I want to be emperor

The forty-sixth year of Chengshun was an extremely ordinary year with nothing special for most ordinary people in the Chu Empire.

But for the Dachu Empire's industrial community, this year has seen the emergence of many important technologies and products that are noteworthy and may even change the industrial structure in the future.

For example, the multi-expansion ultra-high-pressure steam engine launched by Tianjin Machinery Company to the market. Although their six-expansion or even ten-expansion steam engines will not see much practical value for a while, their four-expansion ultra-high pressure steam engine is very Not bad.

Although this thing is expensive and complicated, its thermal efficiency value has reached a new breakthrough, which means that less coal can be used to obtain greater kinetic energy. This is a very good thing for companies with huge power needs. Not a bad choice.

In addition, the mechanical automatic three-axis machine tool introduced to the market by Hantian Machinery Company is also a major innovation and can even change the pattern of high-end parts processing.

Of course, this thing is more expensive...

Every advanced machine tool product that Hantian Machinery Company brings to the market is notoriously expensive and is a veritable high-end machine tool product.

However, although their products are expensive, their performance is really good, with high processing accuracy and faster processing speed. At the same time, the reliability of the machine tools is better, and some loss parts such as cutting tools can also be used longer, so they can be used comprehensively. After their high-end machine tools are reflected in the cost of processing products, it is not too exaggerated.

Therefore, in the field of mid-to-high-end product processing, Hantian Machinery Company's high-end machine tools have always been the first choice!

In addition, its competitor Li's Machine Tool has also launched electric motor general machine tools to the market, applying electric motors to the field of general machine tools first. Relying on the high speed, high controllability and other characteristics of the electric motor, their electric general machine tools have also improved in processing efficiency and The machining accuracy has made good progress, and its performance has historically reached the level of some high-end machine tools of Hantian Machinery Company.

The two major general machine tool equipment manufacturers in the Dachu Empire once again set off fierce technology and market competition this year.

The electric general-purpose machine tools introduced to the market by Lee's Machine Tool Company also mean that electrification has once again penetrated into the field of industrial production.

In the forty-six years since Chengshun, as more and more companies have introduced various products powered by electric motors to the market, electrification in the industry has progressed much faster than outsiders imagined.

For example, Bell Refrigeration Company has introduced electric-powered refrigeration machines to the market, which have been installed on some ships this year.

The space on the ship is very precious. If you want to use refrigerant to obtain a cold storage, you need to build a very troublesome transmission system to transmit the power of the auxiliary engine to the refrigerator in the cold storage.

However, if an electric motor is used as power, although a steam engine is still needed to generate electricity, energy can be transmitted conveniently through wires. There is no need for a complicated transmission system, and there is no need to make a lot of messy designs because of the transmission system, which takes up more space. Lots of boat space.

Because the first application target of electric refrigerators is ships where land is at a premium.

Guangzhou Tianhe Lift Co., Ltd. also launched an electric motor-powered lift to the market last year, and gave this new lift a simple and catchy name that is more convenient for people to call than an electric lift. It is called "elevator". There are several new buildings ready to adopt this new technology.

By the way, Guangzhou Tianhe Elevator Company once wanted to register the word "elevator" as a trademark... but was rejected by the Trademark Office on the grounds that you cannot directly register the abbreviation of an entire category as a trademark.

In the end, we had to settle for the next best thing and registered the new trademark "Tianhe Elevator" as a promotional trademark for electric lifts.

The electrification development of the Dachu Empire is still inaccessible to ordinary people. After all, electric equipment is still far from being able to enter the homes of ordinary people. Even wealthy families cannot enjoy it. Contemporary electric equipment is basically all industrial equipment. Or military equipment, it actually has little to do with ordinary people.

The only places where ordinary people can come into contact with electrification are the very few large department stores and restaurants that use electric equipment.

Although power equipment is sky-high today, in order to build their own quality, these high-end service places will basically not be stingy with the money. They will build a small generator and then electric lighting. The lights will be brightly lit at night. Who saw it? It must be said that it is high-end and classy!

After this year, with the emergence of elevators, many department stores and hotels have already considered using the new elevators, especially some shopping malls or restaurants under construction or renovation, and even some higher-rise office buildings have begun to use them. Contacted Guangzhou Tianhe Lift Company.

By then, people will be able to experience the feeling of an elevator!

However, this is only a very small number of people. For the vast majority of Chu people, electrification still only exists in newspapers... It is difficult to have an intuitive feeling about what it is.

Electrification is still too far away from ordinary people.

But... for the industry, electrification has actually begun to bring huge changes. This can be seen from the fact that the factories of several major domestic power equipment companies are working overtime every day to supply the market. out.

Among them, Songjiang Electric Company has expanded its factory three times in just one year and invested in the construction of a new production base in Guangzhou and Tianjin.

The main product of Songjiang Electric Company is electric motors, in addition to some supporting power equipment. Their electric motors are now selling very well, accounting for almost 70% of the market. Chengshun alone has sold more than 70% of the market in 46 years. More than 10,000 electric motors of various specifications have been shipped.

