Chapter 374 - Dr. Zhong

“Xiao Du!” Du Wen called out. She was accustomed to working at night, so the people around her had to be night owls as well. Du Mei, naturally, couldn’t sleep before her master did. She was dozing off on the wooden sofa in the office, and upon hearing her master’s call, she quickly sat up, wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth, tidied her hair, and trotted to Du Wen’s desk, standing at attention.

Du Mei was not wearing the unwritten uniform of the life secretaries—the maid outfit—but the standard uniform for general administrative staff of the Yuanlao Senate: a cotton “People’s Suit” with only two pockets. An identification strip was sewn on her chest.

“Call the General Office for me right now. Tell them I need to make a trip.”

Du Mei was long accustomed to Headman Du’s work style and knew that her master’s orders had to be “unconditionally and most swiftly fulfilled.” But at this moment, she couldn’t help but voice her objection: “Headman, it’s eleven o’clock at night…”

“Call the General Office’s duty room. How many times have I told you, the Yuanlao Senate never sleeps!” Du Wen said, raising her eyes coldly.

“Yes, Headman.” Du Mei dared not argue further. In reality, calling now was no different from calling tomorrow morning; the clerk in the duty room would just record it. But she already knew this female headman’s temper well. She quickly asked for further instructions: “May I ask where the Headman is going? And on what day?”

“I’m going to Jeju. Tell them to prepare a ship. The time is within a week.”

“Yes, Headman.”

At this very moment, kilometers away from Lingao, in a place called “Hutou Village” in the western part of Chengmai County, electric lights were shining in the dark night.

Although Chengmai had been a “blue zone” since the victory of the second anti-encirclement campaign and was the first place to establish a preliminary county-level government, the Yuanlao Senate’s institutions here were still sparse, mostly concentrated around the county seat. In the vast rural areas, the establishment of grassroots political power was just beginning.

In this pitch-black darkness, the lights of Hutou Village were particularly conspicuous. The place was surrounded by water on three sides, with only the east connected to the mainland. When the Lingao-Chengmai highway was built, a branch road was specially constructed to connect to this place. However, the branch road came to an abrupt end before reaching Hutou Village—a trench was dug where it connected to the land, separating it and turning it into an “island,” connected only by a drawbridge.

As if the trench wasn’t enough of an obstacle, behind it was a high earthen embankment, on which stood barbed wire fences and watchtowers. Electric lights shone grimly on the only entrance and exit on the embankment—a tightly closed wooden gate. A wooden sign hung on the gate with two large ink characters: “Restricted Area.”

On the coastline of this small “island,” rows of reefs served as natural fortifications, and watchtowers guarded against all threats from the sea. As long as sea conditions permitted, the Coast Guard’s patrol boats patrolled the surrounding waters 24 hours a day—no unauthorized vessels were allowed to approach.

The sentries changed guard every hour, and patrol teams with dogs patrolled the seaside, not missing any suspicious signs. They didn’t know what they were guarding with such vigilance. Most soldiers never entered the core area during their entire tour of duty: the large compound on the hillside of this small island.

The compound was very large, its walls built of local stone, both high and thick. From the outside, one could only see the roofs and towers protruding above the walls.

The compound was also heavily guarded. Except for some boxes being transported in and out by land or sea every few days, the gate was almost never opened. However, the soldiers would sometimes hear the sound of a loud bell from within the courtyard.

Some people rumored that the courtyard housed an “Australian temple.” But the bell did not ring as punctually as in a monastery, and they never saw anyone who looked like a monk.

“Do not listen, do not look, do not ask, do not spread.” These eight characters were painted on the wall with limewash, adding to the mystery of the place.

This was the Hutou Village Observatory, the timekeeping center of the Yuanlao Senate.

In an era without satellite navigation and positioning, timekeeping was a crucial technological point for a regional power like the Yuanlao Senate, which relied heavily on maritime transport. For a ship to accurately determine its position at sea and set its course, it had to rely on latitude and longitude calculations.

Latitude is easy to calculate. Because latitude is determined by natural laws, the equator is zero latitude, and the poles are 90 degrees, the same everywhere. Positioning through astronomical observation—whether using a sextant that references the sun’s altitude or a star-gazing board that observes the position of the stars—can determine a ship’s latitude quite accurately. But longitude is different. The Earth is constantly rotating, and there is no natural way to determine the position of the prime meridian; it can only be artificially defined. Similarly, no celestial body can be used to intuitively display differences in longitude.

