Tangshan was the central garrison in Kaiping during the Ming Dynasty. It was just an ordinary garrison during the Ming Dynasty. Because it was close to the Great Wall, it was often invaded by Mongolians or Eastern captives in the late Qing Dynasty, and its development was not good.
After the Chu Empire pacified Hebei, Kaiping Zhongtunwei was changed to Kaiping Town. Because it was close to the border, a lot of troops were stationed here. It served as the rear area of Shanhaiguan and was also an important passing point for the supply line.
It was not until the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Mongolian tribes were pacified, and all military threats around Hebei disappeared, that many places near the Great Wall ushered in gradual development.
And because the local area is rich in coal resources, the coal resources mined in the Kaiping area are supplied to the Tianjin area nearby. This is where it initially developed. Later, many factories were established based on the coal resources.
With the gradual development of the place, Kaiping Town was upgraded to Kaiping County and became famous for the Kaiping Coal Mine.
After step by step development, there were more and more factories in Kaiping, and it has gradually become an important industrial zone in the northern region except Tianjin. In order to further coordinate development, the empire merged several surrounding counties together and upgraded them to Tangshan Prefecture, directly It is directly under the jurisdiction of the Hebei Governor's Yamen, that is, it is a provincial prefecture.
The first railway in Hebei is the Tianjin-Tangshan Railway. The core purpose of this railway is to connect Tianjin and Tangshan, two important industrial areas, and to facilitate the transportation of coal from Tangshan to Tianjin.
After the more than 100 kilometers of Tianjin-Tangshan Railway was opened in the 23rd year of Chengshun, it has brought greater development opportunities to the local area. Tangshan Machinery Company has also developed further in this wave.
As a typical government-run enterprise, Tangshan Machinery Company was invested and established by the Hebei Provincial Department of Industry. At first, it was only used as a small supporting factory for the Kaiping Coal Mine to produce and repair some mining equipment. Later, it gradually developed into the production of other machinery and equipment, and finally produced agricultural machinery and equipment. And famous.
The series of water-powered, power-storage threshing machines, power-storage harvesters and other agricultural products they produce have a high market share in Hebei.
And many years ago, they have been thinking about developing agricultural machinery powered by steam engines.
After the patent authorization for low-pressure steam engines was liberalized, they obtained a series of patent authorizations for low-pressure steam engines at a relatively cheap price, and became one of the more than 100 steam engine manufacturers in the Dachu Empire.
Of course, the steam engine technology they produced was not very good, and the patented technology of the steam engine was purchased just to pave the way for the development and production of steam engine plows.
However, the original low-pressure steam engine was too small and too heavy to power a plow.
In this case, they once adopted other methods, such as placing a steam engine at the head of the field, and then pulling the plowing mechanism through a steel cable... This method is very unreliable just by listening to it, so The market response was very poor and ultimately failed to be promoted on a large scale.
This made Tangshan Machinery Company a little desperate for agricultural machinery powered by steam engines.
After the high-pressure steam engine was developed, Tangshan Machinery Company saw the hope of applying steam engines to agricultural machinery.
To this end, they began to develop steam plows again.
This time they didn't try to make their own high-pressure steam engine... Well, they didn't have the technology, let alone the patent.
Today in the Chu Empire, there are only three technical routes for the patented technology of high-pressure steam engines, which are controlled by Guangzhou Machinery Company, Tianjin Machinery Company, and Dangtu Machinery Company... Well, in fact, these three technical routes are similar. Strictly speaking, only Guangzhou The technical route of the Machinery Company and the so-called separate technical routes of the other two companies only bypass the patent restrictions of Guangzhou Machinery Company.
In addition to patent restrictions, what’s more important is that the production technology of today’s high-pressure steam engines is very high. Unlike low-pressure steam engines, many medium and large-scale machinery factories can make them after thinking about it... This is why there are hundreds of steam engines in China. Because of the manufacturer.
However, high-pressure steam engines have very high requirements for materials, processing and even many technical details. Ordinary machinery factories cannot produce them at all, or even if they can barely produce them, there are many problems. Not to mention competition, daily use is very difficult. Danger.
The power source of the high-pressure steam engine relies on high-temperature and high-pressure water vapor heated by coal. Once the high-temperature and high-pressure water vapor leaks due to poor technology, the power will be no less than that of a bomb.
The more advanced the industrial equipment, the higher the technical requirements, and the higher the threshold. This is why although there are more than a hundred factories in the Dachu Empire that can produce low-pressure steam engines, only those that can produce high-pressure steam engines Because of the three families.
Tangshan Machinery Company has never thought about crossing the industry to build a steam engine. Their solution is to directly order a special steam engine from the Tianjin Machinery Company next door, and then use it as power.
However, Tianjin Machinery Company can produce a steam engine, but just such a steam engine is not enough.
It also needs to load the steam engine body, transmission structure, walking structure, and a series of mechanical structures that drive the plowing structure.
When all the systems are combined, it becomes a complete steam plow. However, it sounds simple to design and assemble these systems, but in reality it is very difficult.
