The Crown Prince Always Stood on the Shoulders of Giants

"Mr. Shap?"

Joseph felt as though he had heard the name somewhere before, so he looked toward the young man, who appeared extremely nervous.

"There's already mature equipment? That's wonderful."

Shap hurried forward and bowed respectfully.

"It is an honor to meet you, Your Highness. I have indeed designed a device for transmitting letters."

Joseph smiled and nodded. "Could you show it to me?"

"Of course, of course."

Shap hurriedly took out an enormous roll of blueprints in fear and trepidation and spread it across the table.

"Your Highness, look, this is it. I call it 'Remote Writing.'"

Shap pointed to something on the blueprint that looked like a Water Tower and introduced it.

"The main body of the equipment is built atop a high tower. Ah, it looks a little like a gigantic clothes rack, but in reality it is a rotatable crossbeam, with a swinging arm on each end."

Only then did Joseph notice that there was a T-shaped device like an antenna at the top of the "Water Tower."

As Shap spoke, he began to grow excited.

"The two swinging arms can be rotated to different angles, and by coordinating with each other, they can make more than ninety different postures.

"If we use each posture to correspond to a letter, then string them together, we can form any passage of words.

"And several kilometers away, another Signal Tower will be built. A signalman will be up there, using a telescope to observe the posture of the swinging arms on the previous tower, record it, and translate it into letters.

"Then this Signal Tower can continue transmitting the contents of the letter onward.

"We only need to build one Signal Tower every ten kilometers—I carried out a great many experiments before, and at this distance the movements