I want to be emperor

The reason why there are so many horse corpses in modern cities is mainly because transportation companies and even individuals in the city do not scruple too much when using draft horses, and they use them desperately...

At the same time, horses may fall down, sprain their ankles, etc. during use. Once the horse falls down, it will be very troublesome to deal with it.

These horses are not light. They can weigh hundreds of kilograms. It would be very troublesome to transport the injured foot and treat it. You have to get a special crane to come over... The cost is not high. Cheap.

Therefore, many people often abandon their horses and walk away after their horses are injured... Well, this kind of behavior is illegal under the current traffic laws of the empire. If caught, you will be fined.

If a horse is injured and falls to the ground, the horse owner is obliged to deal with it promptly.

After all, if you don’t handle it yourself, the government will have to pay for it, and horse carcasses will also affect traffic and cause environmental pollution.

But many people would rather take risks than pay for the processing themselves... The cost of processing is too high, and the traffic patrol police are also limited. It is impossible to stare at countless carriages on the road every day.

Moreover, there are no cameras or anything like that. After the horse is abandoned, the owner of the horse removes some numbering marks on the iron paws and other parts of the horse. It is really difficult for the traffic patrol to find the owner of the horse and fine him.

Therefore, the disposal of horse carcasses on the road has become a problem in the contemporary cities of the Chu Empire, which consumes a lot of transportation funds every year.

The large-scale use of horse-drawn carriages in large cities in Chu State has caused very serious pollution problems. The urban areas of many cities are smelling of the feces and urine of rushing horses all year round... Many people even came to Songjiang City for the first time. I was frightened by the many horses, horse feces, and corpses on the streets...

Some unkind people would even call Songjiang a horse dung city... Don't think it's an exaggeration, this is reality.

Coupled with the fact that every household uses briquettes and almost every factory in the city uses steam engines... this has resulted in very poor air quality in the big cities of Chu State.

The air is always mixed with the smell of horse excrement and coal.

For this reason, it will also cause severe smog in some calm weather, and cause a large number of urban residents to suffer from respiratory diseases... Every winter, many people always die of illness in bad weather.

The big cities in the Chu Empire were basically all industrial cities. These places were not suitable places to live!

Among the big cities in Chu State, there is only one Jinling City that does not have air quality problems... Because Jinling City has strictly controlled industry and population from the beginning, and has strictly controlled the number of horse-drawn carriages and even the quality of coal entering the market. Strict controls.

Luo Zhixue doesn't want to live in a toxic fog.

But this problem is very serious in other big cities... This is also the reason why rich people in big cities, even the high-income middle class, live in suburbs and even remote rural villages. They would rather spend a certain amount of time on the road than They are willing to make their home in the city...they are also afraid of death!

These days, the urban centers of Chu's industrial cities are densely populated and the air pollution is extremely serious. It is really not a place for people to live!

In recent years, the Dachu Empire officials have also realized the dangers of environmental pollution, so they have successively begun to promote plans to move factories away from the city center, but this is not easy!

Many factories these days are labor-intensive industries. If you move to the suburbs, will you take your workers with you? If they are not taken away, how will the workers get to and from get off work?

If you take the workers with you, then... if your factory is moved, the workers will be taken with them, and then the workers and their families will come with them, and finally there will be a third party that provides various services to the population of the industrial zone. Industries will also enter one after another.

Then the industry pays attention to the focus effect. If a single factory produces in a certain place, the cost will be very high, so many factories often produce in one place to reduce supply chain costs.

But in this case, wouldn't that be the various industrial parks in the Da Chu Empire now... And many of the so-called city centers in the Da Chu Empire are actually built around these industrial parks.

In this way, what is the difference between the new industrial area you moved to and the original urban area? There are not only many factories and a large population, but also various pollution problems.

If we want to truly solve the problem of urban pollution in the steam age, it is not enough to relocate factories. We must also add many other methods. A multi-pronged approach can be effective.

