Chapter 14 The Clock Tower Rhapsody

The creation of the grandfather clock undoubtedly became an opportunity for Ye's Workshop to raise its overall technical level by a notch. After receiving the simple timer drawings designed by Ye Tao, the workshop created the item in just a few hours. When that seemingly crude initial product was delivered to Chun Nuan Ju, Second Brother Zhao Dazhu once again praised Ye Tao. Now, as Ye's Workshop ventured further and further beyond the field of woodworking, more and more things required precise timing. Although the grandfather clock was useful, it was not as convenient as this small timer, which could count down at most one shichen (approximately two hours). Moreover, the timer had a simple structure, making it most suitable for apprentices who had just joined the clock workshop to practice their skills. Zhao Dazhu was not good at finding business opportunities for products, but the taciturn and introverted him always silently considered issues from the workshop's perspective, constantly improving Ye's Workshop's complex and precise technical system. It was precisely because Zhao Dazhu was in charge of the headquarters of Yicheng Ye's Workshop, constantly cultivating apprentices and workers with excellent skills, that Ye Laogeng, Guan Haishan, and Suo Yong were able to leave Yicheng with peace of mind and run to Danyang, and stay in Danyang to display their talents and temporarily unable to return.

After Zhao Dazhu finished talking about his views on this small timer, he realized that the atmosphere around him seemed a little strange. In the warm and cool quiet room of Chun Nuan Ju, there were more than a dozen young people sitting in twos and threes. Their clothes were obviously very particular, but perhaps because of practical reasons, they were not much more gorgeous than the rough cloth clothes Zhao Dazhu was wearing. And in the best-lit window seat, sitting cross-legged around a small table were none other than Governor-General Peng Detian and Naval Admiral Min Yue.

Throwing the timer to the young people to play with, Zhao Dazhu, feeling a little slow to react, hurried over to pay his respects.

"Ye Tao, what are you doing making that little thing again? Apart from your own workshop, I don't think it'll sell very well, right?" Peng Detian looked at the young people huddled together on one side and asked with a chuckle.

"Sir, this thing is very useful," Zhao Dazhu thought for a moment and said, "The workshop is busy with work, and now there is some time for a lunch break after lunch, allowing everyone to rest. Set that little timer for half a shichen (one hour), and it will wake you up when the time comes, so you won't miss the start of work."

Peng Detian and Min Yue laughed heartily. Although Zhao Dazhu was a little simple-minded, this was a good way to put it. In various government offices, there were too many people who had developed the habit of taking a nap due to being tossed around by various matters. This was an effective way to avoid oversleeping. After all, it was impossible for every room to have a grandfather clock. Most of them were placed in the main hall or study, places that needed to impress. But this small timer could be carried around.

By association, while timers were needed in places like workshops, other people also had many opportunities to set a time standard for themselves at any time. Peng Detian often gave visitors half a ke (7.5 minutes) or a quarter of an hour (15 minutes) to explain the situation, but ended up being fooled into wasting a lot of time and delaying other things. Peng Detian wanted to have a timer like this with him at all times.

Ye Tao said indifferently, "As long as it's useful, I'm not afraid it won't sell. There are many things that can be sold for money now. I don't care about one or two of them. At the very least, with this thing, Tian Suo Clock Shop won't only have so few things. The orders for grandfather clocks have already been scheduled until next year. The shop always needs something to sell."

Peng Detian nodded and said, "Alright, let's get back to what we were saying. What do you think about that matter we were discussing?"

Peng Detian and Min Yue came to find Ye Tao together, obviously not just to enjoy the breeze and drink tea in this quiet room. They brought a fantasy, a fantasy that made Ye Tao's heart race.

After the grandfather clock was introduced, Peng Detian set aside space in the entire port area to build a port affairs office and three branch offices, all of which were equipped with grandfather clocks. Moreover, together with the officials who were originally responsible for dock affairs and the tax officials, he formulated more detailed and standardized regulations for the port area. With specific time references, the arrangement of berthing plans, loading and unloading plans, tax inspections, and a series of other matters had been precise to the ke (7.5 minutes). In recent days, the Yicheng Port Area had become more and more orderly and efficient, but also more and more busy. Now, the problem was not only to let the subordinates of the port affairs office know the time and follow the timetable to do things, but also to require the cooperation of shipowners and large merchants from all sides in terms of time. Otherwise, the current timetable could not be further promoted.

Therefore, Peng Detian and Min Yue came up with an idea: to build a large enough grandfather clock, at least six or seven stories high, with the top floor open on all four sides, with four faces displaying the current time to the entire port area. The hourly chimes and the time reminders that rang every quarter of an hour would almost immediately make the port area more efficient and orderly. And such a building would become a symbol of Yicheng Port, a symbol of Yicheng's prosperity and wealth.

This would be a clock tower. The images of those Gothic buildings with towering spires that had left a deep impression on him when he traveled in Europe constantly涌现 into Ye Tao's mind. The metal crosses erected on those spires did indeed give people a sense of sacredness. The clock tower, which could become a landmark building in a place, and its melodious chimes could create a peculiar sense of stability and belonging for the residents of the entire place. And in his most familiar Shanghai, the chimes of the Customs Building rang from the 20th century to the 21st century, and were still talked about by many people, and were still a bright landscape.

What Peng Detian and Min Yue were considering was not just a clock tower, but also a local landmark building with considerable practical significance, and also a "political achievement project" for them, the local officials. However, their political achievement project seemed worth Ye Tao's support. But then, the problem arose. Grandfather clocks and clock towers were far from being as simple as magnifying them several times.

