Chapter 172
Chapter 172
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 172
Chapter Title: Commercial City Hanyang (6)
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Liberal arts majors suffer from a peculiar affliction.
They believe that if you give someone from the sciences—especially an engineering graduate—a solid idea, they can whip up just about anything.
Even while acknowledging that no one is omnipotent and limits exist, deep down they harbor this misconception that an engineer could cobble together something like that with just a bit of hard work.
One of my classmates once thought that every computer engineering major could naturally repair a computer motherboard.
I'm not quite that bad... but honestly, watching Jang Yeong-sil, it's easy to imagine he could build anything.
"Couldn't he make something like a steam engine?"
If I just supplied him with rubber and pushed him hard, it felt like he'd have a steam engine ready in under a decade.
This is the real problem with liberal arts types—we know it's a bad habit, but we can't shake it.
"Master Craftsman Jang, how have you been?"
Jang Yeong-sil greeted me with a face worn from constant work.
"Thanks to the Minister of Works' special consideration, I've been doing well."
"I'm glad to hear that."
The first time I met Jang Yeong-sil, his face was marred by severe dark circles under his eyes from endless overtime.
Now, thanks to His Majesty's slogan that "overtime is unfilial," Jang Yeong-sil gets to clock out on time every day.
As a result, there wasn't a trace of dark circles on his face, and he looked perfectly healthy.
That said, the workload hadn't decreased just because overtime was gone.
'He must throw himself into work like mad during office hours to make it home on time.'
"These days, thanks to His Highness's benevolence, unless there's some dire emergency, all officials must leave at the proper hour. So even I manage to get about three and a half sichim—seven hours—of sleep a day."
From what I'd seen, science and engineering folks, especially engineering students, often survived on just three or four hours of sleep in bad times.
But thanks to King Sejong getting dragged into exercise by Yi Bang-won and declaring that even he wouldn't pull all-nighters, so his officials shouldn't either, the craftsmen were reaping the benefits too.
"And thanks to you, sir, I've racked up some real merits. No one looks down on me anymore for being a slave-born official."
"I only came up with the ideas for useful devices. You're the one who actually built them, Master Craftsman Jang. Without you making those things, Joseon wouldn't have advanced like this. So I'm truly grateful to you."
Even without Jang Yeong-sil, I probably could've come up with a blast furnace, a reflector, or matchlock muskets.
But it would've taken several times longer, with far more trial and error.
And the final products wouldn't have been nearly as refined as what we got with him.
"I'm so humbled by your words that I don't know where to put myself. But I know better than anyone that it wasn't just my meager talents that made it possible. It's all thanks to you, sir. I am deeply grateful. Ah, and please come this way for a moment."
Jang Yeong-sil led me to a warehouse in the corner of the Ministry of Works compound.
It was packed with all sorts of machines and tools, but two machines immediately caught my eye.
"You've already made the cotton gin and the spinning machine?"
"These two aren't that structurally complex, so they weren't too hard to build. This morning, I submitted a report to the Minister of Works detailing how to make them and their uses. He was thrilled and said that once he secures funding from the Minister of Treasury, he'll mobilize the artisans from the Directorate of Armaments and the government workshops to mass-produce them."
"If getting the budget approved is tough, just let me know. I'll help however I can."
"I wouldn't dream of troubling the busy Minister of Personnel with that. Your kind thoughts alone are more than enough."
With just the cotton gin and spinning machine, cloth production would become much easier.
The reason clothes were so ridiculously expensive in this era was the massive labor required to weave fabric.
If the cotton gin handles removing seeds from raw cotton and the spinning machine spins it into thread, the effort needed to make cloth would drop dramatically.
Less labor means easier production.
It was a shame they hadn't made a loom for weaving thread into cloth yet, but Jang Yeong-sil had produced the cotton gin and spinning machine far faster than I'd expected.
As expected of Jang Yeong-sil.
Hand him a task, and he delivers like a fairy from a lamp.
'If we could introduce the flying shuttle too, clothing production costs would plummet like crazy.'
