Chapter 375 - Zhong Xiaoying

Of course, a minute later, Dr. Zhong realized it had nothing to do with the Executive Committee—he was still in his workshop at the Taibai Mansion. The telephone, covered with a cotton cloth, sat quietly on a small tea table.

The large glass window in front of his workbench was already covered with water droplets—it had started to rain outside.

“The sea must be getting rough again,” Zhong Lishi said as he slowly stood up. Zhong Xiaoying quickly helped him put on his coat—the temperature had dropped significantly.

“Yes, Father. The current temperature is 19 degrees Celsius. Humidity is 90%. The barometer reading is rising, so the rain probably won’t last long.”

“Good,” Zhong Lishi nodded with satisfaction. Zhong Xiaoying was his adopted daughter. He had bought her from the female servant training school. Zhong Xiaoying was from Dongguan County, Guangdong, with slightly dark skin and plain features, but she had large eyes and a decent height.

Zhong Lishi hadn’t won a lottery spot. He wasn’t impressed with any of the girls below B-grade in the first batch of the female servant training school. Just as he was about to casually buy one to do laundry, cook, and warm his bed, he noticed a girl with very lively, big, and bright eyes. He was immediately captivated. After asking a few questions, he felt that this young girl was quick-witted and had potential, so he bought her.

Zhong Lishi soon discovered that she was a clever and skillful girl. Besides doing housework, she would always stand by quietly and observe while he conducted experiments and research, occasionally lending a hand. Gradually, Dr. Zhong found that she had quite a talent in this area and began to teach her some scientific knowledge and simple mathematics.

The learning and comprehension abilities the young girl displayed both surprised and delighted him. After careful consideration, Zhong Lishi decided to adopt her as his daughter, giving her the name Zhong Xiaoying.

Zhong Xiaoying could read and write, and her calligraphy with a brush was better than ninety percent of the Yuanlao. She also knew some basic self-defense. It was clear she didn’t come from a poor family. Dr. Zhong had specifically reviewed her “self-statement” from the refugee camp and learned that she came from a family of minor officials. Her grandfather had been a county magistrate, and her father, the third son, had been unsuccessful in his studies. After the grandfather’s death and the division of the family property, the family’s fortunes quickly declined, and they could only make ends meet by the women in the family reeling silk. Unexpectedly, a sudden fire a few years ago had destroyed her family and home. The surviving Zhong Xiaoying was almost sold into a brothel by unscrupulous relatives.

The Yuanlao Senate not only rescued her from a pit of eternal damnation but also gave her a secure and stable life. In particular, this learned and refined Dr. Zhong deeply impressed her. Since being adopted, she treated Dr. Zhong with even more reverence. Not only did she pay her respects every morning and evening, but after accidentally watching a few of the animated films Dr. Zhong had collected, she began to call him “Father.”

“Father, you’ve been busy all day. You should rest early,” Zhong Xiaoying said, supporting his arm.

“What time is it?”

“Replying to Father, it is now 10:40 p.m.”

“It’s still early,” Dr. Zhong yawned. He was considering whether to continue his work.

He thought of the newly installed “Verification Pendulum Mark II” on the test clock tower outside. He had implemented a simple time-reporting function on this large clock, though it was limited to striking once on the hour. In effect, it was similar to the current factory system of sounding a steam whistle at set times—still a very primitive stage.

But even so, it was the result of Dr. Zhong’s painstaking work. For the past two years, Zhong Lishi had spent most of his time trying to rebuild the clock industry. This was not only a matter of great trust from the Yuanlao Senate and the Executive Committee but also had a serious bearing on his own face and reputation.

“Those bastards from the General Construction Company!” This was a phrase he often cursed inwardly over the past two years. Those people knew very well that they couldn’t produce a large clock anytime soon, yet they loved to design a clock tower on every building. It was said that this was to implement the Yuanlao Senate’s spirit of “instilling the modern concept of time into the minds of every native.”

The problem was that these clock towers had no clocks to go with them, so they became attics with gaping mouths. To prevent wind and rain from getting in, the openings where the clock faces were to be installed had to be sealed with wooden planks and reed mats. These ugly, sealed holes seemed to be silently protesting something, making Dr. Zhong uncomfortable whenever he saw them.

Whenever the Yuanlao Senate held a standing committee meeting, some tactless Yuanlao would always ask when the great clock of the customs house clock tower would finally chime. The empty clock tower had already aroused much speculation among the naturalized citizens and natives. Over time, Dr. Zhong’s clock tower became a monthly topic among the Yuanlao.

At first, Dr. Zhong felt like he was sitting on pins and needles. Later, he simply turned a deaf ear. As the People’s Commissar for Science and Technology, he could communicate directly with the Executive Committee at expanded meetings. Moreover, the people who could get a seat at these meetings had a better understanding of the nature of scientific research and knew that research projects never yielded immediate results, so they were not stingy with investment.