If the electric motors are sold well, then the power generation equipment and power grid equipment will not be much different.

The DC generators of Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company are currently the best in technology and the best sellers. Their DC generators have high power and the most important thing is extremely stable. Under normal circumstances, there will be no problems at all. This kind of ultra-high The reliability means that it can provide long-term and stable power supply to the corporate power grid.

There is no need to worry about power outages occurring every three days, causing the factory to stop production.

After all, in industrial production, poor performance is acceptable, but stability is relatively high, because if the factory's production line stops production due to failure, every minute will be an extremely high loss.

Therefore, many companies would rather purchase high-priced and stable equipment than cheap and unstable equipment.

Reflected in the field of electrification, major manufacturers like to purchase products from the three major electrical companies at the same time, and then use them in networking.

They purchased various motors of different specifications from Songjiang Electric Company, the best and most stable generators and the longest-lasting light bulbs from Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company.

Then purchase transformers and other power grid equipment from Xuzhou Electric Company.

As for wires, they are more casual. If you are not short of money, choose the products of Tongling Special Materials Company. If you want to save a little, there are also wires from other domestic companies to choose from. After all, today’s wires mainly use copper wires. Then just make an insulating outer layer.

Its main raw materials and costs are copper materials, and many domestic mining companies that produce copper materials have successively invested in the field of wires over the past many years, developing and producing their own wire products... Of course, they are not supplying any industry. But to compete for orders from the telegraph office.

You must know that the wires required for the construction of the wired telegraph backbone network planned by the Dachu Empire Telegraph General Administration are not as simple as tens of thousands of kilometers, but will be an exaggerated hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

Why is this such an exaggeration... Because the telegraph network of the General Telegraph Administration does not mean to only build a small area in the hinterland of East Asia, but a global network!

What they are doing is a global backbone network for cable telegraphy... So don't use national concepts to measure it, you have to use global concepts to measure it.

This is similar to the empire's railway construction... The reason why the Da Chu Empire's steel industry exploded so fiercely is because the railway is such a big consumer of steel, and the empire's railway construction is very exaggerated.

The kilometers of railway construction in ordinary countries may be tens of thousands of kilometers, but no more than 100,000 kilometers, but in the Chu Empire, the number of railways that have been built has exceeded 250,000 kilometers... and there are also Up to 400,000 kilometers of railways are under construction and planned routes!

Over the past twenty years, the Chu Empire has added an average of tens of thousands of kilometers of railways every year!

Why are the railway construction and future plans of the Dachu Empire so exaggerated?

Again, this plan is not a railway construction plan for the hinterland of East Asia, but a construction plan for the global railway network.

Everything becomes exaggerated when you add the prefix global.

The Great Chu Empire is a truly global empire... On the contemporary earth, except for some areas in the interior of Africa that are limited by technical conditions and the Chu people are unable to colonize them on a large scale, other places are either under the direct jurisdiction of the Chu people. The territory is either an administrative territory or a vassal state territory... Even the Antarctic, the Chu Empire built a large stone tablet after discovering Antarctica, and wrote a letter to the Chu Empire's territory Nanfan Prefecture, which is currently under the jurisdiction of the governor of South America. (Southern Argentina) The prefect of Nanting Prefecture is in charge. Antarctica is a serious territory directly under the jurisdiction of the Chu Empire!

For such a huge empire, when planning some infrastructure, especially transportation and communications planning, it is basically a direct global layout.

This is true for wired telegraphs, railways, and shipping... The various shipping ports of the Dachu Empire are spread all over the world, ensuring that the empire's steam ships can find a nearby port for supplies when they reach any sea area, especially coal and Fresh water and food supplies.

Therefore, the planned mileage of wired telegraph in the Dachu Empire is very exaggerated, and behind the exaggerated mileage is the huge demand for cables and telegraph corresponding equipment.

Telegraph equipment, batteries, generators and other equipment directly support the three major electrical companies and allow them to grow and develop, thus promoting the overall electrification development.

The same is true in the field of cables. The huge demand for telegraph cables has long been noticed by major giants. This has also led to many mining companies that can produce copper materials to eventually end up personally and set up wire companies.

Therefore, there are still many wire companies in the contemporary Dachu Empire, and there are more than ten companies with relatively large shipments. Of course, Tongling Special Materials Company relies on the first-mover advantage, and its parent company itself is the largest in the empire. copper production and mining companies, so they still occupy a major market share.

At present, the technical content of wires is not too high, and the technical threshold is not high, so the competition is fierce, and many large companies can enter.

But the same cannot be said for various electrical equipment. The technical threshold for this stuff is too high...

Even though the electrification equipment of the contemporary Da Chu Empire is still very primitive, based on the current overall basic technical level of the Da Chu Empire, the electrification equipment in the Da Chu Empire is actually very technical and the industry threshold is also very high.

For example, the simplest light bulb... This thing seems very simple, but it is not that easy to come up with. Just a vacuuming technology will be blind to most companies.

Not to mention that this thing is patented. For example, the carbonized bamboo fiber vacuum bulb currently used by Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company is patented. Even if you can produce it from other manufacturers, you cannot...

