Chapter 47: The Printing House

The most important piece of equipment in the printing house was undoubtedly the high-speed mimeograph. As for the several EPSON 24-pin printers, they were also very important in the early days—many stencils were printed using these printers in the past. Later, after the first batch of female typists was trained, the Chinese typewriters brought over finally came into play, and Zhou Dongtian basically relied on the Chinese typewriters to make stencils.

Now, the Chinese typewriters brought from the old world, along with several other dot-matrix, inkjet, and laser printers in better condition, have been dismantled, cleaned, and sealed as STC—original standard equipment templates. They have been replaced by several bulky, locally produced Chinese typewriters. Several female typists were hard at work in front of the bright windows, and the room echoed with the sound of the typing heads striking the lead type plates.

In the next room, around a large table, some people were carving steel plates with styluses, while others were proofreading freshly printed galleys. Everyone was very busy—the printing house was very busy in the transmigrator group, not only responsible for printing thousands of copies of the two issues of the Lingao Times every week, but also for printing a large number of textbooks, technical pamphlets, various manuals, and countless documents. The tasks were very heavy. Besides the mimeograph, several hand-cranked mimeographs were also copied for small-scale printing. Several workers were cranking the machines.

The woodblock carving workshop occupied the largest area here. Zhou Dongtian went in to take a look. When these workshops were built, great care was taken with the lighting. Since the transmigrator group could not provide enough artificial light for the workers, they had to find ways to make the most of daylight. A lot of thought was put into the design of the lighting. Not only were the windows in the workshops large, but most of them also had skylights. Blinds and curtains were used to adjust the light to make it as soft as possible.

In front of the windows sat several old carvers, wearing their issued reading glasses and concentrating on carving the printing blocks. The woodblocks were mainly used for printing various bills, blank documents, certificates, and the like.

Lingao’s currency—the grain circulation voucher—and other securities were also printed here. So the woodblock printing workshop was particularly important. During working hours, a special person was responsible for guarding it. Before leaving work, all woodblocks, paper, and ink had to be counted and returned to a special storeroom.

The management system here was very strict. Not only were there records for the manufacturing, modification, and disposal of the woodblocks, but there was also a registration system for each printing run, accurate to every single sheet.

Zhou Dongtian went to the mimeograph workshop to find Tan Ming—this person was one of the few talents among the transmigrators who had operated a printing press, and he also knew color separation—though it was not used locally.

The high-speed mimeograph was housed in a separate workshop and locked when not in use. Zhou Dongtian had brought a large number of spare parts and ink for it. He estimated that with careful use, it could last for about seven or eight years. To take care of this precious baby, every time it was used for printing, a council member would operate it personally, with only a few native apprentices assisting.

Tan Ming was washing his hands. He had just finished processing the latest order: a dictionary of the official language of the Great Ming compiled by the Great Library. The Executive Committee had placed an order for one hundred copies.

Because Zhou Dongtian had too many part-time jobs, Tan Ming was now mainly responsible for the technical work of the printing house. Zhou Dongtian talked to him about setting up a printing factory.

“I’ve never seen the kind of movable type factory you’re talking about,” Tan Ming shook his head. “I’ve operated an offset press and done laser phototypesetting. But I really don’t know how to set type with lead movable type.”

“You don’t have to do it yourself,” Zhou Dongtian said. “But my main focus in the future will be on the movable type printing factory. You just need to manage this printing house well. I’ve submitted a document to the Organization Department, recommending that you be appointed as the director of the Bairen Printing Factory. The official appointment should come down in a few days.”

“This… of course… thank you…” Tan Ming said incoherently.

“Don’t be polite. You’re the one doing most of the work here anyway! Besides, I’m just a part-timer here,” Zhou Dongtian waved his hand. “Being the director or not doesn’t really matter. The key is that you have a title to make things easier.”

Zhou Dongtian explained the various matters to him one by one in the office. Tan Ming seemed a little lacking in confidence. Suddenly being responsible for everything made him feel a little scared.

After finishing his business, Zhou Dongtian hurried to the industrial department to discuss the equipment issue.

Movable type printing sounded very modern, but it was almost invisible in the modern printing industry. Even very small printing factories no longer used it. Zhou Dongtian had come into contact with a movable type printing factory in the past and had some knowledge of this system.

Movable type printing was of course much more efficient than woodblock printing. But in a traditional society with no industrial base, its cost was much higher than woodblock printing, and the technical difficulty was also much greater. This was also why movable type printing was not widely used in China. There were only a few instances of large-scale movable type printing of books in Chinese history, and they were all organized by the government. Private movable type printing had always remained at a small-scale, simple, and low-level application, and was rarely used for printing books.

Zhou Dongtian of course knew the reason for this. First, casting movable type was a technical job, and printing a book required a large amount of movable type, which had to be made in advance. And the material of the movable type was very particular. Bi Sheng used clay movable type, which was the least difficult to make and had the lowest cost. Therefore, clay movable type was still used in the 19th century. The local gazettes were printed with clay movable type. Because of its poor adhesion to ink, the printed documents had blurry characters.

