Li Hong looked at the map that Long Ma regarded as a treasure, and continued to draw out the map he had improvised, carefully smoothing out the wrinkles on it, and his heart was full of respect and admiration for this empress in history.
He knew better than anyone how shocked Wu Mei was when such a map appeared in her eyes.
After all, the maps of this period were all based on mountains and rivers. County maps and city maps first drew the center of the city, and then mapped out the scenic spots, rivers and other places within the jurisdiction according to the corresponding Draw the general direction corresponding to the center of the city, and finally fill in the nearby villages and other places to the corresponding foothills and river sides, forming a regional map.
Such map drawing relies on the painter carrying simple directional equipment and simple distance measuring equipment step by step. Due to the lack of positioning technology and the absence of coordinate systems such as longitude and latitude, it is drawn Maps, the error will increase with the increase of the map, and the areas are not proportional to each other at all. As a result, people can only follow the map, as if they are being led forward. Otherwise, they will lose their way. , don’t know where you are.
As for complex places such as mountainous areas, such maps are of no use at all. Therefore, during this period, sand table manipulation was extremely important in the military. It was more popular with military generals than unreliable maps. .
As for the current waterway map, as the importance of the Sui and Tang Dynasty canals continued to increase during this period, the waterway maps drawn by the Tang Dynasty were made by the painter standing on the bow of the ship, first drawing Luoyang at this end, and then drawing as the ship progressed. The painter drew down the cities, mountains and rivers he saw along the route one by one. After arriving in Hangzhou, he drew Hangzhou at the end of the map, and this waterway map came into being.
This kind of map has no actual reference function at all. It is just like a cartographer drawing what he saw and heard after traveling around.
There is no direction or proportion to speak of. If you are in a good mood, just paint this place better. If you are in a bad mood, just paint this place with fewer strokes. The map you make is more like an artistic painting than a professional one. map.
When Li Hong was ten years old, he once instigated Li Chunfeng. The astronomical telescope he made for Li Chunfeng made Li Chunfeng crazy for a year. He had to rely on the telescope every day for food and accommodation.
At the same time, students from the Hongwen Museum began to use the "planning method" and the "six-body cartography" done by Pei Xiu of the Jin Dynasty to redraw the map of Chang'an City, but at that time the real coordinate system and longitude and latitude were missing. With high accuracy and without considering the curvature of the earth, or without knowing it at all, Hongwenguan was able to draw a map of Chang'an over a long period of time.
It's just that the map, except for the nearby places such as the Imperial City, is more accurate, and other places farther out are no longer accurate.
What's even worse is that during the drawing process, they found that the map became more deformed as it went outwards, and even became distorted as if it had been pulled away by something. They could not draw a satisfactory map no matter what.
Fortunately, the students of Hongwen Hall did not feel discouraged by this. Seeing His Royal Highness the Prince's dismissive look, these people gathered their energy and began to plunge in. According to legend, Dayu left behind when he was controlling the flood: " The left yardstick, the right rule, carry the four seasons, in order to open the nine states, connect the nine roads, pass the nine lakes, and cross the nine mountains."
Some books such as "Zhou Bi Suan Jing" and "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic" were borrowed from the Imperial College by students from Hongwen Hall. Shangguan Yi was so frightened that he repeatedly told them that they could borrow them, but they must not cause any damage. ah.
The students who dived in and were bound to make His Highness the Crown Prince look at him with special eyes, all just nodded in agreement like wolves and tigers. They only thought about how to draw a perfect map, so how could they have the intention to take Shangguan Yi's instructions to heart? superior.
But fortunately, when Shangguan Yi saw those books again, he was greatly relieved. Fortunately, nothing was damaged. There was only one book, obviously written by His Highness the Crown Prince, with four words written on it: "A bunch of idiots! "
When these students from Hongwen Hall looked like defeated roosters, with their heads hanging down when they saw Li Hong, they saw a round wooden ball placed in front of His Highness the Crown Prince.
He held a piece of paper in his hand, with some words written on it that no one could understand: "Jianyi", "Gaobiao", "Yangyi", "Liyunyi", "Xuanzhengyi", "Zuozhengyi" "Yi" and some other incomprehensible words were handed to a student from Hongwen Hall.
Then Li Hong personally selected a dozen students from Hongwen Hall from his observations during these days, and asked these people to take the piece of paper and the wooden ball to Li Chunfeng, and agreed that within ten years, if they could completely After understanding and drawing a satisfactory map, everyone will be named a Tang Dynasty official of the fifth rank!
The students were naturally overjoyed by this promise, but when they heard that His Highness the Crown Prince was talking about ten years later, everyone realized that drawing the map was by no means as simple as it had been since their own research during this period.
