Chapter 377 - Taibai Observatory

The wide workbench was piled with various tools and small professional equipment: clamps, vices, a desktop lathe… and of course, professional watch repair tools. If any model maker were to see these things, they would be green with envy: among them were high-end devices purchased at great expense.

In front of the workbench was a large glass window facing the courtyard, with glass set in an iron frame. This both ensured the strength of the glass and made the window large enough to provide ample light for the entire workshop.

As if the light were still insufficient, there was also a large skylight on the roof of the workshop, covered with wooden shutters. This allowed enough light to be cast down without the sun being too hot or glaring.

On the walls of the workshop were rows of small drawers and neat shelves, like those in a traditional Chinese medicine shop. A wide variety of tools and accessories were all neatly stored and categorized. These were all exquisitely crafted by fine carpenters hired from Guangzhou, using top-quality wood, all with mortise and tenon joints, without a single nail. Both the inside and outside were coated with tung oil and then thoroughly air-dried, ensuring the absolute safety of the tools and components.

In addition to his workbench, there were four other small, fully equipped workbenches for Zhong Xiaoying and his apprentices.

Dr. Zhong spent most of his day in the workshop. To the side of the workbench was a large, fully equipped drawing board. In the old world, he had long since stopped using a drawing board—he used CAD—but the foundation he had laid while studying was still there, so he was quite proficient at drawing. All the verification equipment was first drawn before being manufactured. The reason for this meticulousness, besides his work habits, was also to educate his adopted daughter and apprentices—many Yuanlao could use CAD, but few had ever used a drawing board.

Dr. Zhong turned on his work light and began to make his “fully proprietary” watch calibrator. All the components of this calibrator were things that Lingao’s industry could currently produce or would be able to produce in the near future.

The amplifier used in this “fully proprietary” calibrator was a vacuum tube—Lingao’s industrial system couldn’t produce this yet. Dr. Zhong’s vacuum tube was obtained from the Planning Commission’s warehouse. Wu De had solemnly told him to use it carefully, as the number of vacuum tubes in reserve was not large.

As for the paper tape on a traditional calibrator, he replaced it with a frosted glass cylinder. A stylus would mark water dots on the frosted glass cylinder. For this, he had specially ordered a batch of high-precision frosted glass cylinders from Xiao Bailang. The principle was simple, but the assembly was not easy. Dr. Zhong was not a high-level fitter, and his skills in repair and grinding were quite amateurish. The attrition rate was high, so he had to prepare a lot of spare parts during trial production.

While he was working, Zhong Xiaoying quietly began to sharpen tools at her own workbench. As a watchmaker, although a full set of tools could be purchased, they still needed to be sharpened and maintained. Knowing how to sharpen basic tools like tweezers and screwdrivers was a fundamental skill for a watchmaker.

Tweezers had to be trimmed to be flat and sharp, so that they would not cause parts to fly around or be damaged when picking them up, or even cause scratches on the base plate and other parts.

The caliber of the screwdriver bits for each watch movement’s screws was different. The caliber had to be adjusted to avoid damaging the screws. The thickness of the screwdriver depended on the different screws, and it had to be ground until the screw and screwdriver could fit together tightly, inserting all the way to the bottom of the screw slot to be considered up to standard.

Zhong Xiaoying was quite skilled at this, so now Dr. Zhong’s tool sharpening was all done by her.

“You should go to bed first, it’s already very late,” Zhong Lishi said with his back to her. “There’s a full day of work tomorrow.”

“Father is not resting, how could your daughter dare to rest? Your daughter is not tired. It’s good to do something small for Father.”

Zhong Lishi smiled silently. “Alright then, come with me to the observatory in a little while.”

This was not a whim. Dr. Zhong’s idea had been submitted some time ago. To facilitate his work, he needed his adopted daughter to have access to the Yuanlao Senate’s core equipment. For this, he had submitted a special application, followed by a long wait—it wasn’t until a few days ago that he received the written approval.

Zhong Xiaoying’s face flushed with excitement—the observatory had always been a “forbidden place” for them. She knew that besides the Yuanlao, no naturalized citizen had ever set foot inside.

Father trusted her so much; he clearly saw her as a real daughter. A wave of warmth surged through Zhong Xiaoying’s chest. She put down her tools, walked to Zhong Lishi’s side, knelt down with a thud, and kowtowed three times heavily. “Thank you, Father!”

Dr. Zhong was startled and almost dropped the tool in his hand. Although it was abrupt, he felt a wave of warmth in his heart. He said gently, “Get up. There’s no need for such formality between us, father and daughter.”

