Chapter 780 Good Luck
Pengcheng, Shenghua Electronics Factory. Song Yuanchao, who had just arrived in Pengcheng, was sitting in the general manager's office, accompanied by the general manager Shen Xiangsheng.
In front of Song Yuanchao, there was a gadget that was smaller than a cigarette box. It was a simple electronic device. The outer shell was made of very ordinary plastic, and the electronic components inside could be seen through the gaps.
On the horizontal side of the device is an LCD screen, below the LCD screen on the left are two buttons, and on the right are four directional keys, representing front, back, left and right.
Turn it over, there is a slot on the back that can hold a No. 5 battery, and there is a small indicator light on the upper side.
Song Yuanchao picked up this thing and played with it. Although it looked simple, it was the first Chinese pager in China, and it was a Chinese pager independently developed and designed by Shenghua.
After playing with it for a while, Song Yuanchao stretched out his hand, and Shen Xiangsheng, who had been prepared, quickly handed a new battery to Song Yuanchao. Song Yuanchao took the battery and put it into the slot on the back, then turned over and pressed the power button.
After pressing it, there was no response. Shen Xiangsheng reminded Song Yuanchao that it was a trial machine and the button material was just makeshift, so he needed some strength. Song Yuanchao pressed it again, this time with more force, and the pager finally responded.
The LCD screen on the front lit up, the indicator lights on the side began to flash, and the machine made a startup sound.
About one second after the LCD screen lights up, the product's logo flashes on the screen. LOGO is a fancy spelling of the English word Alpha, and is also the brand name of this pager.
Alpha, which means Alpha in Chinese, was a brand decided by Song Yuanchao and had been registered long ago.
After a while, the LOGO faded away and was replaced by the setup screen after the power-on was completed. Under the guidance of his son Shen Xiangsheng, Song Yuanchao set up the machine step by step, including the year, month, date, time settings, etc. After finishing these, he nodded slightly.
"The operation is okay, the screen brightness and clarity are also good, and it has basically all the necessary functions." Song Yuanchao said to Shen Xiangsheng with a little satisfaction.
This is not just a casual remark. Song Yuanchao has used a Chinese pager before. Although this is a very distant thing in his memory, he quickly became familiar with it once he got the hang of it.
In fact, pagers have been around for decades, but they have only been in China for a short time, only two or three years. And for various reasons, pagers are not popular in China and there are very few users.
But abroad, the pager market is already very common. Not to mention developed Western countries, let’s just talk about Hong Kong. The pager business is already very well established. Shenghua acquired a paging station and started the paging business more than a year ago.
However, the pagers on the market have always had digital displays, not Chinese. The Chinese-display pager project was successfully developed by an American company based on Motorola's paging technology at the request of Song Yuanchao, and then actually formed by Shenghua Electronics.
Speaking of Chinese display, in fact, this technology is not a difficult task. It is just an , but this technology is actually very convenient.
The sample in Song Yuanchao's hand is still very simple, but this seemingly simple thing is unique.
Holding it in his hand, Song Yuanchao listened to Shen Xiangsheng's introduction of the pager and nodded slightly without comment. After a moment, he asked, "How is the actual paging effect?"
"There is no problem with the internal test, Mr. Song, you can try it directly."
"Oh, we need to try it. How do we try it?" Song Yuanchao suddenly became interested and asked with a smile.
Shen Xiangsheng asked Song Yuanchao to wait for a moment, then picked up the phone beside him and dialed a number. After the call was connected, he said a few words to the other end and hung up.
About 5 minutes later, the phone on the table rang. Shen Xiangsheng picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and hung up again. He then pulled the phone over and placed it in front of Song Yuanchao: "Mr. Song, just dial 0158 for the extension. They have already arranged it. Once you dial it, just follow the normal paging station operation and pay attention... Oh, by the way, the code name of the trial phone in your hand is 8601. Remember to call the code first."
"Haha, I understand." Song Yuanchao picked up the phone and dialed 0158. After the call was connected, a soft female voice came from the receiver. The other party reported: "Hello, this is Shenghua Electronics' internal test paging station. What can I do for you?"
When Song Yuanchao heard this answer, the memory of himself using a pager in his previous life suddenly flooded into his mind, and he couldn't help but feel emotional.
Song Yuanchao remembered that it was the early 1990s, 1991 or 1992? It was so long ago that Song Yuanchao could not remember clearly. At that time, he was already a formal employee of the Telecommunications Bureau, working as a small cadre in the line service. Since the line service personnel often had to work outside, the unit equipped them with pagers.