When they came to Taiyi Mountain with the paper and the wooden ball in their arms, and handed everything in their hands to Li Chunfeng, Li Chunfeng looked at it for a long time and couldn't figure it out.
Yuan Tiangang turned the ball around and teased the students: "Who drew this? What is this?"
But when he continued to turn it inadvertently in his hand and saw that the word Chang'an was written on the ball that did not look like a painting or a picture, he was so frightened that he threw the ball to the ground!
Li Chunfeng, who was startled by Yuan Tiangang's ghostly appearance, curiously picked up the ball and looked at it for a long time. While muttering the names of Chang'an, Luoyang and other places, he suddenly realized that this seemed to be a map!
From that time on, Li Chunfeng led the dozen or so students and plunged into the study of map drawing. From the beginning, he couldn't understand why the map was drawn on the sphere, to the end, he looked at it with fear and trembling. Looking at the ball, everyone's face was filled with fear and disbelief!
Almost at the same time, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, who had already gone to Anxi, suddenly sent a secret letter to Li Chunfeng, and even selected nearly 10,000 people from among the Crown Prince's six leaders for Li Chunfeng to drive.
The content of the prince's secret message is very simple: "If anyone dares to reveal the truth discovered through research, he will be killed without mercy!"
At the same time, Li Chunfeng was naturally informed that the purpose of the 10,000 people given to him was to be used by him and the students from Hongwen Hall throughout the Tang Dynasty.
As the prince's secret letter, Li Chunfeng locked himself and more than a dozen students from Hongwen Hall in a remote palace in Zongsheng Palace for three days. It was not until the fourth day that these people showed up with perseverance and high spirits. , solemnly walked out of the palace.
But every one of them seemed to have had his tongue cut off in the palace, and became very speechless. No matter how much Yuan Tiangang asked them how their research was going, these Hongwen Hall students seemed to be deaf and mute, unable to speak. People pay attention to his words.
Whether it was Li Chunfeng or the students of Hongwen Hall, they were all completely shocked by His Highness the Crown Prince's secret letter, and at the same time, they regarded His Highness the Crown Prince as a heavenly being in their hearts.
After all, their research was still imaginary. When they parted the clouds and stood on the shoulders of giants and looked down at the mountains and rivers, their inner shock was self-evident: "We actually live on a sphere! The sun is gone. It just ran to the other side of the ball. The sun appeared because the ball under our feet was actually rotating! The stars above our heads were not as big as we saw. Far from being so close to me, the distance between me and them is the distance between life and death.”
But His Royal Highness the Crown Prince was not involved in all the celestial phenomena they observed. He only occasionally asked how the process was going, and was not fully involved in the process. How did he know that we were on a sphere? And where do you know that on this sphere, the area of the ocean is much larger than the area of the land!
For three days, Li Chunfeng led the students from Hongwen Hall from doubting life to accepting reality, and then to a dozen or twenty people standing motionless in a circle, staring at the pattern on the wooden ball.
In the end, these dozen or twenty people overcame their fears and believed that the world would not suddenly let them fall because of the existence of something called gravity.
Li Hong knew very well that if Li Chunfeng's research was known to more people, who knows whether the world would suddenly become chaotic, and whether the people of the Tang Dynasty would suffer because of the fact that people lived on a sphere. Bringing fear and panic, and then being used by malicious people to cause various riots throughout the Tang Dynasty
At that time, I would really become a sinner of the Tang Dynasty. After all, people's understanding has always been based on the concept of a round sky and a square earth.
When they learn that they are living on a rotating ball, who knows whether this fact will make them confused and think that one day they will fall into an abyss
So for the sake of the stability of the Tang Dynasty, Li Hong firmly locked all this in the mouths of those dozen or twenty people when he estimated that it was almost done!
From that day on, these talents gradually mastered more astronomy, astrology, geometry, mathematics, drawing and other subjects. From that day on, the path in front of them was completely contrary to the people of this era and completely detached. The thinking of this era was brought to life by Li Hong, who was more than a thousand years ahead of schedule in this field!
"Your father told me last night that he now feels that his health is not as good as before, and his energy is getting weaker and weaker. This time he went on a personal expedition, and he realized that he would never be able to surpass the late emperor. He was even worse in culture, Taoism and military strategy. Many of the late emperors originally hoped to use this personal expedition to prove that he was in the heyday of the Spring and Autumn Period. Who knows, this personal expedition made him completely lose confidence. I'm talking to you, what are you thinking about? !" Wu Mei looked up and looked at Li Hong, who was looking at the map in a daze, with one eye closed and making an incomprehensible gesture. He was so angry that he hit Li Hong on the shoulder again with the feather duster.
"Ah? I'm Jack... Isn't this map good?"
(End of chapter)