Chapter 358 — Entertainment and Gawain's Dilemma
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
It was an odd-looking machine, with a conveying structure for feeding paper and a large "drum" at its center. The conveying structure could send paper beneath the drum and make the paper advance in sync with the drum's rotation. Above the drum were connected an ink roller for transferring pigment and a container for storing ink. It was a printing press of simple structure and primitive technology.
A machine capable of continuous printing, a machine capable of changing the world.
Gawain said that if, once the people's material life was satisfied, their spiritual life could not be satisfied in time, then society would inevitably slide into chaos. The more severe the mismatch between the spiritual and the material, the more the chaos would intensify.
So after realizing that the territory's population was constantly increasing and that well-fed subjects needed spiritual life, he had quickly devised entertainments like chess, Lord's Cards, and billiards to relieve the mental pressure brought on by intense, continuous work and to raise everyone's happiness in living on this land.
But entertainment alone was not enough.
Through the compulsory promotion of general education, more and more people in the territory possessed basic literacy. At the same time, with population growth and urban expansion, relying on the original city-center bulletin boards and soldiers' public lectures to spread ideas was clearly no longer sufficient. So Gawain hit upon the necessity of elevating the territory's cultural construction and increasing the intensity and means of propaganda.
Since the people could read, then give them reading material—that was Gawain's most direct thought.
It was not that the territory lacked printing technology. In fact, this world possessed not only mature papermaking but also relatively mature woodblock printing. The labels pasted on the bottles of alchemical potions produced by the alchemical factories, and the textbooks used by students at the General Academy, were all produced with this printing technology. For the early stage—even for the territory's cultural propaganda construction at the present stage—these techniques were already sufficient. But for the future Gawain wished to realize, they fell far short.
He needed technology more convenient, easier to edit and implement, and better suited to large-scale industrial mass production to replace these two "workshop techniques."
So, based on what he remembered and what he surmised, he designed this continuous rotary printing press. But now he had to solve one problem: how to make the printing plates.
How could edited content be converted, in the quickest and most convenient way, into raised and recessed text on the drum, and then printed out?
Traditional engraving was obviously too slow for plate-making, and it did not meet his requirements of "easy to operate, easy to edit, low cost."
Frankly speaking, although Gawain could conceive most of the printing press's structure, he had no idea how to realize the key technology within it. Even though his memory had been enhanced and he could recall all the knowledge he had seen in his previous life, he could not conjure from thin air things he had never seen. And he felt that even if he did know those key technologies, it would be useless—whether they could be realized in this world of strange physical laws was still an open question...
He had to think of a solution from the angle of magic. Unfortunately, he had not yet come up with one.
After brooding at his desk for a while, he raised his head and called out toward the corridor outside the study: "Betty!"
The little maid immediately pushed the door open and bowed low: "Master!"
"Go and fetch Rebecca."
A moment later, the Viscountess of the Cecil family arrived at Gawain's study.