Chapter 918 – Telescopes

"Perfect timing."

Lin Hanlong pointed at a half-assembled machine. "Flat-surface grinder. Should be assembled and ready for testing by next week."

Qian Shuiting turned his head back and forth, comparing the flat-surface grinder to the spherical grinder beside it. "The structure looks remarkably similar."

"Essentially the same design. The only difference is that the grinding tool moves in a planar motion—a slight variation there."

"You said this is for making binoculars for the Navy? I thought binoculars weren't standard equipment until the Battle of Tsushima—and even then they were quite precious. What's your cost per unit?"

In answer, Lin Hanlong walked to a nearby workbench and picked up a monocular telescope, handing it to Qian Shuiting. By modern standards, the workmanship was rather crude. The barrel was gleaming brass, but processing scratches were visible everywhere. The eyepiece had a protective ring that felt like leather. Adjusting the tube revealed no obvious sticking, though it didn't move particularly smoothly either.

"This one's for the Army—the cheapest model. Five man-hours to make." Lin Hanlong smiled wryly. "Although it cost quite a bit of arguing to get even this much brass. Can't help it—there's no better material for telescope barrels at the moment."

Qian Shuiting did some silent calculations. "Less than three yuan in circulation vouchers—at most three fen in real silver. If we could sell these externally, fifty taels of silver each and buyers would fight over them."

"They can be sold externally. I have better ones." Lin Hanlong handed over another monocular.

This new telescope looked quite different. Though the brass barrel was equally scratched, the shape was flatter, comfortable to grip, clearly designed with ergonomics in mind. A large knob in the middle of the barrel, when turned, caused the tube to extend and retract automatically.

"This one takes fifteen man-hours."

"Oh, that expensive? What's the advantage?"

Lin Hanlong led Qian Shuiting out through a side door, pointing at a distant smokestack for comparison. Under the gas streetlamp's light, the five-hour cheap model could only barely make out the smokestack's shape amid a blur—edges indistinct. The fifteen-hour premium model could clearly distinguish the mortar joints in the brickwork and individual wisps of white smoke. The difference was obvious at a glance.

"This is practically the same as what we brought. Absolutely worth the price."

Lin Hanlong shook his head. "The quality still falls a big step short. This one's just for practice—nobody actually wants it."

He explained that the item occupied an awkward middle ground. The Army preferred the cheap version because it could be issued in bulk to native junior officers, scouts, and gunners—loss and damage weren't concerns. The Navy only wanted binoculars; they didn't care for monoculars even if the quality was superior. As for transmigrator officers, everyone had at least a few genuine military-grade pieces from the old timeline, naturally superior.

Regarding binocular costs—hand-grinding the prism with silver coating took a week; machining the barrel took nearly another week; Lin Hanlong and two others spent three-plus days on assembly and calibration. The result: three finished units. Adding in lens costs, each binocular came to over sixty man-hours. But this was the current hand-prototyping time; once the flat-surface grinder was operational and barrel processes matured, man-hours could drop dramatically. Additionally, the Navy's non-combat vessels wouldn't receive binoculars. Main combat ships with transmigrator officers already possessed old-timeline telescopes. The actual need was just a portion of combat and patrol craft crewed exclusively by naturalized personnel. Lin Hanlong estimated a hundred to two hundred units would suffice.

"That's the power of industry." Qian Shuiting sighed. Elsewhere in the world, even the most primitive spyglasses were rare, high-end military products. In Lingao, binoculars nearly three hundred years ahead of the world were mass-produced items requiring at most sixty man-hours.

Setting down the telescope, Qian Shuiting put his sunglasses back on and watched with great interest as Lin Hanlong demonstrated how to make non-spherical lenses. Simply put, these lenses were just drops of molten glass. Due to surface tension, molten glass naturally formed a curved surface. If glass blanks of the same diameter and weight were used, the curved surfaces they formed after melting would be essentially identical. This method was suited for making small-diameter, short-focal-length lenses, such as microscope objectives. Historically, Leeuwenhoek had made over a hundred microscopes using molten glass-rod lenses. His technique was lost after his death and wasn't rediscovered for over a century. Here in Lin Hanlong's workshop, blanks were cut one by one from glass rods; after confirming their weights matched, they were placed on tin dishes and heated with a coal-gas torch. With proper control of the flame, highly consistent, smooth products were easily produced. A bit of polishing and they became finished lenses.

Qian Shuiting suddenly asked with excitement: "Old Lin, how about making photochromic glasses? They'd be an absolute sensation out there."

Lin Hanlong gave an embarrassed smile. Qian Shuiting realized he'd asked too abruptly and inquired about the key issues.

The principle of photochromic lenses was fairly simple: fine particles of silver bromide and copper oxide were added to the lens glass. Silver bromide decomposed into bromine and silver under strong light, darkening the color. In dim light, copper oxide catalyzed the recombination of bromine and silver, making the glass transparent again. But saying it was easy and doing it were different matters entirely. Lingao didn't yet mass-produce silver bromide, and there were difficulties in turning solid chemicals into fine particles. So photochromic lenses remained out of reach. However, once daguerreotype photography technology broke through, the same processes could be adapted to produce the necessary raw materials for photochromic lenses. At the current stage, manufacturing colored sunglasses wasn't really a problem for Lingao.