Under Zhong Lishi’s sole management, the Planning Commission approved the construction of the Taibai Timekeeping Center. From its completion, Zhong Lishi moved into the Taibai Mansion here, living a semi-reclusive life. Besides going to Bairen New City one day a week to handle the daily work of the People’s Commissariat for Science and Technology and attending meetings of the Central Government Council and the Executive Committee, he rarely appeared in Bairen New City and did not participate in the Yuanlao’s social activities, except for important occasions like the New Year’s reception.

This seclusion allowed him to concentrate on his work. But he soon discovered that tinkering with existing clocks was completely different from actually designing them himself, especially when he had to work within the constraints of the current poor raw materials and production technology.

The Planning Commission authorized him to use various controlled materials, including “Class I controlled materials” brought from the old world that could not be produced in the short term. But Dr. Zhong knew very well that using these materials to manufacture clocks was worthless—it would not be sustainable in this time. It was just like the batch of mantel clocks and grandfather clocks they had assembled using imported clock components.

For the sake of simplicity and ease of production, the first task he undertook was a pendulum clock—this was the least technically difficult, with primitive versions having appeared in the sixteenth century. Such clocks were generally large and crude, with lower requirements for materials and processing accuracy.

Even so, Zhong Lishi had a headache for a while when designing the first prototype clock.

The most crucial part of a clock is the regulating mechanism. In a pendulum regulating mechanism, the first thing to implement is the escapement. The escapement can be simply described as a “Y”-shaped device with two teeth. It works by repeatedly swinging, using the two teeth of the “Y” to alternately catch and release a gear-like escapement wheel, causing the wheel to advance one tooth at a time with its movement. This is the escapement mechanism. The “Y”-shaped part is called the “escapement fork,” and the two teeth that control the wheel are called “pallets.”

The first two parts Zhong Lishi designed were the escapement fork and the escapement wheel. These two simple things caused him a great deal of trouble.

The first experiment used a wooden model, Test Machine No. 1, which ignored other functions and only tested the escapement. One person would manually move the escapement fork back and forth, while another person turned the escapement wheel by hand to test the relationship between their movements. Zhong Lishi initially designed the escapement fork to be below the wheel, because the pendulum was also below. But during the actual test, as soon as he let go, the escapement fork disengaged. Bat, who was responsible for turning the wheel, used too much force and fell, bruising his elbow.

Bat’s surname was not “Ba.” His real name was Bater—his father was a Mongolian “Yi Ding” (hereditary military household) who had been transferred to Guangdong with a certain military commander. Although Bater was born on the grasslands, he grew up by the Pearl River and became a Mongolian who spoke fluent Cantonese. Despite speaking Cantonese and eating rice, he was still quite sturdy. During the second anti-encirclement campaign, the fifteen-year-old Bater fought as a Ming soldier and was eventually captured. Then he became Bat.

Zhong Lishi couldn’t go it alone in clockmaking; he needed a team of naturalized citizens. He decided to take on a few apprentices and train them personally. One of them was Bat. The reason was simple: Zhong Lishi needed a strong apprentice—the few naturalized citizen apprentices assigned to him by the human resources department were all too frail to handle heavy physical labor.

Bat’s arm was swollen for a few days. To prevent this from happening again, Zhong Lishi designed the escapement fork to be on top of the wheel. It later turned out that he didn’t need to worry about this; as long as the crutch was assembled with the escapement fork, this problem wouldn’t occur. This incident made him fully realize his lack of understanding in mechanical properties. For this reason, he made a special trip to the Great Library and got some books on the mechanical processing of clock parts to read.

He then proceeded to build Test Machine No. 2 for the escapement mechanism, which was used to test the “impulse” function. “Impulse” refers to the process where, as the pallet of the escapement fork disengages from a tooth of the wheel, the inclined surface of the pallet interacts with the inclined surface of the tooth, transferring the power from the wheel to the escapement fork. The escapement fork then transmits this energy to the pendulum, allowing it to continue swinging. This experiment was 98% successful. Zhong Lishi had Bat turn the wheel with force. The moment the former pushed the escapement fork away, the fork sprang back powerfully as designed, hitting the latter’s hand and causing it to swell—at dinner that day, the terrified Bat was rewarded with two large chicken legs.

Test Apparatus No. 3 was to test the complete pendulum regulator. Zhong Lishi had a 10-meter-high wooden platform built in the clock workshop, on which a 4-meter-long pendulum was installed. Test Apparatus No. 2 was mounted on it, with a slot cut in the tail of the escapement fork to engage with a pin on the crutch connected to the pendulum.