In the 17th year of Chengshun, one year after the Royal Institute of Technology's Steam Engine Research Institute developed a practical steam engine (the early Watt steam engine), and after one year of industrial mass production research and production line construction, the Dachu Empire finally launched the steam engine industry. The door to practical applications at scale.
And start running towards the steam age behind the door!
First came the coal mining industry, then other mining companies, and then a series of advanced industries represented by the heavy machinery industry and the national defense industry, which have extremely high demand for power and have large added value.
Finally, a few industries in areas where there was an urgent need for power, but human resources could not meet it, and water power could not be used, began to use steam engines.
These industries began to implement steam engines within half a year, and the scale and speed of their installations far exceeded the expectations of the senior officials of the Da Chu Empire.
At that time, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce estimated that the application scale of steam engines would reach about 500 units within five years based on the conditions of various industries and regions.
But the actual situation is that in the second half of the 17th year of Chengshun alone, more than 50 steam engines have been delivered to users, and the delivery speed is getting faster and faster.
This is still the current delivery data. If we look at production capacity and estimated production capacity, it will be even greater.
The production lines established by the three major manufacturers based on market feedback are expected to have an annual production capacity of more than 700 units, and will be completed and put into production by the middle of next year.
Although most of them are small and medium-sized steam engines, the problem is that when the Ministry of Industry and Commerce estimated the scale, the data adopted were mainly small and medium-sized steam engines...
When the estimate was first made, there were no high-horsepower steam engines. The prototype produced by the Steam Engine Research Institute of the Royal Institute of Technology was a 16-horsepower steam engine. When the data was first estimated, a 16-horsepower steam engine was also used as the basis. Estimated according to standards.
The five-year goal originally set by the upper echelons of the Da Chu Empire to support the development of steam engines now seems to only take two years to achieve.
Because judging from the current steam engine production line construction status of the three major manufacturers and the orders provided by downstream manufacturers, next year's production and sales data can reach at least 500 units, or even higher.
The enthusiasm of downstream manufacturers for steam engines is more enthusiastic than expected by the top executives of the imperial industry. Especially among mining companies, the most popular topic nowadays is steam engines.
And it's not just steam pumps. Mining companies are also thinking about how to use steam engines in other ways.
It was Chizhou Coal Mining Company. They first purchased and applied a batch of steam pumps, and then they commissioned Dangtu Machinery Company to use a subsequently purchased steam engine as power to quickly and conveniently lift coal from the mine through cable pulling. Come up.
Instead of relying on manual trolleys for transportation as before.
For this reason, we have to mention the rail carriages that are now widely used in various mines or some freight terminals.
Very early on, Luo Zhixue personally proposed the method of using rail carriages to transport goods in order to solve the problem of rapid transportation of large quantities of materials in ports or material transfer stations.
But this kind of track is not a railroad track, let alone a steel rail, but a wooden track, and the vehicles running on it are not trains, but horse-drawn carriages.
This method of transportation using wooden track carriages has great cost advantages in transporting bulk goods, but the cost is very high.
Because wooden tracks are under continuous high-intensity use and are exposed to wind and rain, even with various maintenance measures, they are not very durable and need to be replaced frequently.
High-intensity maintenance and track replacement make the use cost of this kind of wooden track very high... This also means that it is impossible to promote it on a large scale. Generally, it will only be used in ports, mines, etc. where a large amount of materials are needed. This kind of wooden track carriage is only used in transportation places.
Even in the city, it is impossible to roll out wooden rails for passenger carriages...the maintenance cost is too high!
Later, as the iron output of the Dachu Empire gradually increased, some ports of the Dachu Empire successively tried to use directly cast pig iron bars to build tracks. In this way, although the initially cast tracks were higher, subsequent maintenance costs were lower. .
Moreover, carriages on railway tracks drive more effortlessly and can transport more goods.
Continuously, many mines and ports in the Great Chu Empire, which had a large demand for cargo transportation, gradually replaced wooden tracks with cast iron tracks.
