The second revolution of printing technology in China
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At the beginning of the new century, there are two major events in the printing industry in our country that are inspiring. First, the Chinese Academy of Engineering held a press conference on the results of the selection of "20th Century China's Major Engineering Technology Achievements". "Two bombs and one star", "Chinese character information processing and printing technology revolution" were rated as China's major engineering and technical achievements in the 20th century; The CPC Central Committee and the State Council held the 2001 National Science and Technology Awards Conference. Academician Wang Xuan and Academician Huang Kun won the National Science and Technology Award. General Secretary Jiang Zemin personally presented certificates and bonuses to them. This pile of happy events reminds me of many unforgettable memories.
Printing is one of the four great inventions in ancient China. Paper, which is the main carrier of ancient printing, was also invented in China. These two inventions have made universally recognized great contributions in the history of mankind, and have effectively promoted the development and progress of human civilization.
In the history of the 6th and 7th centuries, China invented the engraving and printing, and invented the movable type printing in the Northern Song Dynasty around 1048. Chinese printing was transmitted to Europe via the Silk Road. In 1448, the German Gutenberg first created a type of lead alloy, and on this basis, the mechanization of lead printing was gradually realized. It should be said that before this, Chinese printing technology has always been the world leader. However, after the 15th century, China’s printing technology was lagging behind due to the embarrassment of China’s feudal system, which hindered the development of social productivity and science and technology. The lead type technology was not transmitted to China until the 19th century. After about 150 years, China began to form an industrial system for lead printing.
After the founding of New China, the Party Central Committee and the State Council attached great importance to the development of the printing industry, and China's printing technology has made great progress. However, foreign printing technology has gained new development, and our backwardness has not changed fundamentally. Especially because of the destruction of the "Cultural Revolution", the gap between the backwards has widened. At the end of the "Cultural Revolution", the people are eager to learn science and technology and economic and cultural knowledge, but they are troubled by slow books and difficult books. General books take about one year from the time they are published to the time they are published, and some have to be dragged for two to three years. Many new books become old books when they are released. In August 1977, Comrade Deng Xiaoping pointed out in a speech that: "Professional academic papers and publications must be guaranteed to be printed and published. Now some works can be printed for many years according to the current publishing situation. Bundled."
I used to have some contacts with the printing industry, and I have some understanding of the backwardness of printing technology in China at that time. That was during the "Cultural Revolution", I was sent to work in the printing workshop of the Science Press. At that time, they were all lead-leaf-printed. The workers hand-held the lead-type dials. They had to go back and forth for dozens of miles every day. They picked up the hands and then poured them into lead printing, which was not only hard but also very inefficient. At that time, the average publishing period of science publishers was 500 days. The authors, readers, and printers all had opinions.
The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party made a shift in the party and state work priorities to a historical decision centered on economic construction, emphasizing that socialist material civilization and spiritual civilization must be grasped together, and the contradiction of backward printing technology is more prominent. At that time, the central government demanded that the state of backward printing technology in China be changed as soon as possible, and it was clearly proposed that under the leadership of the State Council, the National Economic Commission would take the lead in solving it. Several deputy prime ministers of the State Council attached great importance to this and personally questioned and supported them. It is worth mentioning that Comrade Jiang Zemin, who was then the deputy director of the State Import and Export Management Committee, had a far-sighted vision. He was personally written on February 22, 1980 when Peking University and other units achieved remarkable results in the development of Chinese laser photo-alignment equipment. Write letters to the leading comrades of the State Council, clearly propose that the project should be actively supported, solve the difficulties of using foreign exchange, introduce key technical equipment, limit the introduction of unnecessary technical equipment and repeat research, all relevant units should cooperate with Peking University and concentrate on this The project is more complete and makes it bloom. This opinion was adopted by the leading comrades of the State Council and played an important role in the success of China's printing technology revolution.
I went to the State Council in 1982 and presided over the work of the newly formed National Economic Council. At that time, the State Economic Commission was formed by the merger of seven ministries and commissions including the Machinery Commission, the Construction Committee, the Energy Commission, the Agriculture Commission, and the Export and Export Commission. The personnel came from all directions. In order to make the work continuity, and to do a good job of cadres, we will hire retired leading cadres who have already reached or will continue to take up some special work to help new leaders become familiar with the business as soon as possible.