For example, factory power replaces steam engines with electric motors. The power required by the electric motors is supplied through the transmission grid, and then thermal power plants are built far away...

Replace the horses as transportation vehicles with gasoline engines or electric motors, build public trams, freight or passenger cars, and develop public transportation between cities and suburbs so that ordinary people can travel conveniently and cheaply between urban living areas and suburban industries. between districts.

Then replace the briquettes used in residential life with gas or natural gas or induction cookers or something...

The last point is that it will be very difficult to replace the briquettes used in residents' daily life, and it will be almost impossible in a short time. However, the power source of factories and vehicles as well as urban public transportation can be changed in the foreseeable future.

And this change depends on electrification and internal combustion engines!

When people from the Ministry of Transportation saw this internal combustion engine, their first thought was that it could be used to replace horses and steam engines and cooperate with the urban public tram plan that the Ministry of Transportation was already planning to solve traffic pollution and congestion problems.

Therefore, the Minister of Transportation paid more attention to the internal combustion engine. He also carefully inquired about many details on the spot. He also specifically asked whether the power of this thing could be increased. For the time being, it does not need dozens of horsepower, but a few horsepower. About ten horsepower is about right.

In this case, the gasoline engine can be installed on the carriage and used as the power source of the carriage to replace the large number of draft horses.

At the same time, the Ministry of Transportation is also responsible for the construction of many roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and these large-scale infrastructure projects will also require the use of a large number of engineering facilities. The initial research and development goal of this gasoline engine was to install it on these engineering equipment and agricultural machinery equipment. Up.

Therefore, the Ministry of Transportation was very interested in this gasoline engine. Before the demonstration was over, the Minister of Transportation briefly communicated with the people from Tangshan Machinery Company and said that they would give it a few days. Come to the ministry and discuss it in detail.

Needless to say, there will definitely be many supporting policies behind this detailed discussion. The Ministry of Transport also has targeted high-tech support plans for technical research in the transportation field. Research projects approved by them can obtain some research funds.

People from the Ministry of Transportation are paying attention to this thing. People from the military, or to be precise, people from the Army are also very concerned about this kind of gasoline engine... This is not to say that people from the Army are now thinking of building tanks and combat vehicles, but At present, the Army actually uses steam tractors more often to haul heavy artillery.

The Army is equipped with many large-caliber and long-barreled heavy artillery. These can weigh several tons or even more than ten tons. In the early years, the Army could only use draft horses for transportation, but it was very troublesome, complicated, and costly. ... Any heavy artillery requires dozens of horses to serve it. In this case, not to mention war, the cost of maintaining these draft horses is not low even in normal times.

Therefore, very early on, the Army tried to use tractors powered by steam engines to replace horse-powered cannons.

However, tractors that are limited by steam engine power are not very powerful, are troublesome to use, and have relatively large limitations. Therefore, the army does not purchase many steam engine tractors. The total number of tractors is only more than 200, which are mainly used for several Independent Heavy Artillery Brigade.

As for the current gasoline engine, especially when people from Tangshan Machinery Company made it clear that this gasoline engine could be installed on tractors in the future and used as power for agricultural machinery and engineering equipment, people from the Army naturally became interested... The Army can also use this thing. ah.

So people from the Army also asked carefully about the situation of this gasoline engine, and then said that the Army currently has an advanced mechanical gun truck project. Your gasoline engine looks very good, and I can participate in the research and development of a power system for you later. contract.

This made the people at Tangshan Machinery Company very excited. It was not in vain that they had invested huge sums of money in research and development in the field of gasoline engines in recent years. No, the things had not even left the laboratory as soon as they were made, and various benefits had already come.

The Ministry of Transportation will provide some support, and the military has directly launched a research and development project.

These two items alone will allow them to obtain considerable project research and development funds in the future.

The people at Tangshan Machinery Company laughed and laughed, but the other two internal combustion engine companies had mixed feelings.

