The departure of Xun Yu and Jiang Yao made Liu Heng and Jiang Yao, who were already familiar with the lively atmosphere, suddenly feel uncomfortable.
Living in the house that Xun Yu had already paid for, Liu Heng began to think about his future path. First of all, he had to consider how to build his own foundation. With a foundation, he could gradually realize his own ideas.
Business was the fastest way, and this was a common thing in ancient times. Doing business to earn money and buying an official position to gain fame could be considered a roundabout way to save the country.
This was because money was an independent capital, especially in an era where the imperial power was weakening. With money, one could directly buy official positions and titles from the emperor and then form their own private troops.
"Haha!" Liu Heng couldn't help but laugh." You can buy an official position and recruit private soldiers. If Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty knew about this, he would be furious!"”
After careful investigation, Liu Heng found that paper had already begun to be popularized in the upper class of this era. It was mainly Cai Hou paper, which was invented by Cai Lun, the Eastern Han Shang Fang Ling.
However, Cai Hou's paper had a rough surface, and its color was obviously yellow, although it had been greatly improved compared to the previous paper.
However, the price of this kind of paper was still relatively expensive and could not be popularized in the middle and lower classes of society. The production limit could not meet the needs of the society at that time.
The price was high and the supply was in short supply. This was an excellent business opportunity!
Liu Heng immediately racked his brain, thinking about how the paper of his era was made. Although it could not achieve the smoothness, thickness, and brightness of modern paper, its quality should be better than the Cai Hou paper of today.
Following this train of thought, Liu Heng roughly wrote down the main parts of the paper, such as raw materials, production process, auxiliary materials, production equipment, etc., especially in terms of improving brightness and smoothness, because good smoothness and brightness were prerequisites for printing.
He drew hundreds of paintings for this purpose, and then used the money left by Xun Yu to buy a small workshop near the river.
In this workshop, Liu Heng studied hard behind closed doors. From the whiteness of raw materials to the design and improvement of production equipment, every process had to go through many repeated experiments.
After all, Liu Heng had never visited a paper mill. All the knowledge he knew about paper making came from books. Now, he could only rely on his own ability to find a way to put these messy things together.
However, the development of things was not as simple as imagined. In the initial trial production, there were many unexpected situations. The raw materials could not be very smooth, the bleaches did not work, the paper could not be formed, and so on.
Liu Heng had spent a lot of time thinking about all of these, but he was able to solve all of them.
Hard work paid off. After hundreds of failures, in the fifth month of the fifth year of Guanghe, the material of the time was combined with the technology of two thousand years later. The first true white paper of this era was born!
Sulfur was used as the main ingredient to make the paper whiter. The steaming, stirring, and grinding made the plant fibers more compact and enhanced flexibility. It was not as easy to tear as Caihou paper. The pressing and drying technology ensured that the thickness of the paper was uniform. This method was completely an ancient version of modern paper-making technology.
The smoothness, brightness, and thickness of the new paper were far better than the Caihou paper at that time. It could already meet the basic requirements of printing.
Although the paper was still relatively thick and hard, it was made of bark, grass, wheat straw, and other raw materials, but there was no problem binding it into a book.
Of course, for Liu Heng, who had been using modern paper for more than ten years, this kind of paper was still far from enough.
When this kind of paper first appeared in Yang Le, people looked at it in disbelief. It was white, tough, and smooth. When it was placed under the sun, no obvious fiber veins could be seen.
Liu Heng cut the paper according to the ratio of length to width, which was the first time that the paper size was unified. People were surprised, and the first batch of 100 pieces of paper was immediately sold out!
Many shrewd businessmen saw the huge profits and came to buy it one after another, advertising it for free.
In less than 1 month, this piece of paper had spread across Youzhou Province. According to their habits, paper was usually named after the inventor, so this kind of paper was called "Liu's paper", or "Gao paper" for short.
Gao Zhi's great success caused Liu Heng's status to rise rapidly. Overnight, he became the talk of the town in Yang Le and even Youzhou. His wealth also accumulated crazily.
The great clans of Youzhou, the Liu Clan of Zhuo County, the Gongsun Clan of Yuyang, and the Xianyu Clan of Xiangping, all sent people to pay high prices to place orders.
Liu Heng assessed the situation and quickly expanded the scale of production. He also appropriately lowered the price of paper from 80 yuan per piece to 70 yuan. There was also a discount for buying more. This price was only slightly more expensive than Cai Hou paper at that time. Under the condition that the price difference was not much, who would not want to use better things?
Hence, merchants from all over the world flocked over. Even merchants from the distant Qingzhou came to Youzhou, which they regarded as a cold and bitter place, for this paper!
After the mass production of paper, Liu Heng began to consider the issue of books. After all, books were still mainly hand-copied at that time, so the price was naturally much higher. This was also one of the main reasons why many ordinary people did not have the ability to touch books. This situation was not alleviated until the birth of movable type printing.
Now, Liu Heng had decided to bring this technology forward. He was prepared to first develop movable type printing and then the primitive printing press. That way, printing alone could create huge wealth. At the same time, it could also allow the vast number of ordinary people to come into contact with books and open up the minds of the people!
After Liu Heng made up his mind, he immediately searched for knowledge related to movable type printing." Fortunately, I studied movable type printing in high school. As long as I draw the blueprint, it shouldn't be difficult to copy it.”
However, it was easier said than done.
At this time, the length measurement tools were inches and feet. Liu Heng was extremely unused to it and had to do unit conversion every time.
Therefore, Liu Heng simply made the first meter ruler according to the conversion of meters and rulers, and the scale was accurate to millimeters.
With the unit of length, Liu Heng began to study movable type printing. After several experiments and memories of the history of movable type printing, he finally decided to use clay and ink as the benchmark.
Just like that, movable type printing was born in ancient China. The first book to be printed was the ancient classic " Strategy of the Warring States Period."
Later, Zuo Zhuan, The Book of Songs, and the world-famous Analects of Confucius were published.
On the back page of the book, Liu Heng added the printing date, word count, and other relevant data that only future generations had. It was also considered a pioneering work.
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