He is responsible for the leadership of printing and technical transformation.
Comrade Fan Muhan was an old comrade of our party. He joined the Communist Party of China in Yanan in 1941. He served as the deputy director of the State Planning Commission, deputy director of the Ministry of Machinery, deputy director of the Sixth Machine Department, and deputy director of the State Machinery Committee. In the past, when we were working in different departments of the central government, we often met together and knew that his work was very diligent and had a lot of good opinions on China's economic development. In the early 1980s, we worked together in the State Economic Commission and learned more about him. Comrade Fan Muhan was the deputy director of the original mechanical committee at that time. He will go to the retirement age. The party committee decided to ask him to be the leader of the printing technology equipment coordination group, leading and organizing the national printing and equipment work and scientific research work.
After the investigation and research, the coordination group led by Comrade Fan Muhan put forward the idea of developing China's printing technology and equipment planning at the National Publishing Work Conference at the end of 1982: aiming at the international advanced printing technology level in the late 1970s to develop automatic photosetting and electronic Focusing on color separation, high-speed multi-color offset printing and binding linkage, we will solve the printing process (setting, printing, binding, etc.) and the required equipment and various matching equipment (paper, ink, photosensitive materials, etc.) according to the principles of system engineering. Plates, etc.), using the "one-stop" method to coordinate the arrangement of scientific research, development, technology introduction and enterprise technology transformation, improve the level of China's printing industry as a whole, and basically solve the problem of slow book writing and difficult book purchase.
The Party Central Committee and the State Council attached great importance to this work. From 1982 to 1985, together with the Central Secretariat and the responsible comrades of the Central Financial and Economic Leading Group, I listened to the work report of the coordination group led by Fan Muhan for five consecutive times to study and develop the printing industry in China. Policy measures. At that time, everyone agreed with the development ideas put forward by Comrade Fan Muhan, and believed that the development of printing proposed by Comrade Fan Muhan should focus on the 16-character policy of "automatic photo-alignment, electronic color separation, high-speed offset printing, binding and linkage", and cut the key to the development of printing technology in China at that time. And the development of automatic phototypes has also led to the development of the entire printing technology "bull nose". Because the backwardness of typesetting technology was the most prominent contradiction. If there is no technological innovation in typesetting, it will only be repeated at low levels on lead and lead printing. The backwardness of China's printing technology is difficult to change.
The Central Financial Leadership Group quickly approved the planning proposal proposed by the coordination group. This program has been included in the national "Sixth Five-Year Plan" as a special supplement since 1983. Since 1986, it has been officially listed in the National "Seventh Five-Year Plan", "Eighth Five-Year Plan" and "Ninth Five-Year Plan". Nearly 20 years ago, the state invested billions of yuan, supporting more than 200 key enterprises and institutions in the press and publication, electronics, machinery, light industry, chemical and other departments to carry out technological transformation, with special emphasis on supporting the printing of Chinese characters laser phototypesetting. The breakthrough in core technology has led to an overall improvement in the printing level, which has brought China's printing industry's comprehensive capabilities to a new level.
In his work in his later years, Comrade Fan Muhan summed up and proposed a large printing concept and system engineering method, founded the China Printing and Equipment Industry Association, promoted the development of printing higher education, established printing museums, and developed international cooperation. In particular, the use of large printing concepts and systems engineering methods to coordinate the implementation of relevant departments across the country has achieved twice the result with half the effort. Practice has proved to be scientific and has been widely praised by domestic and foreign counterparts. Be brave in innovation, young scientist Wang Xuan overcomes the difficulties of computer processing technology
Chinese characters are the great creation of the wisdom of the Chinese nation. It is one-word-one meaning, intuitive and concise, simple in grammar, sorted in word order, imaginative and associative. The thinnest document in the texts of the United Nations is always Chinese. However, Chinese characters are a kind of block characters with complicated structure, many strokes, many words, many fonts, one word and one sound, and it is difficult to write and read. The Kangxi Dictionary has more than 47,000 Chinese characters, and there are more than 6,700 commonly used. So many words must be recognized, remembered, and used. It is really difficult for ordinary people.