So... the railway tracks in the Da Chu Empire came out before the trains, and they were very early...
The same is true in modern history. In the second half of the 16th century, wooden tracks began to be used in mines in Britain, Germany and other places. Well, they were basically no different from the wooden tracks of the Dachu Empire.
In the past few decades, both East and West have used wooden tracks in mines and transported large quantities of goods with track carriages. This is an inevitability of historical development and the result of practical needs.
It's just that in Europe in the original time and space, it was probably in the second half of the 18th century that the price of iron plummeted, and the owners of the iron factory temporarily cast the unsold iron into iron bars to replace the wooden rails for their own use, and they were also prepared to wait for the iron. After the price went up, the rails were sold again, and it turned out that the rails were better to use than the wooden rails... And because steel production continued to increase significantly, the price of iron continued to remain low, resulting in the lifetime cost of the rails being higher than that of wooden rails. The cost of tracks is even lower, and the transportation volume is larger... The combination of many aspects has triggered a wave of large-scale laying of railway tracks.
In the Dachu Empire, the situation was actually similar. At first, wooden tracks were built to transport large amounts of goods. Then, as domestic iron production continued to increase and the price of pig iron became cheaper, the wooden tracks gradually turned into pig iron tracks, and they are widely used in the country. Among the mines and ports.
Although Chizhou Coal Mining Company is a small and medium-sized coal mining company, its mines also have iron tracks. The longest iron track extends from the mine to the inland port, and is more than two thousand meters from the main plant.
The coal they produce can be easily and conveniently transported from the mine to one of their own coal inland river terminals by rail carriage, and then directly loaded onto a ship, passing through the river and then into the Yangtze River, and finally arrives at Dangtu Industrial Zone for sale to Dangtu Steel Company. or other customers.
After rail transportation became available, they also tried using steam engines to pull and transport goods, but the method of directly turning them into trains was unreliable. The current steam engines are too heavy and too bulky. It would be impossible to move the steam engines up there. What cargo.
Chizhou Coal Mining Company's approach is not to build a train, but to use a method similar to a water pump, using the steam engine as a source of power to pull the coal from deep in the mine through small rail vehicles inside the mine.
That’s the cable car!
Of course, only coal mining companies can do this... Anyway, their coal is almost free, and the daily use cost of the steam engine is also mostly coal. When coal is free, except for the cost of maintenance, the steam engine costs almost nothing. No cost…
Therefore, these coal mining companies are thinking about using steam engines in more ways to replace the large number of mules and horses in the mines.
Mules and horses eat a lot, and their endurance is limited, so they cannot be used all the time. Therefore, in the production process, the actual cost of using mules and horses is very high. It does not mean that you can put a rope on the mules and horses, and then they will not eat. I'll do your work for you.
If you can just tie a rope around and work without eating or drinking, that is an animal from the 21st century, not an animal from the 17th century!
Livestock in the seventeenth century were valuable to use.
This is why many coal mining companies, after getting steam engines, started to think of ways to replace mules and horses with steam engines to save costs.
For example, the Huainan Coal Mining Company has a more radical idea than the Chizhou Coal Mining Company... They also try to directly use steam engines to drive vehicles. The main reason is that the railway track from their coal mine to the dock is relatively long, and there is also a long distance between their two mining areas. The distance is relatively far, and the total mileage of this track is seven kilometers.
The idea also attracted the attention of the Institute of Steam Engines at the Royal Institute of Technology, where a group of engineers were very interested in carrying out the design and complex calculations.
But the ideal is beautiful, and the reality is very touching... According to their calculations, if they move the existing steam engine onto the rails and then drive the goods, with the power and weight of today's trains... the efficiency will be particularly touching... How should I say, It's better to just call a bunch of people and drive away, it's cheaper, easier to use and faster...
The final result is: It's not that it can't be built... If you insist on building a train now, it can actually move, but in terms of speed, cargo capacity, and more importantly, cost, it's not as good as pushing it with people...
Although Huainan Coal Mining Company is a government-run enterprise and has a positive and enterprising spirit, it cannot lose money.
