1840 Indian Rebirth

Chapter 199 [Letter from a Boy] Happy Chinese New Year

Not surprisingly, Kelvin decided to participate in this project that he was already interested in, and Ma Shaodang even appointed him as the chief technology officer of General Electric.

"Chief Technology Officer?" Kelvin was apparently hearing about the position for the first time.

Companies these days certainly don't have the term chief technology officer, and in fact it wasn't until the late twentieth century that terms such as chief executive officer and chief technology officer began to emerge in the United States.

Ma Shao nodded: "That's right, as you can tell from the name, the chief technology officer is the highest person in charge of technology in the company."

Kelvin: "Sounds interesting...but I don't think I've ever heard of this position at any other company."

"Of course, this may be my first initiative." Ma Whistle smiled, "I hope that General Electric will become the world's leading, genuine high-tech company, and it should have many fashionable things."

"Okay, so as GE's chief technology officer, how many people do I have?" Kelvin asked.

"Zero...I haven't recruited much manpower yet, especially technicians." Ma Shao said, "But it doesn't matter for the time being, we just need to fix the cable, and then rent a ship and throw the cable into the English Channel, and it will be done forever. In the annals of history - the builder of the world's first trans-sea cable."

Kelvin smiled: "You have already been recorded in the annals of history."

"I think, in addition to communication technology, our cables should have these characteristics. First of all, it must be resistant to seawater, so we need to cover it with multiple layers of gutta-percha... and then it should be relatively heavy. After all, we can't go to the bottom of the sea. layout……"

The method of laying submarine cables in the early days was extremely crude. Due to the serious shortage of diving technology, people basically had to throw the cables into the water and let them sink to the bottom.

"Another point is that we have to mark the cable as 'communication cable, no salvage and damage', otherwise it will be bad if it is caught by some fisherman and sold as scrap." Ma Shao added that this kind of thing has indeed happened in history.

Kelvin: "Those fishermen may not be able to read."

Horse sentry: "Indeed, we have to send someone to notify the nearby residents... We will promote 'protecting cables' to become a social consensus and even local laws."

In the following period of time, the two did some experiments, finally determined the design of the submarine cable, and produced a sample as a reference for the workers to produce.

Until the forty kilometers of cable are produced, they need not pay attention to this matter for the time being.

Northeastern England.

The capital of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The famous University of Edinburgh is located on the seashore here. It is the highest institution of learning in Scotland and one of the seven classical universities. It was established in the Renaissance and has been passed down to this day.

In the university, you can see high-spirited young students everywhere, and you can also meet wise elders with white hair from time to time.

There are of course exceptions. For example, at this moment, in a remote and quiet corner of the University of Edinburgh, a handsome young man is immersed in writing.He looked like he might be the youngest person in this school, logically, he should be in middle school at his age.

After a while, a middle-aged man walked over with a smile on his face: "James, are you writing poetry? Or are you studying optics?"

"No, Teacher Forbes, I'm writing a letter." The boy hesitated for a moment.

"To whom?"

"Mr. Horse Whistle... is the Indian scientist who gave a lecture at Cambridge University not long ago. I remember that you also attended that lecture, sir."

"Yes." Teacher Phoebes asked, "Why did you write to him?"

The young man was a little shy, and subconsciously covered the content of the letter: "I heard that many people wrote to him, and this Indian scientist also wrote some replies... The second law of thermodynamics I told him is very good. I am interested, but I am a little confused, so I want to write to him to ask him for advice, maybe he will reply."

Teacher Forbes nodded: "But you'd better not get your hopes up. Several teachers I know have written to him, but they haven't received a reply so far. This Indian scientist is a famous person, and His Majesty the King even personally received him. , I think he must be very busy."

"I know." said the boy named James, "but no one seems to be able to answer my doubts."

"Can you tell me something?" Teacher Forbes asked.

The young man pondered: "Well... I imagined a scenario like this, that is, assuming that there is a magical tiny creature that lives in the middle of a sealed space, and there is a switch here that allows individual particles to pass through. When the particles come near the switch, the creature will turn on the switch to let it pass, and vice versa, so that the hot particles and cold particles are respectively concentrated on one side of the space...Of course, I know this should not be possible, but I think Know why. Existing theories seem inexplicable."

……

London in a few days.

As usual, Horse Post has received many letters, most of which are academic, and come from the UK mainland, but also some from Europe.The increasing number of letters from Europe clearly showed that his influence was spreading outward.

Of course, there are also many non-academic letters, such as telling him, a barbarian, to get out of the British Empire.

For these letters, Mashao asked his subordinates to roughly sift through them, throwing away those irrelevant or offensive letters, and then took some time to sort out the rest of the letters like a Chinese teacher correcting a composition.

Kelvin also came to help sometimes. At this time, he was sitting next to the horse whistle, with his legs crossed, flipping through the letters in his hand.

Compared with Horse Whistle, he reads letters at a much leisurely pace. Even if it is some unscrupulous letters, he will read them out of curiosity or watching the excitement.

"Mashao, I think this letter is very interesting, you can read it." Kelvin finished reading the letter in his hand, glanced at the signature, and handed it to Mashao, "It looks like it was written by a college student, Edinburgh the University."

Ma Shao didn't take it seriously at first, after all, he has received too many letters during this period, let alone this kind of student admirer.

However, not long after receiving the letter, he was immediately attracted by the hypotheses described in it, and his eyes brightened.

"It's quite interesting. A magical creature arranges the distribution of random heat-moving particles, thereby breaking the second law of thermodynamics... It can be seen that this student is quite whimsical." Kelvin noticed his expression , smiled, "But your expression seems a bit exaggerated."

But Ma Shao said: "Intuition tells me that this seemingly naive assumption is not that simple."

Before he finished speaking, he moved his eyes to the place where the letter was signed, and saw a name not unexpectedly:
James Clerk Maxwell.

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Ps:

I wish you all a happy Spring Festival and a happy family.

In addition, that, it’s a bit shameful to say... Due to the long-term suspension of updates, and some blurring of the specific time in the book, I forgot which month the protagonist is in in 1848-...

(End of this chapter)