In the middle of the 20th century, electronic computer technology developed rapidly around the world, greatly promoting the progress of social, economic and cultural developments in all countries of the world, and human beings entered the era of informationization. Use computers to process information, including data, text, graphics, language, etc., but the basics are text information processing. Western countries use pinyin text, the general letter is only a few dozen (26 in English), the font is simple, the amount of information is small, easy to achieve the processing of text information. There are many Chinese characters in Chinese characters, and there are many Chinese characters for printing. There are more than 10 kinds of Chinese characters such as Song, Black, Scorpion and Lishu, and there are more than 10 different font sizes. The number of Chinese characters used for printing exceeds 650,000. The storage capacity exceeds 20 billion bytes, which is hundreds of times higher than the amount of Western information storage. To make the system software compatible with Chinese character processing and Western processing, many people think that it is an insurmountable obstacle, a worldwide recognized problem.
In 1975, a group of young scholars such as Wang Xuan of Peking University decided to overcome this worldwide problem. At that time, Wang was 38 years old. He graduated from the Department of Mathematics of Peking University and worked as a teaching assistant at the Peking University Radio Department. They accepted the task of the Chinese Character Precision Phototypes project in the National Key Research Project of "Chinese Character Information Processing Technology" arranged by the State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Electronics. This project was called "748 Project" because it was established in August 1974.
Wang Xuan repeatedly studied the characteristics and laws of Chinese characters. He found that although there are many fonts in Chinese characters, the basic strokes are still very regular. For example, horizontal, vertical, and fold are composed of basic straight lines and pens such as pens, pens, and transitions. Such regular strokes account for more than half of the total number of Chinese strokes. This type of rule stroke is taken as an example of the Song Dynasty, and can be represented by 4 to 5 bytes, which plays an important role in increasing the compression factor. Irregular strokes, such as 撇, 捺, and points, are irregular, but there are certain curve changes, and there are rules to follow. You can use a series of fold lines to approximate their contour curves. Wang Xuan spent a few months squatting on the table with a magnifying glass to analyze the laws of Chinese characters, conducting arduous and complicated statistics and comparisons, accurately calculating the curvature changes of different strokes, classifying and merging, and using parameters to describe horizontal, vertical, and fold patterns. The lengths, widths, inclinations, and variations of various strokes use outlines to describe irregular strokes such as dots, cymbals, and cymbals, which reduces the amount of Chinese character glyphs by hundreds of times. At the same time, he also developed a set of fast algorithms to restore the outline of the polyline into a lattice and a zoom algorithm that minimizes the distortion of the text. High-magnification Chinese character information compression technology, high-speed reduction technology and undistorted text zoom technology are the core of Chinese character laser photo-alignment technology. The breakthrough of this technology has opened the door to the use of computers for Chinese character information processing, showing the wisdom and wisdom of the Chinese.
Aim at the world's advanced level
On the basis of significant progress in the compression and restoration of Chinese character information, Wang Xuan focused on the problem of output of Chinese characters after computer information processing. At that time, the world has developed "four generations" in the technique of phototypesetting. The first generation is manual photosetting. It has been applied in China in the 1960s, but its efficiency is very low and it is difficult to promote it. The second generation is a optomechanical phototypesetting machine with high processing precision and technical difficulty. The third generation is cathode. The ray tube photo-aligning machine was launched in Germany in 1965. The technology has gradually matured and began to be applied in the advanced countries of the world, but China is still in the research stage. The fourth generation is the laser imagesetter. The British developed successfully in 1976, but Wang chose them. do not know.
While Wang Xuan was thinking hard about the output technology solution, he learned that the Hangzhou Communication Equipment Factory of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications had successfully developed a newspaper fax machine, using a video light as a light source, and had a similar function of the photo-sequencing machine. The idea was suddenly open, but he was not expert in this regard. So he went to the physics department to ask for advice. In collaboration with the teachers of the Physics Department of Peking University, he changed the light source to a laser light source and changed the single light path to four parallel laser scanning, and the output speed was increased by four times. Therefore, they decided to cooperate with Hangzhou Communication Equipment Factory to transform the newspaper fax machine into a Chinese laser phototypesetting machine. In this way, Wang Xuan is determined to cross the second and third generation photo-aligning machines, and set the goal to develop the fourth-generation laser imagesetter, and take the path of leaping development.