Therefore, after the train plan is not feasible according to the data, we can only continue to use rail carriages.
But this matter was also sent to Luo Zhixue along with a report on the application of steam engines.
Looking at the train test research conducted by the Huainan Coal Mining Company and the Royal Institute of Technology Steam Engine Research Institute, Luo Zhixue couldn't help but sigh that there are more smart people in the world than he thought.
Now some people are starting to build trains. Although this low-pressure steam engine is useless, the theoretical concept is very good. If this continues, real trains will not be far away.
In addition, Luo Zhixue also knew that Guangzhou Machinery Company was developing high-pressure steam engines, and the best early customers for high-pressure steam engines were trains.
After thinking for a while, Luo Zhixue gave instructions, asking the Royal Institute of Technology's Steam Engine Research Institute, Iron and Steel Research Institute and other institutions to deploy some scientific researchers to launch a new research technology: trains!
He also instructed the newly established Train Research Institute to cooperate with the Guangzhou Machinery Company, because the high-pressure steam engine being developed by the Guangzhou Machinery Company seemed to be very determined.
Both parties have the basis for strategic cooperation.
After giving the instructions casually and making the layout, all Luo Zhixue has to do now is to wait for the train to bear fruit!
Luo Zhixue didn't know when a practical train would be built, but he knew that if he continued on this path, it might take ten or twenty years, but the train would eventually be built.
Even if this process requires a lot of time and money!
Others may have doubts about the train's subsequent application value, but Luo Zhixue would not, because he clearly knows the huge value of the train.
This can be seen in many key projects.
Many research projects in the Chu Empire, especially those nationwide projects that cost a lot of manpower and material resources, were mostly launched with the support of Luo Zhixue.
For example, the previous steam engine research project and today's train research project.
Then there are related research in the electromagnetic field and research in the field of internal combustion engines that have not even been understood in theoretical research.
In addition, there is a series of research in agriculture and animal husbandry that the empire has invested heavily in supporting for more than ten years!
In the eyes of future generations, agriculture and animal husbandry may not be high-level enough, and it is far less attractive than research in industrial fields such as steam engines, trains, ships, and electromagnetism.
But in fact, among the current series of scientific research funds allocated by the Dachu Empire, the research funds obtained by agriculture and animal husbandry far exceed the research funds obtained by industrial projects!
It's just that the research on agriculture and animal husbandry is relatively scattered, with too many projects, and each project is not too big, which makes it seem out of scale.
But in total terms, the research funds related to agriculture and animal husbandry, that is, the primary industry, exceed those of the secondary industry!
There are many kinds of research in agriculture and animal husbandry, some of which are familiar to later generations, such as the research on hybrid rice. The Chu Empire established a total of three professional hybrid rice research bases in Guangxi, Hainan and Guangdong, specializing in the research and cultivation of hybrid rice. High yield rice.
And rice is only part of a series of huge agricultural and animal husbandry research carried out by the Chu Empire. It can only be said that the scale is relatively large and the name is also larger.
But in fact, wheat research has received more funds and more manpower and material support, because wheat is the staple food of the contemporary Chu Empire. Even in the southern region, winter wheat is grown in many places.
Therefore, wheat-related research is very important, through selective breeding, observing the adaptability of various varieties to various places, etc. To this end, the Wheat Research Institute has established five professional test bases across the country. There are two more than the rice base.
In addition to research on hybrid rice and fine wheat, the Chu Empire actually has many very important agricultural research related to the national economy and people's livelihood, such as the research on several other types of grains that can serve as staple foods.
That is, sweet potatoes, corn, and potatoes are three crops. These three crops have several things in common, that is, they are all exotic crops. They do not require high land requirements, and they can all serve as main supplementary grains, and even serve as agricultural crops under certain circumstances. staple food.
There have been records of a small amount of these crops being grown in China before, but they have not been grown on a large scale. The most important thing is that the yields of these exotic crops are not high because they are affected by the climate and environment.