Although traditional Chinese wooden structures had been pushed to a pinnacle by Ye Tao and Dai Yuege, to be honest, they were not suitable for building such a considerable height. This was not a pagoda-style building. The load-bearing capacity of the structure was limited, especially the top few floors. The greatest load-bearing capacity was the weight of the building material itself. The top of the clock tower was to be equipped with a large clock movement with an extremely complex structure and considerable weight. To make it visible to the entire port area, the weight of the huge clock face and hands alone would be enough to be a problem. Although Ye Tao had a good foundation in architecture and a considerable amount of architectural design experience, he was not confident in using wooden structures to bear such a heavy burden. After all, his research on Chinese wooden structures was only at the application level rather than the academic level. Naturally, he could also make the wooden structure bear that kind of weight, but from any point of view, such a solution could not be called economical.

When he thought of clock towers, another classic image popped into Ye Tao's mind: Big Ben. This example was so classic that Ye Tao even had a rough drawing of the entire building in his mind. Big Ben on the banks of the Thames had been running since 1859, and was still running healthily when Ye Tao was kicked out of the world he was familiar with, except for occasional malfunctions. Ye Tao felt that perhaps that ninety-eight-meter-high building, after slight modifications, would be very suitable for Peng Detian and Min Yue's needs. What needed to be modified naturally included some details of the design and the appearance of the building. Copying the appearance of Big Ben in its entirety and letting the spire of Gothic architecture be born in Yicheng first... that was a little too ridiculous.

As for the structure of the clock room inside the clock tower, Ye Tao felt that there was no need to copy the design of the 19th century. He could completely improve the timing accuracy of the clock room and separate the power of the hands on the outer clock face from the power system of the clock room. This would be much better both in terms of ease of maintenance and the tolerance of the entire clock tower and clock room to changes in the external environment.

Ye Tao asked Lu Dan, who was leaning against the pillar and sipping a little wine, to fetch him paper and pen. He quickly sketched the most intuitive image of Big Ben clock tower in his mind on the paper. After putting down the pen, he thought of a problem, then shook his head and said, "Sir, the matter of this clock tower is not difficult, but it is not simple either."

Min Yue glanced at the sketch and immediately felt that something was wrong. Having never seen Western-style architecture, he felt that the building, which looked like a long spear standing on the ground, was a little too sharp. Although the appearance of the building was a little strange, it was still very harmonious. However, he noticed something from the size of the windows and the proportions of the entire building. After looking at the sketch carefully, Min Yue asked, "Nephew, how high are you planning to build this clock tower?" Min Yue and Peng Detian had initially estimated that the clock tower should be at least five to six stories high, already considering that wooden structures could not be built very high, but to allow as many people as possible to see the clock tower, these five to six stories were already the minimum. If it could be built higher, they would naturally not refuse. But, could the thing drawn on Ye Tao's drawing really be built?

Ye Tao calculated in his mind and said, "About two hundred and eighty chi (approximately 93 meters) high." The number he gave shocked not only Min Yue and Peng Detian, but also a group of trainee officers in the quiet room who were quite interested in their discussion. Two hundred and eighty chi, how high would that be? If such a tall building could be built, how high would you have to look up to see the top?

Peng Detian thought carefully and said, "What would you use to build such a tall building? I'm afraid it's not strong enough to use wood, right?"

"No, not wood." Ye Tao picked up the pen again and drew the structural framework of the building on the paper with a rustling sound. At the same time, he explained the structure and function of the building to Peng Detian and Min Yue in as simple language as possible, explained how to use cast iron to build the structural framework for the clock tower, how to fire special bricks to meet the needs of the outer walls of the clock tower, what the relationship between the clock room and the clock face was, what the scale of the bell used for telling the time was, how to install it, and why the clock tower needed a set of equipment for calibrating the time and for maintenance in addition to the clock room, pendulum, clock face, and time bell... At this moment, although Peng Detian and Min Yue did not know much about this aspect, they understood. In that instant, Ye Tao had completely understood what they meant, and even had a rough framework for the entire clock tower plan in his mind, and even had a certain construction plan. How could such talent not be outstanding? In ancient times, there were anecdotes of literati composing poems within a few steps, but those were just anecdotes after all. Without being picky about quality, it was not difficult for literati to casually compose crooked poems. But to be able to have such a grand idea in an instant, and to be able to think about how to realize the idea with eighty or ninety percent certainty, perhaps only Ye Tao in this world could do it.

That towering spire of the clock tower could not compete with the radiant flame of Ye Tao's talent.

After listening, Peng Detian asked, "...Since you already have a plan in mind, what is difficult about this clock tower?"

Ye Tao said straightforwardly, "Money! I have no idea what the budget for this clock tower is right now."

Ye Tao, who had supervised the construction of many gardens, was now an expert in engineering management. Since he said he had no idea, then the problem must be quite big. Sure enough, Ye Tao continued, "Although cast iron is not a very expensive thing, it is not easy to use cast iron to create so many large structural frameworks. There are no large smelting workshops in Yicheng. If they are processed in other places, I can't be sure of the accuracy and quality, and transportation is even a bigger problem. The same is true for special bricks. How should the foundation be handled for such a tall building? All pile driving machines have to be redesigned. Looking at all aspects together, a lot of effort and time will be spent starting from scratch in all aspects. If these problems are solved, I will let my eldest brother be responsible for building this clock tower, and then I will personally be responsible for the installation and debugging of the clock room and the time bell... And the key is money. If I build this thing completely from scratch, I can't calculate the specific cost. Let me think, think of a more feasible plan."

"No!" Peng Detian said firmly, "This is it. I will figure out the money problem. There are so many wealthy households in Yicheng who don't know how to spend their money, and it is a place where big merchants gather. I think that implementing this plan and connecting themselves with such a magnificent clock tower, someone will definitely be willing to pay... Since you can build a building two hundred and eighty chi high, then build it that high. If it's lower, Yicheng doesn't want it!"