Not to mention that Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company has never stopped continuous research and development of light bulbs. They organized a large R&D team to conduct repeated tests on various materials, and finally chose carbonized bamboo fiber as the filament in the past few years. This is also why they Even though the current vacuum technology is not very reliable, the light bulbs still have a service life of hundreds of hours.

Now, in addition to continuing to study vacuum technology and looking for better filament materials, they are also trying to use other methods to extend the service life of the bulb, such as by trying to fill the bulb with inert gas to prevent the oxidation of the filament and thereby prevent the oxidation of the filament. Extended service life.

In the field of light bulbs, Yingtian Electromechanical is currently the leader. Although the other two electrical companies also have basic light bulb patents, they lack some other light bulb patents. Therefore, the light bulbs produced by the other two electrical companies are not very good, and in The follow-up research and development is also inferior to that of Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company.

This is talking about the other two electrical companies, not to mention other companies. Even a behemoth like Lee Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. wants to enter the electrical field with great difficulty...

Lee's Iron and Steel Company attached great importance to the dawn of electrification. Last year, they invested and acquired some small and medium-sized electrical companies, and then established Lee's Electric Company.

Even though Lee's Steel Company attaches great importance to electrification, the subsidiary Lee's Electric was created as a first-tier business subsidiary from the beginning, strategically placed alongside core businesses such as shipbuilding and machine tools.

But if it doesn’t work, it won’t work…

Their current main product is still a small hand-operated generator... and the technology is at least ten years behind the times. Those laboratories do not even use this thing for scientific research, and only some teaching institutions do science popularization and individual enthusiasts Only then would I purchase such an old-fashioned thing...it's so cheap!

As for things that can really be put into large-scale commercial applications, I'm sorry... there is none!

Currently, they have no access to the three major components of DC generators, DC motors, and transformers that are widely used in the market. The three major electrical companies have already built very high patent barriers through years of research and development and patent applications. .

Especially in the field of direct current, it has almost blocked the way for all latecomers!

This makes it difficult for the backward electrical companies represented by Li's Electric... Although they are not short of money, it is very uncomfortable that you can't do anything without basic patents.

Under such circumstances, many electrical companies have begun to change careers. They do not intend to go deep into the upstream industry of electrification. Instead, they change the direction of research and development and engage in electrical applications... such as developing motor-powered application products, similar to elevators. Category.

But these are the thoughts of ordinary companies, but companies like Lee Iron and Steel will not give up easily.

Even in such a high-threshold industry, the appetite for Li's Steel is growing. They like to engage in this kind of industry with high investment, high threshold, high returns, and high stability.

Just like the core businesses of shipbuilding and machine tools back then.

Today's electrification field also allows them to see the direction of their new core business... electrification, and it cannot be an ordinary mid-stream and downstream industry that is easily replaced. To engage in it, it must engage in meat-eating upstream core industries... it can be eaten The kind that lasts decades.

The retreat of other companies did not make Lee Steel give up. Instead, it allowed them to see greater prospects, which meant fewer competitors in the future.

Therefore, in the winter of December of the 46th year of Chengshun, Li's Steel held a board of directors meeting, and then unanimously approved a plan: to invest 5 million Chu Yuan in the next five years to develop new electrification businesses.

The sky-high investment of five million Chu Yuan scared many people out of their wits...

This is five million Chu Yuan under the gold standard currency system. It can even buy two top-level battleships that the Imperial Navy is reluctant to purchase.

At present, the entire electrification industry's annual output value is not that much...

Even if the market value of the three major electrical companies combined is not worth five million Chu Yuan!

But Lee's Steel Company plans to invest all this money in the field of electrification... How many generators do we need to buy to recoup these research and development costs for electric motors?

And what are they going to do with such huge sums of money?

Unknown to outsiders, Lee's Electric Company, a first-tier subsidiary of Lee's Steel Corporation, is planning to bypass the DC field, which is already controlled by the three major electrical companies, in the field of electrification, and enter the AC field, which is currently blank.

At the same time, AC generator systems, AC transmission grid systems, AC motor systems and other supporting AC technologies will be developed.

They want to open up a new AC circuit!

Since the direct current route has been blocked by the three major electrical companies, they have opened up a new alternating current circuit.

Moreover, Li's Electric's ambition has never been to be a supplier of power equipment. Behind the sky-high investment of five million yuan is their ambition for the entire power industry!

You know, among their many core research projects, there is a research and development project on AC power transmission network!

Their entire alternating current research and development project... In fact, the core goal is to use alternating current technology and then create an alternating current network that can transmit power over long distances.

Therefore, although selling electrical equipment is important, in fact this is not the ambition of the executives of Lee Iron and Steel Company!

Setting up a power grid to sell electricity is their ultimate goal!

When they think about the future electrification era in full swing, the electricity used by everyone will be supplied by their own companies. The dozen or so senior managers of Lee Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. can't help but swallow their saliva. How much money will they make... …

Moreover, this kind of business is a basic business and will be very stable once it is started.

High threshold, profitable, stable, and low competition. This is the core business that Li's Iron Company strives to pursue!