From technical solutions to the formation of system prototypes, Wang chose them to give up all the holidays and struggled for five years. The State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Electronics arranged the necessary research funding for this project. Zhou Peiyuan, the old principal of Peking University, organized all the forces of the school to create the necessary conditions for them. Shandong Weifang Computer Company and Hangzhou Communication Equipment Factory cooperated. In the summer of 1980, Wang Xuan printed the first sample book, "Wuhao's Sword", with a successful prototype. A leading comrade read and said: "This is a gratifying achievement. Printing has transitioned from the fire and lead era to the era of computers and lasers." Comrade Deng Xiaoping pointed out that "should be supported." This principle prototype system was named "Huaguang I".
The success of Wang Xuan shows that China has outstanding scientific and technological talents, and they have intelligence and intelligence. The software technology of Chinese character information processing is our advantage. At this stage, China's comprehensive economic strength is still not strong, and it is unrealistic to fully catch up with the world's advanced level. However, we have our own advantages, and we can use this advantage to concentrate on our strengths and achieve leapfrog development. The breakthrough of Chinese laser phototypesetting technology is a pioneering example.
Perseverance, two generations work together to promote the practical use of scientific research results
Although the prototype is encouraging, it is still far from the practical requirements. After coordinating the team led by Comrade Fan Muhan, after determining the development of the automatic photo-arrangement machine as a breakthrough in printing technology progress, conduct multi-party research and listen to various opinions for improvement. Some of the opinions have doubts about whether Wang's selection of this prototype can be put into practical use. At that time, many scientific research achievements were for "gifts," "sports awards," and "titles for evaluation." In the future, they will be put on the shelves. In particular, there are no precedents for the successful commercialization and industrialization of scientific research. Some people worry that Wang chooses them. Is it the same?
Comrade Fan Muhan went to Peking University to inspect the situation of the laser photo-remission laboratory and then had a heart-to-heart conversation with Wang Xuan, then an associate professor. Wang Xuan said that their goal is to make the Chinese printing industry get rid of the lead and achieve laser phototypesetting. What is most needed now is that the state supports them to continue research and development, do a good practical pilot, and then use laser to renovate the national printing industry.
Comrade Fan Muhan told me after returning from Peking University that Wang Xuan is different from some intellectuals. He has a strategic vision and should support them. After full argumentation, the Chinese character laser photo-distribution system was officially included in the national six-five and seven-five special plans for printing technology and equipment, and was later identified as one of the 12 major national technical equipment projects. At the beginning of 1984, the State Economic Commission arranged for the intermediate test of the computer Chinese character laser phototypesetting system in Xinhua News Agency to test the newspaper and magazine published by Xinhua News Agency. The first newspaper is the "Forward Newspaper". This is the internal newspaper of Xinhua News Agency. It is a 10-day issue. The first issue is the "Xinhua Newsletter", which is a daily 64-page magazine. At that time, Wang Xuan was overworked and his body was weak. His wife, professor, is also the main collaborator, the head of the system software, who was just sick after surgery. They dragged their bodies for the common cause and persisted in the trial site. Comrade Fan Muhan personally went to the scene to coordinate at every important moment of the experiment. In the test, the system software and hardware, especially the laser imagesetter, have many problems and failures. Under the joint efforts of everyone, they have basically been solved. After three months of continuous operation, a total of 88 editions of the "Press Release" and 12 issues of the "Forward" were printed, totaling more than 10 million words. Although there are many problems in operation, the overall technical indicators of the system have reached the predetermined requirements and are relatively stable. In May 1985, the State Economic Commission conducted a national-level appraisal and acceptance of the system. This is the “Huaguang II”.
This is a leap from a prototype to a practical prototype, which enhances confidence. The success of the Xinhua News Agency pilot only indicates that the system is “available”. If it is to be “practical”, it must also be able to publish daily newspapers because the daily reports are the most time-sensitive and the most technically demanding. If the laser phototypes can be published daily, then the layout of other books and magazines should be no problem.
