klisemfg Chapter 329 Era: XCMG's Simple-minded Wife 33
Chapter 329 Era: XCMG's Simple-minded Wife 33
"Too deceiving!"
The old factory director slammed his hand on the desk, causing the water in his teacup to splash out.
The conference room was filled with smoke, and the faces of the dozen or so technical experts were terribly gloomy.
"The spectrometer we've been waiting for for half a year has just been confiscated like this?"
Old Zhou, the head of the equipment department, clutched the customs notification, his knuckles turning white. "Not even a reason?"
"Reason?" The finance director sneered. "The reason the Americans have is that they can't stand to see us doing well!"
In the corner, Lin Xiaomei, her eyes red, muttered softly, "Without a spectrometer, how can we detect nanostructures? Are we just going to have to guess again?"
The air in the conference room seemed to freeze for a few seconds.
Suddenly, Shen Hongying stood up, tossing her ponytail: "Then let's make it ourselves!"
"Build it ourselves?" The finance director nearly jumped out of his chair. "Do you know how much a spectrometer costs? Just one optical prism alone costs..."
"The Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics can make prisms."
Shen Hongying interrupted him, took out a stack of blueprints from her backpack, and said, "My college classmates are over there. They just mastered high-precision optical grinding technology."
"What about electronic components?" Old Zhou frowned. "We don't even have a decent integrated circuit."
Zhao Bo pushed up his glasses: "There's an old, decommissioned spectrometer in the oil field to the north. We can take parts from it."
The conference room suddenly exploded.
"Nonsense!" The finance director slammed his fist on the table. "How can something cobbled together be used?"
"It's better than nothing."
Ji Xiaosong said calmly, "When Marie Curie discovered radium, even the laboratory was a shantytown."
Old Li suddenly burst into laughter: "Well said! What hardships haven't we steel mill endured?"
He turned to the old factory director and said, "Director, let's do it! At worst, we'll suffer another setback!"
The old factory director didn't say anything, but stared at the slogan on the wall for a long time.
"Self-reliance and hard work"—that was painted on back in the 1960s, and the red paint is already faded.
"Dry!"
The old man suddenly stood up. "From today onwards, the entire technical department will work in three shifts, and the canteen will provide meals 24 hours a day. Even if we have to pry it out with our bare hands, we will get the spectrometer out!"
*
Three days later, the steel mill's warehouse was converted into a temporary laboratory.
Shen Hongying and two electricians were squatting on the ground assembling control circuits, with piles of parts salvaged from old equipment next to them.
Zhao Bo, along with several young workers, carefully wiped down the scrapped spectrometer that had been transported from the north.
"Be careful!" Zhao Bo exclaimed, sweat beading on his forehead. "You won't find another photomultiplier tube like this anywhere else in the country!"
Ji Xiaosong was checking the circuit diagram drawn by Shen Hongying when she suddenly heard sobbing behind her.
She turned around and saw Lin Xiaomei squatting in the corner, her shoulders shaking.
"what happened?"
"Sister-in-law..." Lin Xiaomei looked up, tears welling in her eyes, "Can we really do this? One piece of equipment from Country M is worth three years' worth of our entire factory's output..."
Ji Xiaosong squatted down and took out a handkerchief from her pocket: "You know what? On my first day of college, I didn't even know trigonometric functions."
She pointed to Shen Hongying, who was soldering a circuit, and said, "She tutors me until late at night every day after class."
He then pointed to Zhao Bo, who was covered in sweat: "He used an oil field drill bit as a model to explain quantum mechanics in order to help me understand it."
"Xiaomei, what we Chinese are best at is turning the impossible into the possible."
Lin Xiaomei stared blankly at Ji Xiaosong, tears welling up in her eyes.
Her rough fingers gripped the handkerchief embroidered with a red star tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"But sister-in-law..." her voice choked with emotion, "we don't even have a decent laboratory..."
Ji Xiaosong gently held her calloused hand: "Look over there."
She pointed to Old Li, who was adjusting equipment in the corner, and said, "You, Old Li, didn't even finish junior high school back then, but now you can still understand the D language technical manual that Wei Dong brought back, can't you?"
Lin Xiaomei followed her gaze.
Old Li was squatting on the ground, comparing data under the dim light. Coal dust left several black marks on his face, but his eyes shone with an astonishing brightness.
Do you know how our steel plant's first rolling mill came about?
Ji Xiaosong lowered his voice, "It was pieced together by workers using parts from captured R Army tanks."
Lin Xiaomei's tears suddenly stopped.
She remembered her father's often-quoted saying: "If we don't have guns or cannons, the enemy will make them for us."
Looking back now, isn't construction the same principle?
"I...I'll go and call Old Zhang from Workshop Three!"
Lin Xiaomei suddenly stood up, wiped her face, and said, "He's been repairing equipment for twenty years, he'll definitely be of help!"
Watching her run away, Ji Xiaosong's lips curled up slightly.
She knew that this young woman had finally understood a truth:
In that era of extreme poverty, their greatest weapon was never advanced equipment, but rather their indomitable spirit.
*
A month later, when the first beam of light passed through the homemade prism, the entire warehouse fell silent.
The spectrometer, a strange hybrid, had its outer shell made from a discarded machine tool, and its control panel still bore English markings, but its core optical system gleamed with brand-new light.
With trembling hands, Shen Hongying pressed the power switch, and a faint curve gradually appeared on the oscilloscope.
“It’s done…” Zhao Bo’s voice seemed to come from a very far place.
Old Zhou rushed forward, his reading glasses almost touching the screen: "This...this really is a diffraction peak of the nanophase?"
Ji Xiaosong was quickly recording the data when suddenly her pen paused: "Wait, this peak shape is wrong..."
Everyone's heart instantly rose to their throat.
Shen Hongying rushed to the equipment to check the optical path: "The angle of the third reflector is off by 0.5 degrees!"
She grabbed a wrench and started adjusting it, saying, "Give me ten minutes!"
The old factory manager appeared at the doorway, carrying two bottles of baijiu (Chinese liquor): "Kids, tonight..."
His voice choked up, "Whether it works out or not, let's have a drink first!"
Late at night, the data finally stabilized.
When the clear nanophase diffraction pattern was printed out, Zhang Desheng, who was over fifty years old, suddenly squatted on the ground and burst into tears.
This old fitter, who had worked in the steel mill for thirty years, once thought he would never see the day when China's steel industry caught up with foreign countries.
With tears in his eyes, Xu Weidong hugged everyone. When it was Ji Xiaosong's turn, he whispered in her ear, "Come home for dinner tonight. The children miss you."
On the way home, Shen Hongying and Zhao Bo walked on either side of Ji Xiaosong.
The early autumn evening breeze was cool, but it couldn't dispel the heat on the faces of the three young people.
“Do you know?” Zhao Bo suddenly said, “My mentor at the oil field once said that our generation is destined to be paving stones.”
"Paving stones are good."
Shen Hongying kicked at the pebbles on the road, saying, "When our apprentices drive over there in the future, at least they can say, 'This road is damn smooth!'"
As Ji Xiaosong gazed at the ever-burning lights of the steel mill in the distance, she suddenly recalled a line of poetry she had read in college: "Why are my eyes always filled with tears? Because I love this land so deeply..."