From Chief to Ball

When all these emotions gradually spread to the whole country, people's thinking is also slowly changing: once the Qi State is defeated, there will be no more enemies, no need for the army, and no need for those who are given the right to political appeal because of joining the army the poor...

At that time, Chen Siwen grew up, no longer the young man dreaming of circumnavigating the earth, but became a normal military officer.

At that time, there was a poet who described everything after that: China will be like a pool of stagnant water, the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.There are no more heroes who have made military achievements in battle, only Chinese people who are only interested in profit.

It was also at that time that all weird views about people began to appear: someone compared the number of population growth, and was horrified to find that one day China's population would be too large to hold, and the world is only so big, so Only then have the anti-human ideas of drowning a group of poor people in proportion.

All kinds of parties have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, discussing only one thing: what kind of country is the best in this known world.

Chen Siwen went to school, and he studied very well; he had ideals, and his ideals were very high.But the more so, when faced with this kind of future, dark despair, he will be more desperate and decadent than others.

From a handsome young officer who wore a stiff uniform without epaulettes even at the dinner table at home, never devoured his meals, practiced spreading his big toes and gripping the ground with the forefoot to adapt to the deck when he walked, and could load a musket with his eyes closed; Became a fat middle-aged corrupt bureaucrat who is occasionally well-dressed, eats slowly, can ride a horse but not walk, and reads more novels than astrology charts.

He didn't want his son to walk the path he had walked again, because the ending was bound to be the same, so why bother?

He couldn't figure out why his son would change, and he couldn't figure out why his son had something ridiculous, something he called a dream, something he had.

After being relieved, there was only a sigh, this thing, it would be better not to have it all the time.

On the second night, while Chen Siwen was reading a book, Chen Jian walked in again, holding something made of wood in his hand.

Just looking up, I knew it was a triangular plate with a ninety-degree angle, and the scale was marked on it.

"What do you want to do again?"

"After I went back yesterday, I thought about the fact that the star board is not good, and the error is a bit large. When a person holds the star board, his arms are at the same level. It is not a person who has practiced for many years. The error will be very large. And the total of 30 yuan for the star board, Each board is at least three degrees, and the exact position can only be determined by visually identifying the star map near the Big Dipper, so I made this."

Chen Siwen frowned and said, "What do you know? Do you really think you understand everything after reading a few books?"

While talking, he took the set piece over without any anger, looked it over, and found that it was no different from the set piece with a [-]-degree angle, except that there was a hole in the center of the arc, and a rope was tied to it. Accented with a buckshot.

"What kind of crap is this?"

"A new star board."

Chen Siwen laughed loudly, pointing to this thing that a child who finished elementary school could knock out in a quarter of an hour, and said, "Are you kidding me?"

"Then let's try it. Calculate according to the earth's circumference of [-] miles. Calculate how far we are from the extreme north."

Chen Siwen laughed and closed the book, went back to the room and took out a large pile of mahogany boards that were rubbed by sweat and hands so smooth that they could no longer stand on them. The 30 yuan piles of pyramid-shaped wooden boards were piled up with Chen Jian. went outside.

The stars in the sky are very clear in the night sky. Chen Siwen knows that the sages knew about the precession hundreds of years ago, that the Polaris is constantly approaching the extreme north, and that the Polaris is about three degrees away from the true north. Even those who look at the stars all day use the precession movement to infer that Vega will appear in the north after 4000 years, and the current Polaris, which is not very clear at that time and is not too bright, will not Another Polaris.

The first story about the stars under the gourd stand a long time ago will become the protagonist of the starry sky in another 1 years, which was unexpected to those who listened to the story under the gourd stand hundreds of years ago.

The Polaris is not a star, it is a position, and whoever is there is the Polaris.

Chen Siwen looked at the starry sky in the extreme north, put the starboard on the ground, shook his head and said, "I have used the starboard since I was young, and I know it even with my eyes closed. If the equator is taken as zero, here is 28 degrees." Half, it's 660 miles from the extreme north. You don't need to calculate half of it, just calculate 28 degrees."

As soon as he finished speaking, he turned around and looked at his son holding the set square and the lead bullet hanging from the center of the arc, which looked like a hanging wire for building a house. Chen Siwen's mind buzzed, and he snatched the seemingly simple toy.

A right-angle fan-shaped, one side is a tin pipe that can be knocked out by any tin pot maker. Aim the tin pipe at the Polaris in the extreme north. After finding it from the field of vision, slowly adjust it, and put , Only a small round hole is exposed on the cover, and the position of the North Star can be found more accurately.

Then use the arm that has been practiced in star-stretching many years ago and practiced on the sea, which can not move at all no matter how your feet sway, to stabilize. The tone said: "Read the corner."

"61 and a half degrees."

Chen Siwen took a breath, put away this simple small wooden board, and murmured: "Subtract 61 and a half degrees from the angle of the moment, that is 28 and a half degrees... If it is made bigger, and the graduations are engraved, it will be really measurable." A gap of thirty or fifty miles...is useless."