"Enough chit-chat. The real reason I came to see you today is... I have something I really need you to make."
"Pardon...?"
Jang Yeong-sil blinked in surprise, tilting his head.
Then he lowered his gaze, avoiding my eyes.
"My apologies, sir. I have so much on my plate right now that starting something new is difficult. I'm stuck on the flying shuttle, a key part for the loom, so I need to focus and resolve that quickly. And I still have to tackle the farm tool improvements..."
A liberal arts boss can't even dream of mimicking an engineer's handiwork, let alone understand their technical prowess.
But whether a craftsman can take on more work? I could tell from his tone and body language.
If he were truly swamped with no room to breathe, he'd have waved me off vigorously, shaking his head no.
He's mumbling excuses, so a blueprint for one public bathhouse? He could probably knock it out in four or five days.
"Master Craftsman Jang, what kind of relationship do we have?"
"You're like a benefactor to me. But I have mountains of work, sir..."
"If you push just a little harder, you can benefit countless people. Think of it as helping the poor and ignorant masses, and at least take a look at the blueprint I brought."
"...Very well, I'll just look at the blueprint."
As I figured—he had some bandwidth after all.
Otherwise, he'd have shaken his head at even just looking, saying the sky could split in two and he still couldn't.
"Here, take a look at this blueprint."
"There's a large water tank and two smaller water tubs."
"Fill one tub with river or well water. Boil the water in the other continuously. Drill holes in the bottoms of both tubs to feed water into the large tank."
"Building it doesn't seem too hard. But we need a way to control the flow of cold and hot water into the tank. Without control, the water could get too cold or too hot."
Jang Yeong-sil fetched a fresh sheet of paper and copied my rough sketch of the cold water tub, hot water tub, and main tank.
He sketched a faucet-like device over the outflow hole, then erased it and drew a pull-tab panel instead.
"I'd love to adapt the screw mechanism from the matchlock to simply twist and adjust the flow. But that might make it too complex. So using these manual pull panels to regulate hot and cold water seems better."
"As expected of you, Master Craftsman Jang. That'll definitely be more convenient."
"Also, if water sits stagnant in a tank where multiple people bathe, it'll get filthy and make people dirtier instead of cleaner. So we should drill a hole at the bottom of the tank for dirty water to drain out."
"Then the drained water can't just go into the nearby river—no. First, we build a settling pit next to the bathhouse to collect the used bathwater. Let the temperature drop and the grime settle there, then channel it via canal to the nearest river or stream."
In fact, books and articles on water conservation suggest you can even reuse bathwater in the washing machine.
So dumping used bathwater straight into the Han River or a local stream probably wouldn't cause major issues.
But as they say, accidents happen. Without a settling pit, if bathwater flows untreated into rivers, we can't be absolutely sure there'd be no water pollution problems.
"Heating bathwater will take a lot of fuel, though..."
"Aren't we mining coal from mines all across the eight provinces? That's what we'll use."
When people hear "coal," they often think of London's smog and massive air pollution.
That's half right, half wrong.
Coal burning does pollute the air, but the "London Smog" happened because, post-Industrial Revolution, countless steam engines devoured coal like monsters in confined spaces.
Using it as fuel substitute like now might slightly worsen air quality, but it won't escalate to a major crisis.
"An excellent idea, sir. But will people actually want to bathe?"
We're asking them to do something they don't normally do: "Pay to bathe."
The masses won't flock to public bathhouses for that.
But I have a plan.
"I'll handle getting them interested. You just focus on building what I ordered, Master Craftsman Jang."
"Yes, sir."
"We need them all over Hanyang, so once you've finished the blueprints, hand them to Deputy Director Jeong Bun at the Ironworks and come find me in Hanseongbu."
Jang Yeong-sil was the blueprint expert; Jeong Bun was the civil engineering specialist.
So construction onward should go to him for efficiency.
With public bathhouses on the way, I planned to spread awareness of hygiene's importance to the masses.
"Using the power of music and performances."
And while we're at it, sell various foods too.
Things like rice balls, hot pot bulgogi, or seolleongtang.