Forced to Liangshan "Economic Daily" to be the first user to use laser imagesetter
The National Economic Commission decided to select a national newspaper for the laser photo-distribution pilot. At this time, the Economic Daily newspaper took the initiative to ask for the first use of the laser imagesetter.
The predecessor of "Economic Daily" was "Ta Kung Pao", which was suspended during the "Cultural Revolution". In 1983, it was renamed "Economic Daily" by the Central Committee and moved into the original re-issue of the former Wangfujing site of the People's Daily. At that time, the factory area was only 6,000 square meters, all of which were In the old-fashioned process of lead-lead printing, in the situation of reform and opening up, the task of the Economic Daily has become increasingly arduous, and the existing printing capacity has not adapted to the needs of the development of the situation. If the old process continues to be used, the low-level expansion will not only cost too much, but also the daily melting of lead-casting, smoke and fire, and polluting the environment will have a great impact on the health of the surrounding residents. After weighing various options, the Economic Daily was determined to take a huge risk to use the "Huaguang" laser phototypesetting system for piloting. It can also be said that they were "forced to Liangshan".
In order to support the pilot of the Economic Daily, the State Economic Commission added the “Economic Daily” technical transformation project to the national “Seventh Five-Year Plan” and gave priority to the funding. Fan Muhan, Wang Xuan organized Peking University, Shandong Weifang Computer Company, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Hangzhou Communication Equipment Factory and other major technical personnel to go to the "Economic Daily" to follow the work, to solve problems on the spot. The daily typesetting time of the daily newspaper is actually only two or three hours a day, because the daily news released by Xinhua News Agency is usually 1 am. In order to let people see the newspaper before going to work, it is usually printed at 4 o'clock in the morning, so it is reserved for typesetting. Time is short, this is the most rigorous test of the system. After doing all kinds of preparatory work, the trial row began on August 22, 1987, when all potential problems of the system software and hardware were exposed, some serial, missing lines, some large blanks, All the periods of the layout were lost, and there were several delays in reporting for two or three hours. The readers made comments and some of them were sharp. The editorial department of Economic Daily has been under tremendous pressure to order a deadline to solve the problem, otherwise it will return to the lead platoon process. Fan Muhan and Wang Xuan know at this time that if the Economic Daily returns to the lead row, it means that the Chinese laser photo-distribution technology has failed, and China's printing technology advancement will be stagnant for many years. Fan Muhan told the editorial committee that new technologies should be allowed to have a gradual improvement process in their development. I can tell the reader that this is a problem with the pilot of new laser photo-alignment technology, which is being improved, please understand. Wang Xuan said with great confidence that these technical problems in the pilot can be completely solved and we will solve them soon. After the election of Wang Xuan, their system has finally stabilized, and the Chinese laser photo-distribution technology is improving day by day. "Economic Daily" decided to "sell the lead in the pot" and cut off the return route to the "lead row".
In December 1987, the State Economic Commission presided over the National Economic Acceptance of the Computer-Chinese Laser Phototypesetting System of the Economic Daily. The Acceptance Report stated: “The Economic Daily is the world’s first computer-based laser screen version, full-page output. The Chinese Daily. "The Economic Daily" not only greatly improved the production environment, but also eliminated lead pollution and greatly improved production efficiency.
In 1988, the "Economic Daily" increased its word size by two times in the past, and the number of reported species increased by four times, and the output value and profit doubled. Some people once worried that advanced technology is good, but it is expensive, and the average company can't afford it. It may be "advanced technology, backward benefits." However, the "Economic Daily" pilot proved that although advanced technology is used, the output is higher and the benefits are better.
Light up a light to illuminate all of China
The "Economic Daily" pilot was successful, and the printing industry in China quickly set off a wave of application of laser photo-distribution technology, especially the newspaper industry is in the forefront of promoting the application of laser photo-distribution technology. At the beginning of 1988, the "Economic Daily" had just passed the state inspection and acceptance, and there were more than 20 newspapers ordering. By 1990, in addition to the "Tibetan Daily", China’s central and provincial newspapers all adopted the domestic laser phototypesetting system. 1992 Tibet Daily The laser imagesetters arranged in Tibetan and Chinese are also in use. In 1995, more than 1,500 newspapers nationwide adopted laser phototypesetting systems.