The official books printed in the Qing Dynasty used copper movable type, and the printing effect was good. But the cost of copper movable type was high—only the royal family could afford it. The value of copper itself made even the emperor covet the copper movable type. The copper movable type stored in the Wuying Hall of the Qing Dynasty was recast into royal furnishings by the time of Qianlong.

Printing craftsmen also tried to use other materials to make movable type, including wood movable type and tin movable type. The results were not good. The requirements for movable type were very high. It had to be wear-resistant, but not too hard. It also had to have good adhesion to ink, and the price had to be cheap enough to be used in large quantities. The only thing that met these requirements was lead. But pure lead type was still not ideal in effect; antimony had to be added.

Another problem with movable type printing was the ink, which was never solved in the traditional Chinese printing industry—traditional woodblock printing used water-based ink—a water-soluble ink with soot as the pigment. Water-soluble ink performed well on wooden woodblocks, but on metal movable type, it easily turned into ink droplets. And it could not be transferred by simple pressing like woodblock printing. Rubbing was a very slow process. To ensure effective printing, paper with strong water absorption had to be used. The result was that the back of the paper would also have ink marks, making it impossible to print on both sides, which invisibly increased the cost of printing.

All these factors combined meant that movable type printing was never the mainstream of the printing industry in China.

New technologies and concepts cannot become productive forces until suitable technical means are found. Zhou Dongtian had this feeling after learning a little about the history of printing out of interest—the Chinese had proposed countless new technologies and concepts that were ahead of their time in history, but many of them had remained at a primitive stage: the clay movable type workshops that printed gazettes in various places in the mid-19th century were no different from the era of Bi Sheng.

Zhou Dongtian knew that to use metal movable type, he had to first solve the problem of mass-producing printing ink himself—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 data, boiled linseed oil was the best. It had excellent adhesion and dried very easily. So it is still used to mix oil paints today. However, Zhou Dongtian went to the Planning院 once and checked all the material inventory lists. There was no such thing as linseed oil in the inventory and producible or purchasable materials. As for other vegetable oils, including rapeseed oil, castor oil, coconut oil, and peanut oil, none were suitable.

“I need linseed oil,” he went to find Fa Shilu of the Agricultural Committee. As the chief agronomist, he should have a way. “I know Lingao doesn’t have it, but you can definitely think of some locally produced substitute oil.”

“Hemp oil, then,” Fa Shilu gave him the answer in just thirty seconds. “There is hemp in Lingao—to be honest, there are not many places without hemp. But we haven’t planted it—the Li people should have planted it. The last trade team to the Li area brought back hemp ropes and coarse cloth.”

So Zhou Dongtian went to the Planning院 again. But there was no such thing in the Planning院’s inventory—hemp oil has a slight hallucinogenic effect after consumption and cannot be eaten. The local hemp has not formed a large-scale cultivation, so the Planning院 has never paid attention to collecting it.

Under his relentless pursuit, Wu De couldn’t stand it anymore and finally agreed to put the collection of hemp seeds on the urgent agenda.

“I will have the long-range exploration team and the trade department collect it as soon as possible,” Wu De said. “But I don’t know if hemp is seeding at this time—you have to have a schedule, you can’t just ask for it…”

“Then the Executive Committee shouldn’t suddenly issue instructions to expand exports.”

“Alright, alright, it’s our fault,” Wu De said helplessly. “The key is that the thing you want is too strange. I still have hemp fiber in stock. No one has ever thought of 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 personnel who had participated in the manufacturing of the Chinese typewriter last time—this group of people had made the lead type on the typing plate last time and were considered experienced.

Lead type needed to be manufactured in large quantities. The simplest and cheapest mass production method was of course casting. The specific method was to use a hard metal, such as steel, to have a carver carve a reverse convex character—a male mold, and then use the male mold to stamp out a female mold on soft brass. Then, lead water was poured into the female mold to cast the type.

This was just a simple principle. In fact, there was a series of detailed processes: the lead type must be of the same size, and the type body must be able to fit together perfectly so that they could be arranged neatly on the typesetting plate. This required special process settings to ensure, and also special type修 (xiū - trimming) workers to do the filing and polishing. Since the amount of lead type used was very large, casting lead type had to be a continuous, large-scale work. The type mold must have a special process for quick demolding… The complete set of type casting technology started from the 15th century, was gradually improved, and reached a very high level by the 18th century.

Zhou Dongtian planned to base the manufacturing of the equipment on the existing industrial level of the transmigrator group, at the level of an 18th-century printing factory.

Several technicians gathered around the technical data that Zhou Dongtian had copied from the Great Library, discussing it. Obviously, to mass-produce lead type, carving one steel mold for each character was not enough. This thing wore out quickly, and the steel molds had to be constantly replenished. This made everyone a little troubled: carving steel type molds was a very boring and tedious job.

“I remember there are eight hundred commonly used characters. For printing, we need to prepare at least three thousand characters,” Jiang Ye calculated. “If each character needs four or five steel molds on average, we’ll have to make tens of thousands of steel molds. This will take forever.”