There are too many problems that need to be solved here. Tangshan Machinery Company struggled for several years before it was able to initially solve a series of important problems and design and assemble each subsystem.
In the autumn of October of the 25th year of Chengshun, the weather was extremely cold, but the factory of Tangshan Machinery Company was in full swing.
A group of technicians are surrounding a massive steam plow making final inspections.
This was also their first time to actually assemble a prototype, and looking at the assembled prototype, they were filled with joy and worry.
The joy is because several years of hard work finally paid off: they finally built the first prototype.
The worry is that they are not sure whether this steam plow can successfully meet the design standards.
At this time, a middle-aged man in a robe said: "Now that the inspection is complete, let's start it!"
"No matter what, this is the result of our ten years of research and development. Even if a problem occurs, it has been exposed in time so that we can solve it in a targeted manner!"
When this person was giving instructions to his technicians, a middle-aged man wearing a Confucian robe beside him said: "Brother Qian, don't worry too much. There should be no problems with your company's design this time."
Wallet Duo nodded slightly, then stepped forward to continue directing his technicians to prepare for the startup test.
Sun Qi, who was standing behind, looked at the testers with expectation and worry.
Sun Qi is not from Tangshan Machinery Company, but from Tianjin Machinery Company. He is the main person in charge of the cooperation between Tianjin Machinery Company and Tangshan Machinery Company.
If Tangshan Machinery Company wants to develop and produce steam plows, it cannot do without miniaturized high-pressure steam engines. They do not have the ability to solve this problem themselves, so they can only find three major machinery companies.
Tianjin Machinery Company also wanted to introduce its steam engines into the agricultural machinery industry. For this purpose, it specially deployed technical personnel and developed a special high-performance steam engine based on a series of performance requirements of Tangshan Machinery Company's steam plows.
The performance indicators of this steam engine are even higher than several other high-pressure steam engines being produced by Tianjin Machinery Company.
This small steam engine seems to be developed for steam plows, but in fact it also assumes the responsibility of Tianjin Machinery Company to develop and test a new generation of high-pressure steam engines.
This new type of steam engine is not only able to provide greater water vapor pressure, but Tianjin Machinery Company also uses a new technology they have developed for many years: multi-expansion technology for this new type of steam engine.
The power source of today's steam engines relies on high-temperature and high-pressure water vapor to push the piston to reciprocate. Researchers from Tianjin Machinery Company found that the high-temperature and high-pressure water vapor of the steam engine still retains a considerable amount of energy after the first cylinder work. Part of the energy, if this part of the energy can also be utilized, then the power of the steam engine can be greater and the efficiency higher.
Therefore, the theory of quadratic work was proposed.
This theory is also very simple, that is, after the high-temperature and high-pressure steam engine performs work through the first cylinder, it is not directly discharged from the car body, but flows into the second cylinder through the pipe. Do the work a second time.
After two consecutive times of work, the water vapor loses most of its energy before being discharged.
This also means that the same batch of water vapor does work twice in a row, and then the two pistons are linked through a series structure, so the power of the steam engine can be increased.
Finally, based on this theory, the latest steam engine product of Tianjin Machinery Company appeared: a double-expansion steam engine.
It's just that this high-performance steam engine seems to have great prospects, but technology development is more difficult.
Tianjin Machinery Company has actually been studying this project for seven or eight years. In the era of low-pressure steam engines, they hope to further improve the performance of steam engines through this technology.
After Guangzhou Machinery Company developed a high-pressure steam engine and Tianjin Machinery Company fell behind in the field of high-pressure steam engines, they pinned their hopes on multi-expansion steam engines.
It has been until now that the preliminary results have been achieved and applied to this high-performance steam engine.
When they conducted steam engine experiments before, the results were very good. After controlling the volume and weight in the early stage, the power was greatly improved, and the calorific value efficiency was also greatly increased.
However, after all, this is just data in the laboratory. It is difficult to say whether it is reliable after being installed and used.
Sun Qi also hopes that his company's new steam engine can drive this kind of plow. Once successful, it will not only open up a new market for agricultural machinery and equipment for Tianjin Machinery Company, but Tianjin Machinery Company will also be able to apply multi-expansion technology to On other steam engine fields.
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For example, ship-based steam engines, train steam engines, and industrial steam engines.
In order to completely reverse the backward situation of Tianjin Machinery Company in the field of high-pressure steam engines.
Speaking of which, Tianjin Machinery Company has been very frustrated in the past four or five years. In the past, it was extremely brilliant in the field of low-pressure steam engines. Whether it was technical level, market share, revenue or even profit, it was completely surpassed by its peers. Tu Machinery Company and Guangzhou Machinery are firmly positioned as the number one steam engine manufacturer in the country.
Because I took the wrong technical route at the beginning, I was focused on building a multi-cylinder super-large steam engine, but did not invest enough in the field of increasing steam pressure. In the end, I was caught off guard by Guangzhou Machinery Company...