The earliest pager was a digital display, a classic Motorola model, also known as a "BB machine". It was smaller than the Chinese pagers we have now, about half the size of a cigarette box, with an LCD screen on the top and a clip on the back that can be clipped directly to the waistband. By the way, there is also a hole on the side for hanging a chain, which can be connected to the trouser pocket to prevent it from falling.
Song Yuanchao used this digital pager for several years. In 1996, the bureau replaced it with a Chinese pager, also a Motorola one. He used it until around 2002, when it was replaced because mobile phones were more convenient to use.
At that time, pagers were used very frequently. People received or made quite a few paging calls every day. It almost became a part of life.
And now, these memories suddenly emerged in his mind, along with all the fragments of life and work deep in his memory, which made Song Yuanchao feel deeply moved.
"Hello, sir. This is Shenghua Electronics' internal testing paging station..."
In a trance, the other party's repeated reminders were heard again in the receiver, bringing Song Yuanchao's thoughts back to reality.
After calming down, Song Yuanchao smiled self-deprecatingly and said to the other end of the phone, "Hello, please help call the owner of phone 8601."
"OK, you're the owner of phone 8601, right? What message would you like to leave?" A female voice answered from the receiver, accompanied by the sound of keyboard typing.
Song Yuanchao was originally planning to say something casually, but when the words came to his lips, he suddenly changed his mind and said to the other end of the phone: "Leave a message: Good luck and good luck tonight, let's eat chicken! My last name is Song, Baomu Song."
It was unknown whether the content of Song Yuanchao's message surprised the other party. The female voice on the other end of the receiver did not answer immediately, but paused. However, she quickly reacted and asked in a soft voice: "The message is: Good luck and eat chicken tonight. Repeat again, good luck and eat chicken tonight? Mr. Song left a message."
"Yes, OK!"
"Okay, thank you for using Shenghua Electronics' internal test paging station, goodbye..."
Then the other party hung up the phone. Song Yuanchao put down the phone and laughed. He picked up the cigarette box beside him, took out a cigarette and lit it. Just as he took a puff, the Chinese pager in front of him started beeping, and the indicator light on the side also flashed to remind him.
He reached out for the Chinese pager, pressed a button, and the display screen lit up.
Two lines of Chinese characters appeared on the lit display screen, which contained the message that Song Yuanchao had just left. The message clearly read: "Good luck, we'll have chicken tonight, (leave a space), Mr. Song".
"Not bad!" Song Yuanchao nodded with satisfaction, and Shen Xiangsheng beside him also showed a bright smile on his face.
The test method just now is very simple, that is, to conduct a paging test through the simulated base station inside Shenghua Electronics, call the paging station (telephone operator), and then use the paging station to operate on the device to input the content of the information to be sent, and then transmit this information to the simulated base station through the device. The base station sends a signal to the paging target, so that the pager receives the information and displays it.
One thing that needs to be mentioned here is that the key to Chinese paging lies in two points. One is that the pager terminal, that is, the pager itself, needs to have Chinese display support. Without this function, it cannot be achieved at all.
Another point is the equipment operation and information sending of the paging center. Technically, this is not a big problem, but the key lies in the mode of rapid Chinese input.
Electronic computer equipment has been using computer language since its birth. Early electronic computers required very professional operations whether inputting information or displaying results, especially the transmission of command character information. Those densely packed professional languages like hieroglyphics were not understandable to ordinary people.
Later, for the convenience of use, technicians developed an operating interface so that the computer's information input and display could be converted into normal text through the display screen, but the conversion of these texts was mainly in English or the texts of other countries.
Due to the particularity of Chinese, it is inherently weak in this aspect, and the use of computers in Chinese is lagging behind. In addition, there is another difference between Chinese and English, which is the convenience and speed of input. Compared with the simple English letter input, the Chinese input conversion is very complicated, slow and difficult to operate, which has always been a big problem.
If this problem had not been solved a few years ago, even if Shenghua had made a pager that could display Chinese, it would have been difficult to use in practice. But now it is different. In August 1983, Professor Wang Yongming of China invented a very efficient Chinese input method, making Chinese input as efficient as English, and the market application of Chinese pagers became possible.
This input method is the famous Wubi input method, also known as Wangma Wubi input method.
As long as the user has memorized the radicals and mastered this input method, Chinese can be input very quickly through the keyboard. Efficient users can input Chinese at a speed no less than English and numbers. In this way, the last obstacle to the practical use of Chinese pagers has completely disappeared.