"If we could get hold of natural quartz in large quantities, we could make amber-tinted glasses and such." Lin Hanlong recalled that much of the quartz from Donghai County was tea-colored.

He then led Qian Shuiting to a row of wooden racks covered with boxes. Opening them revealed piles of glass of various colors and shapes. Each box lid had a pasted form densely filled with data on formulations and processing. These were all samples made using already mass-produced glass materials as a base, with various minerals obtainable in Lingao added.

"Oh, so that's how you found the formulations?"

Lin Hanlong smiled wryly. "No. This approach is basically groping in the dark—can't get it right." He and the Chemistry Department transmigrators had spent almost a month trying to formulate optical glass in small crucibles, all with poor results. Without quantitative analysis, the glass produced not only had colors that were hard to remove, but worse, each batch turned out different. Finally, with no other choice, he'd soft-talked the Executive Committee into a special approval to use the X-ray fluorescence spectrometer once on a batch of carefully selected samples. This modern analytical instrument was practically a cheat code; within two hours, the precise elemental composition of the samples was determined. Based on this, and consulting the optical glass process manuals they'd brought, the Chemistry Department quickly produced passable optical glass samples. They could now reliably make four or five grades of glass, including the most common crown and flint glasses. But this batch of glass was limited in quantity—a concern for the future.

Looking at the astonished Qian Shuiting, Lin Hanlong explained further that the Chemistry Department had specifically set aside twenty tons of glass raw materials to ensure product consistency. This stockpile had been ground, thoroughly mixed, then sealed and reserved specifically for optical glass. The composition testing had been done on samples from this twenty-ton reserve.

Ordinary glass production had now reached large-scale levels. The original ore source was exhausted; now they were using quartz sand from Changhua. The Changhua quartz sand was excellent quality, but needless to say, the new material wouldn't have exactly the same composition as before.

"But by the time those twenty tons are used up, I estimate we'll be well into the Second Five-Year Plan." Lin Hanlong was confident. "Once I'm past this busy stretch, I'll make a Bunsen spectrometer. Then we won't be entirely dependent on modern equipment."

After touring the optical workshop, Qian Shuiting seemed ready to take his leave. Just as he was about to speak, Lin Hanlong slapped his forehead. "Ah, your laser device is fixed—perfect timing to show you."

He led Qian Shuiting out of the workshop, circled halfway around, and walked a short distance more. Ahead was a row of single-story buildings, doors and windows tightly closed despite the summer heat. Lin Hanlong opened a door and gestured for Qian Shuiting to enter; inside was another door. Qian Shuiting noticed thick insulation material wrapped around the doorframe. Lin Hanlong followed him in, shut the outer door behind them, then opened the inner door.

Inside, the light was dim, but a wave of coolness washed over them.

"Optical assembly workshop. Temperature controlled to some extent," Lin Hanlong said. Bronze pipes were extravagantly arrayed along the walls.

"Ground-source air conditioning. Installed recently," Lin Hanlong explained from beside him. Forced-air cooling was no longer sufficient here; using ice blocks would increase air humidity, so special approval had been granted to install ground-source air conditioning.

Ground-source air conditioning was remarkably effective at temperature control, maintaining relatively constant temperatures regardless of summer or winter, without raising humidity. The only drawback was that it consumed large amounts of copper. So only a very few sites in Lingao could install this type of system.

Temperature control during assembly was primarily to prevent thermal expansion and contraction from causing unnecessary errors. Although many optical instruments currently made in Lingao didn't require extremely high precision, Lin Hanlong had always believed that establishing strict standards from the start was better than tightening up later after things became lax.

Qian Shuiting noticed several workers in the room focused intently on operating instruments. He said nothing more, quietly following Lin Hanlong around several workbenches into another room. This room was empty except for several workbenches holding what were obviously instruments brought by the transmigrators. Lin Hanlong walked to a workbench where a bench vise held a cylindrical object. He flipped a switch; a red spot of light appeared on the far wall. Lin Hanlong beckoned Qian Shuiting over to the light spot and pointed:

"Five-meter distance. Error won't exceed one millimeter."

Qian Shuiting leaned down to examine the spot—it landed right in the center of a small crosshair. He nodded.

Lin Hanlong walked back to the workbench, turned off the laser, removed it from the vise, and handed it to Qian Shuiting. "The epoxy was applied day before yesterday. Should be fully cured by now."

Qian Shuiting thanked him profusely. This small laser was the sighting device for Qian Shuixie's laser pistol. A few days ago during training, it had accidentally fallen from a height and hit a rock. The casing was dented; the laser was no longer properly collimated. Now the casing looked fully restored, and the laser seemed accurate.

"Just one thing—it's heavier than before." Lin Hanlong picked up a damaged part from the table. "This center positioning cone was made of engineering plastic, but it cracked in the fall. I made you a replacement in copper—same function, just a bit heavier."