At the same time as the "Economic Daily" pilot, Fan Muhan and Wang Xuan also seized the "Science and Technology Edition" laser photo-scheduled pilot, compared with the newspaper version and the general book and book layout, the "technical version" of the mathematical formula, chemical symbols and various reaction processes There are special requirements for the software. The pilot was carried out at the Railway Publishing House and the technology of Wang Xuan was also successful. The national script experiment conducted in the National Publishing House has also achieved success. In this way, various technical problems of Chinese character computer information processing laser phototypes have been solved. In the mid-1990s, China's key book printing and printing factories all adopted the domestic laser photo-distribution system. China's printing industry finally got rid of the lead characters and entered the era of “light and electricity”. The printing industry in the country is one of the new. Chinese laser phototypesetting technology has played a huge role in transforming China's traditional printing industry. If it is the first printing technology revolution from engraving to movable type printing, then the lead printing and printing is the second printing technology revolution in China.
The two printing technology revolutions in China are separated by nearly a thousand years. The success of the second printing technology revolution was achieved under the leadership of our party. It should be said that the social age conditions of the invention of the movable type printing are greatly different. The contemporary computer-Chinese laser photo-distribution technology as a major engineering technology project is a large and complex system engineering, which needs cross-regional, inter-departmental, inter-disciplinary, multiple units, Many technicians and workers work together to cooperate. Completing this project requires not only the intellectual innovation of scientists, but also the scientific organization and coordination of managers. Wang Xuan is an outstanding representative of this heroic group. He is a "Qianli Ma". Zhou Peiyuan and Fan Muhan are actively supporting them and trying to provide them with logistical support. It is "Bole". This is another successful practice of our party leadership in organizing scientific and technological innovation.
The success of the Chinese character laser photo-distribution technology also shows that the realization of the commercialization of scientific research results must be repeatedly tested and constantly improved, often experiencing the process of “re-reviewing mountains and heavy waters, nowhere to be seen, and another village”. Victory is in the "continuing efforts." Scientific research units must persevere and constantly find problems and improve them in the trial. Production companies must strive for excellence and continuously improve product quality and system stability. The use unit should dare to take risks, allow new technologies to have a perfect process in the trial, and do “enlightened users”. In this way, the pace of commercialization of scientific research results in China will certainly be greatly accelerated.
Constantly climbing, never satisfied
While promoting a large number of laser photo-distribution systems and bidding farewell to "lead and fire", under the leadership of Academician Wang Xuan, Chinese technicians completed a newspaper remote transmission system based on page description language in 1990, so that the amount of information transmitted after compression is only One-tenth of the fax method, and no distortion. In 1992, the People’s Daily used this method to transmit far-reaching layouts to more than 20 printing spots across the country through satellites. The efficiency has been greatly improved. Now hundreds of newspapers have been used for remote transmission. In 1992, for the first time in the "Macao Daily" to achieve text and color photos in one processing and output, the time to print a page color version from 2 hours to 20 minutes (now down to 1 minute), thus eliminating the traditional electronic color separation Machines, there are now hundreds of newspapers in the country with color versions, and about 100 daily color versions. In 1994, "Shenzhen Evening News" realized the computer processing of editing and editing. All the pages were edited and published, and they began to bid farewell to "paper and pen". Now more than 100 newspapers have realized the integration of editing, grouping, output, remote transmission and retrieval. Process management. The editor-in-chief can monitor every operation process of his newspaper through the Internet in foreign countries, making the overall technical level of China's newspaper industry in the forefront of the world. The Japanese version of the laser phototypesetting system has begun to enter the Japanese market, and the Western version has also entered the European and American markets. The development history of more than 20 years shows that through unremitting efforts, the Chinese are fully capable of bringing products with independent intellectual property rights into the markets of developed countries.
Today, when we congratulate Academician Wang Xuan on winning the National Science and Technology Award, I miss the late Comrade Fan Muhan and all the comrades and friends who have contributed to the second printing technology revolution in China. The people will not forget them, and the history of the development of China's printing industry will not forget them.