Although they also brought a gasoline engine to participate in the demonstration, during the actual demonstration, their gasoline engine still used the heat pipe ignition mode. Not only was it poor in performance, but its reliability was also very poor. The gasoline engine of Liaodong Machinery Company even The fire broke out in the middle of the demonstration... At first glance, it was clear that the heat pipe ignition device they had bypassed Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company had poor performance!

In fact, heat pipe ignition is not unusable... but most of the useful designs have been registered and patented by Hekou Machinery Company. Their Liaodong Machinery Company can only do twists and turns, and finally bypassed the patent pool of Hekou Machinery Company. There are many problems when the heat pipe is ignited.

As for Hekou Machinery Company, several people in charge were also filled with a sense of crisis... Unexpectedly, the people from Tangshan Machinery Company secretly suppressed a big move and solved many technical problems of electronic ignition. They really took this thing seriously. Reliability and service life are solved.

What to do now?

What else can I do? I will just stick to electronic ignition when I go back... Fortunately, they have obtained the electronic ignition patent of Tangshan Machinery Company through mutual authorization of the basic patents of the internal combustion engine back then.

There are no restrictions on the basic patent of electronic ignition. The current problem is to solve many technical problems and at the same time bypass some new technology patents that Tangshan Machinery Company has continued to apply for in subsequent improvements, and finally come up with an electronic device that can be used and has no patent troubles. Ignition system.

As for now...or what should I do before my own electronic ignition system is developed?

What else can be done, just continue to use the heat pipe to ignite.

Although their heat pipe ignition mode is used on gasoline engines, its reliability and performance efficiency are not as good as electronic ignition... But their heat pipe ignition has a huge natural advantage!

Their stuff is so cheap!

The so-called heat pipe ignition actually doesn't involve high-tech components. To put it bluntly, it just inserts a semi-closed heat pipe into the cylinder, and then creates a fire source outside the iron pipe. It's very simple.

So this thing is actually very cheap. This is why their gas engines could be sold so cheaply before. The price is actually similar to that of an advanced three-expansion reciprocating steam engine of the same horsepower.

But what about the electronic ignition system of Tangshan Machinery Company... This damn thing is very valuable. Everything related to electrification is very expensive these days, even if the manufacturing cost is not mentioned.

Even the research and development costs are astronomical. The amount of money Tangshan Machinery Company has spent in this field is not a small amount. The research and development funds are in the hundreds of thousands.

When electronic ignition gasoline engines are produced and sold in the future, the research and development costs of the electronic ignition system must also be included.

As a result, their electronically ignited gasoline engines will certainly be very expensive!

This also gives Hekou Machinery Company and even Liaodong Machinery Company’s heat pipe ignition gasoline engines room to survive...

The future gasoline engine market will also need mid- to low-end gasoline engines. It is impossible for everyone to buy high-priced gasoline engines.

The three major internal combustion engines in the demonstration had their own pros and cons, but Guangzhou Machinery Company was very calm... because they only had one diesel engine, and there was no one to compete with them for the time being.

In terms of the current basic technology of the empire, the technical difficulty of a diesel engine is much higher than that of a gasoline engine... Just a high-pressure cylinder is not that easy to handle.

Although their diesel engine could only perform the most basic demonstration during the demonstration... and could not even sustain long-term operation, the pressure was still not great.

Luo Zhixue did not show any disappointment after watching it. Instead, he applauded the staff of Guangzhou Machinery Company and spoke to encourage him. At the same time, he expressed his views on the future of diesel engine technology.

“In the long run, diesel engine technology has great potential, especially in the field of medium and large power. The diesel engine’s unique high torque, simple structure and easy maintenance, and low fuel cost can all serve as a good choice for shipboard and large-scale equipment. power."

After finishing speaking, Luo Zhixue looked around again and said to the personnel working on the three major internal combustion engines of gasoline engines: "Whether it is a diesel engine or a gasoline engine, or a gas engine that has been put into the market, or even a kerosene engine that is not mature yet, As internal combustion engines, they all have their own unique advantages, and they can all find applicable fields in the future, and they all have great potential!"

