Chapter 99: The Glass Dry Plate

Ge Xinxin changed into straw slippers and took off her coat. The feeling of the wooden floor on her feet brought a sense of relief to her sore ankles. She first went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, set her alarm for 12:30 AM, and then lay down on a rattan rocking chair, covering herself with a blanket.

“Ring…” The old-fashioned mechanical alarm clock she had brought often needed to be calibrated. Its only advantage was that it was loud enough to wake an elephant. Ge Xinxin straightened her clothes a little, washed her face with cold water, and returned to the laboratory. Once again, with only the red flashlight on, she took out the silver bromide gelatin she had just put in the box, first pouring off the surface water, then wrapping some of the gelatin in a piece of white cloth that had been boiled and dried. Like squeezing cream onto a cake, she repeatedly squeezed all the gelatin into a line into a large beaker with 3L of distilled water. She gently swirled the beaker, and after a few minutes, poured out the water and added 2L of distilled water. After repeating this five times, she drained the water completely. She heated the gelatin again until it melted, stirred for 10 minutes, let it stand for a short while, and then poured off the surface water.

Having completed this step, Ge Xinxin let out a long sigh. This was the most tiring of all the steps. Once this was done, the difficulty was not so great. She took out a simple coating device she had made herself. It was actually two parallel guide rails with a 30cm gap and a polished glass strip to prevent scratching her hands. Ge Xinxin carefully held the edge of a 15cm x 20cm glass plate that had been cut long ago, washed ten times with distilled water, and then soaked in ethanol for a day, and fixed it in the middle of the guide rails.

These glass plates had been specially ordered from the laboratory a few days ago and had just been delivered. The glass factory had a workshop dedicated to making supporting glass instruments and consumables for the laboratory to meet its requirements for high precision and high purity. These glass plates were manufactured to the highest possible uniformity. However, Ge Xinxin was not very confident in the quality control of the glass factory. She had instructed a trainee experimenter to measure the thickness of the glass plates one by one with a micrometer to see if they were uniform.

A total of one hundred glass plates had been delivered. The trainee experimenter had carefully measured each one with great patience and selected forty-three for use according to the standards Ge Xinxin had given.

The thickness error of these 43 glass plates was within an acceptable range. But she only planned to make 20 today. She glanced at the level on the table to confirm that the table was currently level. She then scooped out a spoonful of gelatin and poured it evenly on one side of the glass plate, using the glass strip to spread the gelatin evenly along the guide rails. In this way, she made 20 glass plates coated with silver bromide gelatin. She carefully placed the wooden box with slots, now filled with the glass plates, on a desiccant, covered it, and put it in a cabinet along with the box containing the beaker of gelatin—the cabinet had also been leveled with a level beforehand.

She was making photographic glass dry plates. Although the evenness of the coating applied with a glass strip was limited, as long as the glass plates were qualified, it was not a big problem. The emulsion on a glass dry plate was not on the micron level like on film; it was generally 0.5-1 mm, so a little error was not a big deal. On the contrary, it was essential to maintain absolute levelness while waiting for the coating to dry. Although the fluidity of gelatin was not good, if there was any inclination, it would still flow, causing problems immediately.

Ge Xinxin finally shook her sore arms, turned on the light, tidied up a bit, and left the laboratory. At this time, the eastern sky was already beginning to show the first light of dawn.

Two nights later, Ge Xinxin brought a small leather suitcase from her dormitory. From it, she took out a Technica 3000 and two plate holders. After drawing the curtains tightly, she used her own glass cutter to cut 2 glass dry plates into 4x5 inch sizes and put them in the plate holders under the illumination of a red flashlight. The rest were put back into the wooden box and covered. Then, she put the camera and plate holders back in the suitcase and locked it in the Lin’gao-made safe in the laboratory.

The next day happened to be a nice sunny day. In the afternoon, Ge Xinxin took out the camera body from the suitcase, mounted a P65+, set the sensitivity to 50, mounted an APO Lanthar 210mm f/4.5, set the aperture-shutter to f/8, and then adjusted the shutter speed from 1/25 to 1/200 in steps. Then, she switched the back to a film holder, took one picture at a shutter speed of 1/12 and another at 1/25, and then put away the camera, back, and plate holder. She placed the plate holder separately in a storage cabinet in the laboratory and locked the suitcase back in the safe.

Returning to the laboratory, Ge Xinxin opened the locked drawer at the bottom of the chemical cabinet and took out several bottles of reagents wrapped in black paper. She opened the packaging. The “Guoyao” label, with its distinct 21st-century characteristics, revealed their origin—precious chemicals from the original world. Some of these chemicals could be manufactured by the Lin’gao chemical department, but not to an analytical grade. To be cautious, Ge Xinxin decided to use the spare supplies from the old world. She selected sodium thiosulfate, metol, hydroquinone, and sodium sulfite, and then put the remaining reagents back in the drawer. Next, she found borax on the upper shelf of the chemical cabinet and also placed it on the lab bench.

