary school, so it's hard for you to understand! It takes a long time for you to understand."

"I graduated from a serious university!"

(End of this chapter)