Unpopular common sense, when these exotic crops first entered the Chinese region, their yields were actually not very good. It took a long period of breeding and seed selection before crops with higher yields appeared. This is why sweet potatoes entered the Chinese region in the Ming Dynasty. , but it was only in the Qing Dynasty that cultivation began to be promoted on a large scale.
Of course, this is also related to factors such as whether the government pays attention to it and whether it has carried out seed selection and promotion.
The Dachu Empire obviously attached great importance to the selection of crops and the promotion and research of excellent crops. Therefore, there are specialized research institutions under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to conduct research on the cultivation and selection of various crops, including these exotic crops, in order to draw more conclusions. Excellent crops.
The hybrid rice project is also part of a series of crop research.
In addition to grain, there is also research on various vegetables, fruits, industrial raw materials and other messy cash crops, animal husbandry, etc.
Among the economic crops, the more typical ones are mulberry trees, cotton, soybeans, tung oil, rubber trees and other economic crops in the raw silk industry, among which cotton is the most important.
The Dachu Empire has a specialized cotton research institution that specializes in cultivating excellent cotton seeds.
Cotton is much more important to the Chu Empire than raw silk, wool and the like. Cotton spinning is the powerful weapon that supports the vast textile industry of the Chu Empire and then drives the rapid industrialization of the Chu Empire.
In comparison, the silk spinning industry and wool spinning industry are somewhat worse.
Under such circumstances, the entire Chu Empire attached great importance to the selection and planting of cotton. They not only selected local cotton for cultivation, but also obtained cotton from overseas regions through various channels for research, especially the famous Egyptian cotton. object.
Egyptian cotton is a very excellent cotton species. Its fibers are not only long, but also very strong. It is very suitable for mechanized mass production. Most of the cotton imported in large quantities by the Da Chu Empire is imported from this kind of cotton. It is mainly imported. The region is not Egypt, but India...
Although this kind of cotton is called Egyptian cotton, it actually originated in India and is also widely planted in contemporary India. It was only brought to Egypt by the Arabs and planted. Then it became famous in the European world and was then called It's Egyptian cotton.
But in fact, this kind of long-staple cotton is grown in many places in the Indian peninsula today. In the past, the cotton they produced was generally used for their own use, hand-woven and then used or exported, but now many landowners in the Indian peninsula grow cotton. The powerful people began to choose to sell cotton directly to the merchants of the Dachu Empire.
It’s not because the price is higher, it’s even lower than before…
It's because the handmade cotton spinning industry in the Indian peninsula is about to be completely finished... At present, there are only some cheap homespun cloths handwoven by Indian short-staple cotton that still have some market, while the mid-to-high-end cloths made of long-staple cotton have long been available. He was beaten to pieces by the machine-made cloth of the Dachu Empire.
Under such circumstances, a large amount of Egyptian long-staple cotton produced in India had no choice but to be sold to merchants from the Chu Empire!
Egyptian long-staple cotton is currently the largest imported material in the Chu Empire, and is imported in large quantities every year.
The country also wants to solve the problem of self-sufficiency in cotton, so it is natural to research and promote high-quality long-staple cotton.
In addition to a series of economic crops, another major category of research in the agricultural and animal husbandry of the Great Chu Empire is animal husbandry, which is the research on the breeding and selection of excellent cattle, horses, sheep, mules, donkeys, chickens, ducks, pigs and other livestock.
The most familiar thing to people, and the thing that the Chu Empire has actually invested the most money in, should be the breeding of horses.
The cultivation of horses began in the early years of the Chu Empire, and many military horse farms were established across the country more than ten years ago.
And the results are quite outstanding. At least they are much more reliable than research on hybrid rice or high-yield wheat, which at first glance has no hope of success.
The most outstanding achievement is the newly bred New Central Asian Horse, and its main breeding base is located at the Damaying Military Horse Farm, which is located in the Hexi Corridor.
Therefore, this new breed of horse, which is purely artificially cross-bred, is also called Hexi horse.
