"Mr. Berns, Betty, I need you to refine such a feasible plan for me."
In the lord's office, Paul was talking to a picture hanging on the wall. Gaye Berns, Betty Diaz, Laddie·Setia and others were also sitting in the room.
The content of the picture hanging on the wall is of a stone tower, which looks like a guard tower, but what is strange is that there is a strange device standing on the top of the tower.
That one is a wooden frame, with two bent "arms" extending out of the wooden frame.
Gaye Berns asked with great interest, "What novel invention is this of yours?"
"Oh! This is an amazing thing, or an amazing system."
"I call him - [Urgent Report Station], or [Semaphore Signal System], used to deliver urgent information."
"Lord Earl, if I guess correctly, you are trying to use the two [arms] on the wooden frame to make different shapes to convey different messages."
"Aha! Berns, you are really my soulmate! Yes, this invention was inspired by Beacon Fire, but you know, the amount of information that Beacon Fire can convey is really too much It was limited, so I thought of Flag Language, and after a slight improvement, it turned into something like this. You see, each shape represents a letter or a number, and then combined they form a complete sentence or a complete paragraph."
Paul introduced his "invention" without a blush or a heartbeat. "We build such a Urgent Report Station at certain distances, called [base stations], and specialized personnel are stationed above to wait to receive signals from other emergency reports. Starting from the first station, the information is passed on one station after another like a baton, until it reaches the terminal station."
"In the past, due to the limited vision of human eyes, it was a bit unrealistic to build such a system, but with Telescope, it is completely feasible. We only need to build a small number of Urgent Report Station to transmit information over long distances."
Berns marveled. "This is really an amazing invention."
Was this invented by Paul? Of course not, the real inventor of this [Optical Telegraph] is the French Claude·Chappe.
In northern France in 1791, Claude·Chappe and his brothers designed a "telegraph" system for long-distance optical transmission of information. They successfully transmitted a sentence 16 kilometers away in 4 minutes, which was much faster than the stagecoaches and ships used at the time.
This is a system that relies entirely on manual operation. The signalman stationed inside moves the indicating arm according to specific rules. Every time the indicating arm of Signal Tower moves into a shape, it means that a signal has been sent. Different signal stations play solitaire and the message is passed on.
Compared with a real telegraph, the efficiency of information transmission is very "touching". A skilled operator can output up to 3 signals per minute. According to statistics, a complete message at that time consisted of an average of 36 signals, which meant that even if the best operators were used throughout the system, the system could only deliver 0.083 messages per minute. If it is windy or rainy or the operator is in a bad mood, whether the message can be sent out depends on luck.
However, even with this alarming signaling system, the information transmission efficiency was enough to beat the human transmission of the same era.
It developed into an industry and served government enterprises in peacetime. By 1840, France had built a 5,000-kilometer communication network and 356 base stations. A total of thousands of such "telegraph" towers were built across Europe. It can be regarded as the first generation of information highway.
In Alexandre Dumas's novel "The Count of Monte Cristo", the count bribed the telegraph operator to send out wrong messages, causing Danglars to lose money in speculation, and then withdrew all the money he had deposited in Danglars' bank. Danglars was unable to pay and eventually went bankrupt.
Paul I am very fortunate that the language system of this world is an alphabetic script similar to Latin. If it were like cuneiform, it would be really urgent.
"Berns, I need you to set up an operating device so that the operator can easily swing the rocker arm into different shapes."
Berns stood up and bowed to Paul: "I am honored to be able to participate in your great invention."
"Haha, it's our great invention."
Paul corrected him with a smile, and then he turned to the education director Betty: "As for you, master of linguistics, I need you to design a coding system-what shapes represent what letters or numbers. Laddie, you are also a knowledgeable scholar, I hope you can help."
Laddie nodded and responded, "Yes, Lord Greiman!"
Betty pursed her lips and said nothing. With her appearance, she looked quite different now.
Her reaction made Paul very strange. He didn't seem to offend her much recently.
Getting down to business, Paul continued to give instructions, "There are also some very important aspects, such as how to determine the beginning and end of a piece of information, and how to verify the integrity of a piece of information. The other thing is [Congestion Control]. To use a metaphor, when carriages are coming from different directions at an intersection, how should we allow them to pass smoothly."
"In addition, we call the ordinary encoding [Plaintext], which can be used to transmit some insensitive information that does not involve confidentiality. However, sensitive information must be re-encoded, or encrypted, on the basis of Plaintext. I don't want the enemy's spies to do nothing and just stay near our base station every day to figure out what confidential information we are transmitting."
Seeing that the lady in charge still didn't respond, Paul said doubtfully, "Uh... I said Betty. Berns is mainly responsible for the design of the operating device. His work focus is still on the development of the new Spinning Machine, so I want you to be responsible for the overall construction of the system. How long do you think it will take to build a line from Lake Franklin Harbor to Lakeheart Town to Butuya?"
Betty, or Irene, finally moved his brows, and after thinking for a while, he replied, "This requires experiments, Lord Earl. You must first determine the optimal distance between the two [base stations] through experiments, and then determine the quantity, select the route, estimate the cost... In addition, the training of personnel also takes time."
"I will say hello to Chief Steward Ford right away and make the construction of the Urgent Report Station system the first priority of expenditures!"
After the salt riots occurred a few days ago, Paul felt that the current spread of news was too slow. After Semaphore Signal System is built, Lakeheart Town can sense the disturbances in the territory in a relatively timely manner, and the orders issued by the Lord's Manor can also be quickly communicated to the local area.
The means of transmitting information is related to whether a regime can effectively control the territory under its rule.
"I eagerly hope that the entire system that runs through the northern part of Arda, Bairdin and Emden can be built within half a year."
Irene raised his eyebrows and said, "I will work hard towards this goal, but Lord Earl, the premise is that Government Affairs Council's Affairs Officers will not treat me as the female supervisor as nothing. If everyone treats me as nothing, things will not work."
Ha! Paul knew why the education director lost his temper. It was because she was not notified of the emergency meeting held after the riot.