As they were speaking, the electronic timer on the desk beeped. It was already 23:45. They had to get to the observatory before midnight to calibrate the time. Dr. Zhong stood up and put a wooden box from the desk into his pocket.

Zhong Xiaoying had already fetched a trench coat. There was a long corridor connecting the workshop to the observatory, but it was not completely enclosed. When it was windy and rainy, the corridor was inevitably exposed to the elements.

Dr. Zhong silently put it on and said, “You should put on a coat too. It’s windy outside.”

“Yes, thank you for your concern, Father.” Zhong Xiaoying also put on her trench coat and took a lantern to light the way ahead—there were no lights in the corridor.

Outside, it was windy and rainy, dark and cold. The two of them walked through the dark corridor and arrived at the observatory. The observatory was a three-story red brick building. On the brick-paved square outside the main entrance, the “Prime Meridian” was inlaid in bronze—this was actually the 110th meridian east that passed through this place.

The corridor led to the back door of the observatory. Dr. Zhong took out a string of keys from his pocket, found one by feel, and opened the steel security door.

The bottom of the observatory was a space with a ceiling that reached the third floor. The second floor was a gallery, and a spiral staircase led directly to the roof of the third floor, where a simple observation platform with a manually openable roof was located. On the observation platform was the best astronomical telescope in the Yuanlao Senate’s possession—of course, by astronomical standards, it was only amateur level, but by the standards of this time, it was a “divine instrument.”

Dr. Zhong rarely used that divine instrument. He usually focused on the transit instrument precisely installed on the 110th meridian east on the side. The transit instrument was used to accurately determine the time when a star crossed the upper meridian (the meridian circle of the observation station) through observation, in order to find the error of the sidereal clock, and thus determine Universal Time, the right ascension of stars, and the longitude of fundamental astronomical points.

This instrument was invented in the 17th century, but at this time, Lingao’s transit instrument was the only one of its kind in the world, not to mention that it was made in the 21st century.

An important purpose of astronomy in ancient societies was timekeeping. Using a transit instrument for timekeeping and determining latitude and longitude was a mature method. With manual observation at the observatory, it could achieve second-level accuracy.

The Ministry of Science and Technology had complete latitude and longitude data, and with astronomical software, it could produce accurate star charts. Combined with observations of sunrise and sunset times, it could provide timekeeping accurate to the second. Even in the 21st century with precise atomic time, astronomical time was still used for verification.

So far, all this work had been done by Dr. Zhong himself. Astronomical observation was a very tedious and time-consuming task. He couldn’t spend all day on it, or he would have no time for anything else—he still had the radio project to tackle.

Xiaoying was a very meticulous girl and was very “able to sit still.” He planned to slowly train her to do astronomical observations, teaching her the principles of timekeeping, rather than just being a watchmaker.

But today he did not take her to the roof—it was storming outside, making it impossible to observe the sky with the transit instrument. He turned on the electric light, and the space was immediately filled with light.

The observatory had a lot of high-tech equipment that required electricity, so the Planning Commission had generously installed a wind power and a solar power generation system here. The building was also equipped with electric lights for fire prevention.

He led Zhong Xiaoying to the bottom of the stairs, where there was a hidden door, also a genuine security door. After opening the security door, Dr. Zhong turned on the light, which illuminated a downward staircase.

“Father—”

“Let’s go down,” Zhong Lishi said, turning back to lock the door.

The two of them descended a dozen steps, and Dr. Zhong turned on another light. They came to a spacious room—a semi-basement with sturdy reinforced concrete beams and columns. The walls and ceiling were covered with thick insulation and moisture-proof materials.

In the room, on specially made racks, were various strange devices, all covered with glass domes. Some she recognized as clocks from the workshop, but others she had never seen before, flashing with red characters.

Dr. Zhong walked to the wall and looked at the temperature and humidity recorders—all products from the old world, used to monitor the constant temperature and humidity environment of the semi-basement.

This basement housed the most core component of the Yuanlao Senate’s timekeeping system: the reference clocks.

There wasn’t just one reference clock, but several. One was a backup clock from a PHS base station, and the others were backup marine chronometers from the ship Fengcheng. They accurately displayed the Beijing time and Greenwich Mean Time from another world.

Because of the importance of the time they recorded, these clocks had been kept in the Planning Commission’s special warehouse on Gaoshanling, carefully maintained in a constant temperature and humidity state, serving as the important time reference. Until the Taibai Observatory was formally established, all clocks and watches in the Yuanlao Senate were calibrated against these reference clocks.