Qian Shuiting suddenly remembered. "You said epoxy resin? Isn't that a modern product we brought?"

Lin Hanlong smirked. "Yes. But this stuff has a shelf life; it'll go bad just sitting there."

Qian Shuiting tossed the sighting device in his palm, then casually tucked it into his pocket. He said his goodbyes. As Lin Hanlong escorted him through the assembly workshop, they passed a naturalized worker whose eyes pleaded for help. Lin Hanlong nodded at the worker, then opened the door to see Qian Shuiting out.

Qian Shuiting felt the trip had been worthwhile. He'd deepened his friendships among technical otaku and gained a much deeper understanding of optics. He told Lin Hanlong confidently: "Old Lin! I'm grateful everyone thought enough of me to elect me Speaker. To be honest, even after being elected, I had no confidence. But since I've taken the position, I want to do something for everyone. Rest assured—I'll make a move soon and speak up for those of us on the front lines. Let everyone see how important we are."

Lin Hanlong nodded. "Then I await the good news."

After seeing off Qian Shuiting, Lin Hanlong returned to the assembly workshop. The worker who'd requested help was operating a knife-edge tester to inspect a freshly ground lens, apparently uncertain about the result. Lin Hanlong sat down, peered at the knife edge, turned the dial in front of it, looked again, then moved the knife edge left and right.

"You've got stray light. The aperture's too big—too much reflection. Everything looks bright and washes out the real image." Lin Hanlong looked up at the worker. "Adjust it like this, switch to a smaller pinhole, and you'll be able to see properly."

Seeing the worker's half-understanding, obsequious expression, Lin Hanlong sighed inwardly. He'd wanted to explain the principles of the knife-edge tester, but no amount of explanation could make physical optics comprehensible to someone who'd spent his life holding a hoe and was still in adult literacy class. All he could do was let them slowly accumulate experience through practice and hope they'd make fewer basic mistakes in the future.

Lin Hanlong waited a moment, watching the native worker operate, and moved on only once he'd confirmed the man had the hang of it. He strolled to the other end of the room, where someone was doing telescope assembly. He stood behind the assembler for a while, then tapped his shoulder and gestured for him to make room. He sat down and peered at the collimator positioned in the distance. The sodium-yellow gas lamp was bright, and the light spot from the collimator was fine. The telescope lenses were already fixed with adhesive in their brass mounting rings. He turned the ring with his hand, carefully observing the light spot refracted through the lens. After several rotations, he turned back and asked the assembler: "What do you think?"

"Reporting, Chief! I think this side needs a bit more grinding!" The middle-aged assembler reached over from the side and pointed at a marked spot on the ring.

Lin Hanlong grunted and nodded for him to continue. Lacking mass-producible precision machining and without good adhesives or adjusting screws, the only way to do optical assembly was fitting—using files, whetstones, and sandpaper to trim the mounting hardware, striving for reasonably good precision. Needless to say, this method was slow and parts weren't interchangeable, but it was still far better than anywhere else in the world, which was only just groping toward the principles of optics.

Coming out of the assembly workshop, Lin Hanlong returned to his office for a few sips of tea, then went back out to patrol the workshop several more times. Time passed quickly; suddenly it was 11 PM. Time for the break and "lunch." Lin Hanlong whispered a few words to his apprentice, who hurried to the on-duty workshop supervisor and murmured in his ear. Lin Hanlong took his position beside a grinder and pulled out his watch.

Clang-clang—clang-clang—clang-clang—

The workshop suddenly rang with bell sounds—the workshop supervisor striking the emergency bell. Different bell patterns meant different things; two short rings meant fire.

The workers began whispering among themselves. Fire! It's a fire! Each pulled down their machine's stop lever, did a quick count, then began heading out. Lin Hanlong stopped a worker who was about to turn off the grinder.

"This is a drill. Don't touch this machine—let it run." The worker acknowledged with a bow and left.

Within a minute, all machines in the workshop had stopped and most people were gone. The workshop supervisor and two others made a circuit of the workshop, then came to Lin Hanlong's side.

"Chief! Everyone's out. Every station has been checked per regulations—all secure!"

Lin Hanlong nodded with satisfaction. "One minute twenty seconds. Not bad. Go outside and do a headcount."

Outside the workshop, all native workers had already lined up. The on-duty squad leaders reported their numbers to the supervisor, who then reported to Lin Hanlong that all personnel were accounted for.

Lin Hanlong waved his hand. "Good work today, everyone. Let's eat."

Outside the workshop door, several people had been waiting with meal containers and two carrying poles, bamboo-pass cards hanging from their necks. Hearing Lin Hanlong give the order, they immediately set down one pole. One end held a large rice barrel; the other end was two tiers of smaller dish barrels stacked like steamer baskets. They set up a small wooden table, placed the dish barrels on top, put the rice barrel to one side, and laid out serving spoons and utensils. The other pole was also unloaded—a soup barrel on one end; the other end like a modern tool cabinet with small drawers in layers. All food-contact utensils were made of tin or galvanized sheet iron, with lids to ensure sanitation.