"In a short period of time, we will vigorously promote the development of gas engines into the industrial field to provide qualified power for some industrial manufacturing fields. We will continue to conduct research and development and application exploration on gasoline engines. In addition to being used in various agricultural machinery and engineering equipment, there are also The passenger and freight civilian vehicle fields I mentioned before, as well as the military vehicle field."

"I hope that in the near future, we can see the first car running on the territory of the empire, providing convenience for production, transportation and people's travel!"

"Finally, I would like to provide another idea. Can this gasoline engine be installed on airships currently under development? Can it even be used in the concept of aircraft that many people have proposed in recent years as a power source for aircraft? Use it to propel aircraft into the sky and lead people to conquer the sky?"

The aircraft that Luo Zhixue talked about is actually not a very new concept... On the one hand, the Great Chu Empire had already developed hot air balloons and used them in the military many years ago. Nowadays, the artillery units and warships of the Chu Army have standard systems. The hot air balloon is mainly used for reconnaissance and guiding bombardment.

At the same time, among the private sector, some hot air balloons are also used for sightseeing. At the same time, the military is also researching and experimenting with fixed inflatable airships.

So flying into the sky is no longer unfamiliar to Chu people.

In addition, since the 1930s, some people and even enterprises have begun to explore and develop aircraft on their own. Some people have whimsical ideas and want to use steam engines as power to develop powered and sustainable flying aircraft. Various flight structures are also available, but overall they are It is developed based on bionics and imitates the shape of birds.

Of course...so far, there are no successful examples. There are quite a few companies that have gone bankrupt in developing aircraft for this reason...

As for Luo Zhixue, about five or six years ago, he had already instructed the Royal Institute of Technology to set up an aircraft project team.

But for the time being, this aircraft project team is not developing aircraft, but is engaged in aerodynamics... conducting research on various basic aerodynamic theories based on fluid mechanics.

Because if you want to build an airplane, you must first figure out how to get lift from the aircraft, how to make the aircraft fly stably, and how to control it.

Fortunately, because of the existence of the Royal Institute of Technology in the Chu Empire, there will be people who specialize in various basic theoretical researches that are temporarily useful or useless... such as fluid mechanics.

The many theoretical results obtained through long-term research on fluid mechanics are not useless, and many of them have been actually used. For example, some theories of fluid mechanics are widely used in shipbuilding.

If a ship wants to sail in the water, how can it save more effort, run faster, and be more stable? These all require the support of many basic theories, and they cannot be achieved by just messing around.

Similarly, early predictions in the field of aircraft also require the use of fluid mechanics, and a special branch of aerodynamics has been developed, but the current basic theoretical research is still lagging behind.

But Luo Zhixue believes that as long as he continues to invest, he may be able to achieve certain breakthroughs in aerodynamics in a short time. By then, coupled with the continued progress of gasoline engines, he will be able to see the first human aircraft take off in this time and space. !

Luo Zhixue's words also gave great inspiration to many people present. To be honest, the people of the four internal combustion engine manufacturers had not thought that the internal combustion engine would have such rich application scenarios, and His Majesty said that it could be used in the future. Serving as a power source for aircraft was something I had never even thought of before.

These are people in the industry of internal combustion engines. However, for many high-ranking officials in the empire who did not know much about internal combustion engines and knew nothing about technology, the possibilities of the future applications of internal combustion engines mentioned by Luo Zhixue shocked them greatly.

None of the people present are stupid. On the contrary, they are all human beings... and they are all highly educated talents in the empire.

Although many of them do not understand technology, this does not prevent them from predicting some of the impacts that these new technologies and new products may have after they emerge.

Especially on the military side... Army General Du Maoshi, the Marquis of the Empire, Minister of Staff, and Chief of Staff, who was born in the cavalry, thought about it in his heart, and said to Xu Ze, the Minister of Ordnance next to him: "Old Xu, what do you mean? If gasoline can be made lighter, can it be installed on a bicycle? If we make a gasoline engine bicycle, it can even be used to replace part of the role of horses? Can we even create a cavalry specifically to ride gasoline bicycles? To increase mobility capabilities and material transportation capabilities?”