Therefore, people began to try to use time to measure longitude very early on. People at that time already knew that the Earth rotates 360 degrees every 24 hours. Each hour is equivalent to 15 degrees of longitude. As long as you know the time difference between two places, you can know the longitude difference between them. If you know that noon at a certain place is exactly 10 a.m. in London, then it means that this place is 30 degrees east of London. Thus, the problem of longitude is transformed into an equivalent problem: how to measure the time difference between two places.

In 1530, the Dutch mathematician Gemma Frisius proposed using clocks to measure the time difference to infer the longitude of a place. According to his idea, if a clock always maintained the time of a certain place (such as London), and then was taken to a new location, the local time could be measured using the sun’s altitude, and then compared with the London clock to find the longitude difference from London.

This idea was fundamentally impossible to realize at the time due to the level of clockmaking technology and the precision required, but it had already preliminarily proposed the epoch-making concept of the marine chronometer.

Before the satellite positioning system was put into use, it was precisely through this idea that ships were able to break free from the shackles that had forced sailors for thousands of years to rely on coastlines and island chains for navigation, allowing them to sail anywhere on the high seas.

The Yuanlao Senate had no satellites to use, so equipping the fleet and merchant ships with marine chronometers became an urgent matter.

Every ship that crossed over on D-Day was equipped with multiple marine chronometers, but the ever-expanding fleet and the demand for precise timekeeping from all walks of life created a strong demand for clocks. For now, the Planning Commission’s warehouses stored many clocks and spare parts, and some Yuanlao had even brought a large number of wristwatches as private goods, but relying on reserves was not a long-term solution.

As soon as the Ministry of Science and Technology was established, the two primary tasks assigned to Zhong Lishi by the Executive Committee were precise timekeeping and radio technology. Zhong Lishi, as the People’s Commissar for Science and Technology, decided to personally tackle this problem.

To have precise timekeeping, one first needed an accurate time-measuring institution, which required an observatory.

The Yuanlao Senate had once planned to build an observatory on Gaoshanling, but Zhong Lishi believed the location was not ideal. After consulting maps and conducting field surveys, he chose the 110th meridian east as the meridian for determining local time.

The most suitable land-based observation point on this meridian was this place called “Hutou Village.” This Taibai Observatory, at an altitude of 15 meters, could not be called a regular observatory; it was merely an institution for measuring time. This place was also not an ideal site for an observatory, with its low altitude and rainy, typhoon-prone climate causing Zhong Lishi a great deal of headache.

According to the development plan he submitted, this place would only be used as a timekeeping station during the First and Second Five-Year Plans. After the Second Five-Year Plan, a more suitable location would be chosen—if possible, it would be best to capture Greenwich.

“If I were given an invincible fleet, the country I would most want to attack is England, and the place I would most want to occupy is the village of Greenwich.”

—Timekeeping and Longitude

By Dr. Zhong Lishi, Fellow of the Imperial Academy of Sciences

Taibai University Press, 1st edition 1645, 2nd edition 178th printing 1655

In the absence of Greenwich as an observatory, Hutou Village was still serviceable. It had convenient sea and land transportation, was close to Lingao, the core of their rule, and was easy to guard—the observatory had to house a large number of “black technology” products from the old world, so security was of the utmost importance.

After the construction of the Hutou Village Observatory began, a certain literary-minded Yuanlao felt that the name “Hutou” (Tiger Head) was both silly and rustic. Based on the coincidence that the place was located in the west of Chengmai, he associated it with the legendary spiritual beast of the west, the White Tiger, and changed “Hutou” to “Taibai,” giving the “Hutou Observatory” a name that almost made Dr. Zhong wet his pants—”Taibai Observatory.”

The Taibai Observatory was equipped with many instruments, including a transit instrument, an astronomical clock, and a shortwave time signal radio station. Radio time signals were a black technology that only the flagship of the Lingao Navy was authorized to use. Radio technology solved the problem of the accuracy of marine chronometers from another angle.

This was also the location of the Ministry of Science and Technology’s clock workshop. In the courtyard were four test towers for weight-driven clock mechanisms, with lightning rods installed on top. Zhong Lishi’s home, the “Taibai Mansion,” was also here. Later, a university developed based on the Taibai Observatory—”Taibai University.”

“Father, Father.” A slender, fair hand gently pushed Dr. Zhong’s shoulder.

“Mmm… can’t eat another bite…” Dr. Zhong muttered, his clothes slipping to the floor.

“Father…” With a hint of helplessness in her voice, the owner of the slender hand squatted down, picked up the clothes, and draped them over him again. “The Executive Committee is holding an expanded meeting!”

“Hmm?!” Dr. Zhong’s body tensed, and his eyes flew open. “Tell them to wait, I’m on my way!”