“The only comfortable thing here is probably having someone to help wash the beakers,” Ge Xinxin muttered to herself as she took a large 1L beaker. She added 750ml of distilled water to the beaker and heated it on a gas lamp. Then she entered the balance room, turned on the analytical balance, and carefully weighed 2.5g of metol, 6g of hydroquinone, and 2.5g of borax. She then used a platform balance to weigh 125g of sodium sulfite, poured it into the beaker, and stirred carefully until the temperature of the liquid in the beaker rose to 50°C, then stopped heating. She added 500ml of cold distilled water, stirred well, and poured it into a 1.25L Coke bottle, carefully squeezing out the air at the top before capping it and labeling it “Developer.” She then used the platform balance to weigh 300g of sodium thiosulfate, dissolved it in 750ml of hot water, added 500ml of cold water, put it in a Coke bottle, squeezed out the air, capped it, and labeled it “Fixer.” She placed both bottles in a cold water bath.

Then Ge Xinxin put all the reagents back in their places and cleaned the analytical balance. After turning off the power, she placed it in a glass cover with a desiccant. Then she called her trainee experimenter, asked her to tidy up all the instruments, and told her to prepare a large basin of warm water.

“The flasks must be washed clean!” Ge Xinxin said this tirelessly. She had little teacher-student affection for the two girls assigned to her. Apart from giving them standards to work by and teaching them how to do their work, she never showed them any kindness.

After doing all this, she took off her lab coat and once again took the commuter train to Bairen for dinner. This time she planned to go to the Agricultural Estate Teahouse. It was said that they had added several new “Western dishes,” such as Indian roti prata and Spanish seafood paella. She decided to go for a change of pace.

After dinner, she returned to the Elder residential area in Bairen City. She had also bought an apartment here according to the policy—the smallest model. Because she mainly slept in the dormitory, she basically used this place as a storage room, filled with her personal belongings. In addition to the luggage she had brought with her, there were also various things she had bought in this world, mainly various items bought at trophy auctions, including some of her favorite European miscellaneous goods—real handmade products from the German states, France, Spain, and the Italian states. If she could take some of them back to the old world and show them off on Weibo, it would attract the envious eyes of many girls.

But she returned to the dormitory mainly to take a good bath—the laboratory dormitory building only had a public shower. After taking a bath in the dormitory, Ge Xinxin applied a little of her self-extracted floral essential oil—a habit she had picked up while studying in France—and then boarded the train to the laboratory. The temperature in Hainan in spring in the original world was often above 20°C, but on a clear night in the 17th century during the Little Ice Age, it was only about 15°C. The evening wind, mixed with moisture, blew, and she suddenly felt a little cold.

“Not being able to use a hairdryer is really troublesome,” she couldn’t help but complain a little at the thought of the hairdryer that had been sleeping in storage since D-Day. Recently, the industrial sector was “saving electricity to run electricity,” which had led to a significant reduction in the Elders’ domestic electricity consumption.

Ge Xinxin tucked her hair behind her ears and looked out the carriage window. Although the factory area, which had an order of magnitude “advantage” over other places in the world, was constantly polluting, the 17th-century night sky still had a splendor rarely seen in the 21st century. Sirius in the southern sky announced its status as a -1.47 magnitude star with its extremely dazzling brightness.

“Just wait, in a year I will record your spectra again,” Ge Xinxin whispered to herself as she picked up her handbag and rang the cord to the driver’s cabin to notify the driver to stop at the upcoming chemical plant passenger platform.

Returning to the laboratory, Ge Xinxin took out a clean rectangular glass shallow dish, poured in 1cm deep developer, and placed it in a freshly prepared 22°C water bath. She also poured a dish of fixer and placed it in the water bath. She also prepared a dish of 5% acetic acid and a large beaker of distilled water. After taking out the plate holder from the storage cabinet, she set up the darkroom again and opened the dark box under the red flashlight. She took out the glass plate, gently placed it in the shallow dish of developer, and looked at her watch. She gently rocked the shallow dish for 5 minutes, then took out the plate and placed it in 5% acetic acid for 10 seconds, quickly took it out, rinsed it gently in distilled water a few times, and placed it in the fixer dish. After gently rocking the shallow dish for 5 minutes, she took out the plate, rinsed it with distilled water, and placed it on the plate rack. After rinsing the other plate in the same way, Ge Xinxin turned on the light, poured the used developer and fixer into a special recycling bottle, and put the fresh ones back in the light-proof cabinet. Then she called the trainee experimenter on duty, asked her to clean up the instruments, and then signed the logbook and left the laboratory.