Xu Ze, the Minister of Ordnance Department next to him, nodded slightly and said: "As long as they can produce a gasoline engine, I think it won't be a big problem. After all, an ordinary four-wheeled carriage can install this thing, and there won't be much problem installing a two-wheeled bicycle. .”

"However, the stability of two-wheeled bicycles is not very good. Although the passability is good, the limitations are relatively large. If you can build a three-wheeled gasoline engine bicycle, it will be more convenient. The three-wheeled bicycle is small in size and weight. Although the trafficability is a little worse than that of a two-wheeled vehicle, it will not be a problem when walking on some rural dirt roads. In this way, you can bring one or two more people or cargo, and we can also install a machine gun on it, um, Air-cooled machine guns such as the 43 machine gun are very suitable and can provide rapid, medium and close range intensive fire support for the cavalry.”

General Du Maosi said: "Yes, that's what I mean. When the time comes to install a 4-3 machine gun, both mobility and combat effectiveness will be very good."

"Furthermore, this kind of vehicle does not require horse feed or drinking water, and has almost no consumption during daily peacetime; even during mobile operations, the fuel used is much less than horse feed and drinking water, so the logistical pressure is not that great!"

When Lu Yi'an, the logistics minister on the side, heard this, he also came over and said: "If this thing really exists, our logistics department will definitely support it. You also know that we use too many horses now, and these horses can eat comparable food." There are more people, and every year we have to worry about the daily consumption of horses. If there are gasoline-powered vehicles that can be used instead of horses, our logistics department will definitely support it."

"And just now I saw people from the Ministry of Transport discussing with people from Tangshan Machinery Company about building four-wheeled vehicles. I was thinking, if these four-wheeled vehicles can be used for private transportation, then they can also be used. It’s for the material transportation of our logistics department!”

The people in the Army talked more and more enthusiastically... In the end, Imperial Viscount, Minister of Military Affairs and Co-Minister, Army General Qian Xingbang even said: "Four-wheeled cars can be used for transportation, and they can also be used for installation. As for the machine gun, just install some steel plates around it and use it to charge into battle!"

As soon as these words came out, several other army generals were stunned for a while. They had previously thought of using gasoline engines for transportation and maneuvering, but they had never thought of directly using vehicles equipped with gasoline engines to charge into battle. superior.

But thinking about it carefully, this thing seems to be really feasible.

If you put steel plates around the vehicle, the indigenous bullets will definitely not be able to penetrate... As for the indigenous smooth-bore artillery, this is a problem. However, the range of the indigenous smooth-bore artillery is very limited, only a few hundred meters to a thousand meters, and the power is also limited. In reality The threat is very limited.

In addition, this problem can also be solved by thickening the front steel plate, but this may lead to problems such as vehicle growth, insufficient power, and poor mobility. How to do this needs further consideration.

But on this day, these army bosses already had new weapon concepts in their minds such as two-wheeled vehicles, three-wheeled vehicles, four-wheeled transport vehicles, and even armored vehicles powered by gasoline engines!

Although it will most likely take many years for these new weapon concepts to become reality and be put into use, the Army can carry out preliminary related research.

Therefore, after the internal combustion engine exhibition ended, the Army's Ordnance Department established a mechanized equipment department, and the staff department also established a mechanized operations department internally.

The former studies new mechanized equipment, while the latter studies how to better use these mechanical equipment in combat, and proposes design requirements for mechanical equipment based on future war needs.

Although the Dachu Empire Army started late in exploring the use of internal combustion engines, it quickly followed up after the successful development of gasoline engines and began to invest a lot of resources in an attempt to transform the new technology of gasoline engines into more powerful combat effectiveness.

Luo Zhixue was surprised by these actions of the military... He originally planned to talk to the Army about the design, development and use of mechanized equipment, but he did not expect that before he could talk about it, the Army had already done it himself It's started...