The more precise an instrument was, the harder it was to manufacture.
For a dry lithography machine like the one Chen Jue had conceived, its manufacturing principles had long since been thoroughly dissected across the internet, and even its blueprints were widely available online. Yet only a handful of countries in the world could actually build a lithography machine.
This was because physical precision limits were involved. Improving precision from millimeters to micrometers and then to the nanoscale was no longer something highly skilled technicians could achieve through manual polishing alone, as they had in the previous century.
It required the most advanced precision machining equipment, paired with experienced technicians, to manufacture components that met the precision requirements.
In the past, technicians like these had a celebrated title: "Grade-8 Worker."
Back in the last century, when university professors earned only a few hundred yuan a year, any outside job a Grade-8 Worker accepted started at a hundred yuan. Getting one to take a job also required treating him to fine cigarettes and liquor, lining up to welcome him into the workshop, and giving him every bit of the respect he was due.
In the present day, although the Grade-8 Worker title had disappeared, it had been replaced by industry heavyweights known as "Special Grade technicians."
Above Special Grade technicians were "chief technicians," who were hailed as Great Country Craftsman.
Chief Technician Gao, who specialized in assembling and welding rockets at the base, was one such formidable expert. He could perform thirty thousand spot welds and go ten minutes without blinking. To bring him aboard, the base offered him a daily wage of 600,000 yuan!
You read that right. Six hundred thousand was his fucking daily wage!
There were only a handful of technical talents of that caliber in the entire