It is a very excellent light draft horse and a horse for medium and long-distance riding. Its advantages are excellent endurance, cold resistance, easy to raise, and good adaptability to plateaus; its disadvantages are lack of explosive power and relatively limited load-bearing capacity.
From a military point of view, this is an excellent light cavalry horse, which can also be used as an artillery or baggage draft horse.
At present, all cavalry units in the Great Chu Empire are equipped with this kind of Hexi horses on a large scale. This is also the reason why the Great Chu Empire cultivates Hexi horses on a large scale.
In addition to the Hexi horse, the main light cavalry war horse, there are also many other horse breeds, including excellent horse breeds collected from various places, including many famous primitive horse breeds: Khanxue BMW Akhal Taco horses, Arabian horses, British thoroughbred horses and Spanish horses in Western Europe, etc.
Therefore, there are now a small number of these foreign horse breeds in some specialized military horse farms in the Great Chu Empire. These horse breeds were obtained at a high cost. On the one hand, they are bred and cultivated to maintain the purebred horse population, and on the other hand, It is to use stallions to improve other horse breeds and conduct cross-breeding research.
Well, it’s actually similar to the previous Hexi horse research!
And the results were quite good. The Chu Empire used a heavy-duty draft horse produced in Western Europe to improve the Hexi horse, and bred a horse that was larger in size, had better draft power, and had a docile personality. Currently, they are mainly bred at Yidu Racecourse and are mainly used as draft horses for artillery and baggage troops.
This kind of Yidu horse is an excellent medium-sized draft horse with good endurance, but poor explosive power... Basically, this thing can only be used as a draft horse, used to pull cannons or carts.
It's actually possible to ride a horse, but don't expect him to run very fast...
In addition, there is another kind of horse that can be regarded as a descendant of the Hexi horse. The Chu Empire cultivated Hexi horses, purebred horses, Spanish horses, sweat-blooded horses and other famous excellent horse breeds at the Jinling Military Horse Farm on the outskirts of Jinling.
Such breeding allowed this new horse breed to have the blood of multiple ancient horse breeds at the same time, including the blood of four ancient horse breeds: Mongolian horse, Arabian horse, Spanish horse, and sweat-blooded BMW. Finally, after long-term breeding, they made A top-notch war horse emerged: the Jinling horse.
This kind of horse is born to be a top war horse, with an average shoulder height of 1.55 meters, and the best ones can reach more than 1.6 meters. It has a beautiful body shape, strong limbs, powerful explosive power, excellent load-bearing capacity, and medium endurance.
Even though his endurance is slightly lower, a series of advantages are enough to make him a top-notch cavalry horse!
The only problem is that this kind of horse is very delicate... Not only is it expensive to eat, but it also has very demanding requirements on the environment. It won't work if it's too cold, or it won't work if it's too hot and humid...
Even if they stay in the warm Jiangnan, a little careless feeding can lead to illness or even death.
This is why the Jinling horse, the top heavy cavalry war horse, was obviously bred, but the heavy cavalry of the Chu Empire used foreign horse breeds on a large scale, such as Spanish horses or Arabian horses.
Because the Jinling Horse’s performance on paper is off the charts, but it’s even better in actual combat…
It belongs to the type that can only be viewed but not used!
So many senior army officials have this view, um, or the approach: Since it is too difficult to cross-breed war horses that meet the requirements in all aspects, it is better to use Spanish horses or Arabian horses and local Hexi horses separately. Forget about simple breeding of horses.
Don't engage in overly complicated breeding. You want everything, but in the end you get nothing... It's better to be simpler. For example, first breed Spanish horses locally on a large scale, and first produce tens of thousands of Spanish horses to meet the needs of heavy cavalry. .
Although these exotic horse breeds still have some shortcomings, as stallions, they will definitely be used as heavy cavalry horses after being bred with Hexi horses.
This is also the source of Liaoxi horses!
The result of simple breeding and breeding of Spanish stallions and Hexi mares... Although it still has flaws, it can still be regarded as an excellent heavy cavalry war horse!
(End of chapter)