“More than that,” Sun Li shook his head. “Printing books will definitely use both simplified and traditional characters. The two combined, the commonly used characters will be at least five or six thousand. And there are many rare characters in ancient books. We have to make one or two steel molds for these rare characters as well.”

“We can recruit woodblock carvers as type carvers. They are carvers themselves,” Zhou Dongtian said.

“But the efficiency is very low,” Sun Li said after looking for a long time. “I don’t know how many type molds a carver can carve in a day, but the efficiency won’t be high. And this kind of casting from a stamped female mold will definitely have to be done by hand—plus the work of demolding and filing. If it’s all done by hand, I’m afraid it’s not realistic to form printing capacity in three or four months.” He asked, “How do modern movable type printing factories do it?”

“There are special linotype machines. Casting, typesetting, and dismantling are all done automatically. One person can operate it. Of course, it requires electricity or steam,” Zhou Dongtian said, taking out a few blueprints. “But this machine is quite complex, close to the level of the early 20th century.”

What he took out was the Linotype machine invented by the Americans. This machine was used from 1890 to 1940. Although it was mainly used for printing newspapers and magazines, it was also widely used for printing books in the United States.

The few of them studied it together for a long time.

“There’s no problem with copying the machine, but the structural strength and tolerance of the materials are difficult to control. This machine is also quite precise,” Xiao Gui said. “We can make it, but the quality cannot be guaranteed.”

“My idea is to start with the simple and then move to the difficult. The linotype machine is difficult to manufacture, so let’s make it later. Let’s sacrifice efficiency and use a simple process first,” Sun Li said. “Industrial upgrading is not a one-day or two-day job.”

“I have an idea,” Liang Xin, who had been silent, said. “Let’s think about it the other way around—we have precise stamping technology that people of this era don’t have. Let’s just use stamping to make lead type.”

His idea was to use high-strength steel to make a female mold, and then use the female mold as a stamping head to directly stamp a lead plate of a certain thickness, directly stamping the lead type off the lead plate.

“This way, we can save the casting process. One stamping mold can stamp hundreds of characters at once. The efficiency is much higher,” Liang Xin said. “The post-processing work for the stamped parts is also much less. We don’t need so much filing.”

“Then we still have to make several thousand stamping molds,” Jiang Ye frowned. “Besides, if you use high-strength steel to make the female mold, what material will you use for the male mold? Are you going to have the carvers directly carve high-strength steel?”

“I think it’s possible. That’s their job. They can even carve diamonds, jade, and glass. Why can’t they carve steel?” Liang Xin said. “It’s just that the speed seems a bit slow. Or we can just use a machining center to make the type molds.”

“Your idea is good, but it won’t work,” Zhou Dongtian shook his head. “The type you stamp out this way is just a character, without a type body. It’s impossible to arrange them neatly on the typesetting plate. And what about the characters with radicals without a base?”

Liang Xin scratched his head in disappointment. He hadn’t thought of this problem.

“If we want speed, the first batch of male type molds can be made directly by the machining center. It will only take a few days,” Sun Li said. “It will be enough for a while. Later, we can let the carvers slowly get familiar with it.”

“It’s a pity we are too far from Europe,” Zhou Dongtian said. “The Dutch already have professional type foundries at this time, capable of producing various standardized letters and symbols for printing factories.”

“The Dutch are making letters. Can they make Chinese characters?” Jiang Ye stroked his chin. “Why don’t we talk to the Executive Committee and recruit a batch of Dutch type founders—it’s just that time is too tight.”

“It should be possible. They can just treat it as making graphics,” Zhou Dongtian said with some regret. “But it’s a long way. Even if we send people now, it will be at least two years before they arrive in Lingao.”

Sun Li said, “Aren’t the Dutch in Batavia? Since the Dutch East India Company’s headquarters is there, they must have to print something, right? There must be a printing workshop. According to you, type casting has to be done non-stop, so there must be a few type founders. Let’s just kidnap them and their equipment and bring them back. We can lock them up and have them print for us.”

“I always feel this method is too backward,” Jiang Ye said after looking for a long time. “There should be a simpler method—you know, we are standing on the shoulders of giants. With so many inventions, we can always choose a suitable one. Let’s reconsider the process.”

“The sooner this is done, the better,” Zhou Dongtian said. If he could recruit skilled type founders, it would be much better than a half-baked person like him training workers himself. After all, he had only seen how to set type and print. If he were to lead the entire process himself, he was not very confident.

Zhou Dongtian continued his departmental tour and document application. He went to the Ministry of Colonial Trade and submitted a document on recruiting Dutch printing workers from Batavia. The document emphasized that whether it was by force or voluntarily, as long as they could get the people, it would be fine. It would be best to get the equipment together.

Si Kaide was organizing a trade inspection team to Southeast Asia. Zhou Dongtian’s request was a side matter, so he readily agreed. He said that as long as they were there, he would try his best to get the people.