High-pressure steam engines have come out. Although there is still a market for low-pressure steam engines, many people would rather wait for the high-pressure steam engines to come out... For this reason, in order to survive, Tianjin Machinery Company can only sell low-pressure steam engines at a large price reduction. In this situation Let alone make money, it would be better if you can lose less.
And you still have to lose money, because once there are no orders, the factory will stop working... and then Tianjin Machinery Company will be completely finished.
In those two years, in order to maintain the operation of the factory, Tianjin Machinery Company invested a huge amount of money in the research and development of high-pressure steam engines. The money it lost every month made everyone stunned!
Even their research on high-pressure steam engines was actually just to bypass the Guangzhou Machinery Company's patent... But the patent was so easy to bypass after that. If it could be easily bypassed, there wouldn't be only three high-pressure steam engine manufacturers now. , but dozens of high-pressure steam engine manufacturers.
Therefore, the R&D investment to bypass patents is still very large.
Due to huge losses in those two years, they had to ask the Hebei Governor's Yamen for help, asking the government to come forward to seek financial support.
Whether it is the Hebei Governor's Yamen or the Tianjin Magistrate's Yamen, they will naturally not just watch the largest company in their territory fall into trouble and completely collapse, and they will try their best to provide support as much as possible.
Special tax rebates, low-interest loans, matchmaking with partners, etc. The local officials have paid a huge price to allow Tianjin Machinery Company, the largest machinery company in Hebei and even the entire northern region, to survive.
In the end, Tianjin Machinery Company spent countless funds on research and development, and they even fully acquired three other companies, just to have several patented technologies that could be used in high-pressure steam engines. In the end, they bypassed the requirements of Guangzhou Machinery Company. Patent restrictions on the construction of high-pressure steam engines.
Then he launched his own high-pressure steam engine.
However, in the field of high-pressure steam engines, they have lagged behind for two years. Even if they want to catch up in time, it is not easy. As a last resort, they can only adopt a low-price strategy to compete for orders.
Even so, their high-pressure steam engines have a small market share and low profits. Especially in the field of train steam engines, they have basically no market share.
Because Tianjin Machinery Company has never been good at miniaturizing steam engines, they are good at medium and large steam engines, especially super large steam engines.
So they are also good in the field of ship-based high-pressure steam engines. This is not because of how good their technology is. It is purely because the market for ship-based steam engines is extremely huge now. The supply of ship-based steam engines exceeds the demand. As long as you can make it, even if the performance is worse, you can It can be sold.
Although the Chu Empire is now in a period of steamship explosion, the navy has hundreds of ocean-going warships and thousands of various offshore and inland river warships and auxiliary ships waiting for steam modification. The navy modification alone has already Warships require at least several thousand shipboard steam engines of various types.
The two major armed trading companies are no exception. They need hundreds of modified naval steam engines.
In fact, the needs of the navy and the two major armed trading companies are only urgent, but not the biggest. In fact, the biggest demand is the ordinary civilian shipping market. The huge inland shipping market in the empire requires hundreds of thousands of steamships. Planned...
The Chu Empire currently only has too many river sailing ships. Not to mention other things, there are more than 5,000 sand ships of various types moored on the Huangpu River in Songjiang Prefecture alone...
Note, this is just one place, one type of ship!
In fact, there are tens of thousands of ships traveling to and from Shanghai every year, not counting those small sampans... Those small ships are not included in the statistics.
A large number of inland river and offshore ships ply between various inland waterways, lakes, and offshore seas, transporting a variety of goods and passengers.
This shows how huge the scale of inland river and offshore transportation in the Chu Empire was, and inland river and offshore transportation was also the shipping market with the highest acceptance of steam engines and ships.
In terms of ocean navigation, steam engines are just auxiliary... More importantly, they have military value, and in terms of economic value... The steam ships currently on ocean-going ships are all motor-driven ships. Sail-driven ships are used when sailing, and steam engines are only emergency power. And just use it when entering and leaving the port.
There is no economic value to speak of!
However, the inland waterway and offshore market, especially the inland waterway shipping market, is different.
The advantage of steamships in countercurrent navigation gives steamships a huge unique advantage in the inland shipping market. Once this advantage is converted into ship orders, it will be very terrifying.
It is precisely under this market demand that the high-pressure steam engine produced by Tianjin Machinery Company with poor technology can occupy a certain market share.
But to be honest, orders for large steam units with hundreds or even thousands of horsepower used by warships are not comparable to steam engines on inland rivers and offshore boats in terms of sales price and profit.
The navy's latest design, the new-generation iron-ribbed wooden hull and sail battleship Hantian, which is under construction, has a standard displacement of more than 5,500 tons and uses a 3,000-horsepower steam engine unit.
For this steam unit alone, Guangzhou Machinery Company's asking price reached a full 230,000 yuan, which is a sky-high price!
Tianjin Machinery Company can make less money by selling a hundred sets of small and medium-sized ship-borne steam engines than others can by buying a set of steam units for battleships!