"Besides, the wind and waves are strong at sea, and the vertical lead bullet will always shake, which may not be accurate. It just saves the hard work of practicing hand-to-hand alignment."

Although he said this on his lips, he couldn't help being excited in his heart. In the final analysis, this is an extremely simple problem-hands can be deceiving, and even eyes can be deceiving. They think they are flat when they are obviously not flat.

Only the cotton thread driven by the sagging lead bullet will not deceive people, it just points to the ground under the feet, and forms a rectangular angle with the theoretical horizontal level of the place where you stand.

The most experienced sailors can ask someone to put a bowl of water on their arm. The water in the bowl will be stable and will never tilt. They can even use their knowledge of the astrolabe map to roughly estimate the north and south positions at this time without using a starboard. .

But this thing... only needs two school-educated children to hold it, as long as one knows numbers, and the other can add and subtract within ninety.

Hanging wires have been used since ancient times, and are still used in building houses today, but the combination of a lead bullet and cotton thread has replaced the three-year hard work of navigators to stretch their arms.

When Chen Siwen was astonished, he heard again: "Father, the buckshot will indeed vibrate due to the swaying of the ship. If it is possible to make something, the angle can be determined not by the arm but by the principle that the world cannot change. Can you just rely on this to sneak into the navy and recruit as a student of the naval academy?"

"The unchangeable truth between heaven and earth?"

"Correct."

"If it can be made and it's easy to use, then you can really go there without paying a bribe!"

Chapter 7 The hardest first pot of gold

"It just needs some money to make it."

Chen Siwen glanced at Chen Jian, then looked at the protractor in his hand, clicked his tongue and said: "You don't have money to spend, you learned this from others, and you come to me to cheat money, right?"

Chen Jian shook his head hastily, and explained repeatedly, but Chen Siwen was dubious and asked, "How much?"

"How much does it cost to get someone to grind a glass mirror? And glass mirrors, the best watchmaker or locksmith..."

Having said this, Chen Siwen shook his head hastily.

"It's too much, I can't afford it. My money is all in the stock, and the dividends of the cargo ship every year are not too much. Don't look at your father and I receive kickbacks, but kickbacks are one thing, but you can't rely on This official position is directly divided into dry shares, this is a big matter, that is a small matter."

"Without money, nothing can be done?"

Chen Siwen nodded, then shook his head again.

"That depends on how much you want to do, and it also depends on your own struggle. Even the best schools, imperial schools, or palaces have set aside half of the places for those who have no money but are particularly good at learning. , everyone knows how to use guns, blocking the road will cause serious trouble.”

"Money is a good thing. Do you know what those people from the original Hou Bofeng state said about us? They don't recognize anything except money, beasts...it turns out that among them, those who once taught and enlightened people are respected , a noble profession. But here on our side, what is sacred, what is noble...all are thrown aside, it is very simple to work with money."

"Don't talk about that, let's talk about food, clothing, housing and transportation. A silver coin weighs about one tael, and it is strictly stipulated in the bank that it is exchanged for three hundred coppers. It can buy four hundred catties of rice and eight catties of cotton... It seems a lot, but is it actually?"

"A sea ship that transports coal across the sea from the northern coal mine to the south, and returns to transport rice, has a load of 60 square meters of water, which is 70 catties. It costs [-] silver coins to be built in the shipyard. I may buy it all my life. I can’t afford a large ship of [-] square meters, but we have more than [-] such large ships unique to Mincheng.”

"They transport tea and silk from here to the capital to exchange for iron, grain, gunpowder, and cotton cloth, and then go north to the desolate cold land to exchange for wood and fur for shipbuilding... How much can they earn on this trip? I know I can make money this way, but I can’t afford a boat, so I can only look at it greedily, so what can I do?”

"My little money is only one-fifth of a ship. If you just find an ordinary locksmith and watchmaker, I can afford the money. But you are the best locksmith and watchmaker when you open your mouth... …I don’t have that much money. As you know a few years ago, I had some money in my hand, but it was said that gold was found in the northern desert, and some money was raised here, and I also participated in the shares, but the result was a small mine. That money is all discounted.”

He didn't really care about it, after all, it was all in the past, and after the distress, it all became a passing cloud and vanished.

However, as a father, after saying these words, he patted Chen Jian on the shoulder heavily.

"Son, it's good for young people to have dreams, no matter what they are. I was young too, so I just want to tell you, don't dream too far, because you can't achieve it."

"Fantasy to see the sea outside, of course it is very good, of course it is very big. But... the previous few times I went to sea and failed, and now even those who have left their names on the shrine of the sages in the academy don't think that they can say Moving the meeting will once again throw hundreds of people into the boundless fog."

"The only way is to rely on money, rely on yourself, and rely on employment. Because no big businessman will fund such an obvious failure, and no one will invest money in such an obvious loss. Wang... Even if you are Wang , and can’t tell others.”