I want to be emperor

Chapter 641 The Wave of the Steam Age

Dangtu Machinery Company began small-scale production of steam engines and took the lead in practical application in Chizhou Coal Mine Company, which had a great impact.

Dachu Mansion newspapers have carried out relevant reports on this news, and called it a 'historic moment'.

After all, this is the first industrial application of the steam engine research and invention in more than ten years, and its historical significance is very great.

This news, coupled with the steam engine-related news that has been reported successively before, has also allowed more people, even ordinary people, to learn about the steam engine one after another.

As for the rumors about the steam engine in the industrial world, not only the coal mining companies are extremely concerned, but even some ordinary enterprises are also extremely concerned.

Among them is Su Qin Textile Company.

As a leading enterprise in the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire, Suqin Textile Company is not only large in scale, but also attaches great importance to technology. Over the past decade, Suqin Textile Company has successively participated in many textile industries through direct investment, shareholding, and self-research. Industry-related technology research and development.

In addition to some technical research and development in the textile industry itself, they also pay great attention to related industries, especially the machinery manufacturing industry.

All kinds of textile machines are the focus of their attention. For this reason, they have maintained a long-term strategic cooperative relationship with Hantian Machinery Co., Ltd., a textile machine R&D and production enterprise in the empire.

The basic model is that Suqin Textile Co., Ltd. contributes part of the research and development funds or pre-purchase contracts, and Hantian Machinery Co., Ltd. is responsible for technology research and development and production, and then shares the research and development results.

One of the most typical successful cooperation cases is Mule!

Mule machine, this is a new type of spinning machine that combines the advantages of hand looms and hydrodynamic spinning machines.

Manual spinning machines have been used on a large scale since the Great Chu Empire was still entrenched in Huguang. The characteristic is that manpower is still used, and the spinning efficiency is several times or even more than ten times higher than that of old spinning machines depending on the model.

Not long after the successful development of a new type of hand spinning machine, Hantian Machinery Co., Ltd. followed suit and developed a hydrodynamic spinning machine.

The hydrodynamic spinning machine can spin more cotton threads at one time, greatly improving production efficiency.

However, due to technical limitations of these hydrodynamic spinning machines, the cotton thread spun is relatively thick and hard, and the cloth woven is also coarse cloth, and the quality can only be said to be average.

Of course, although the quality is mediocre, the advantage is that the cost is extremely low and the output is huge, not to mention that in these years, even coarse cloth has a big market... Not everyone can afford clothes made of fine cloth. The daily wear of ordinary people is still dominated by coarse cloth.

The water-powered spinning machine and the subsequent water-powered loom together set off a wave of large-scale mechanized production in the Great Chu Empire, which then swept across the country and even covered most of Asia.

And Su Qin Textile Company is the second player in this wave, and has grown rapidly, becoming the second largest textile company in China, and continues to compete with Hantian Textile Company for the title of the largest domestic textile company.

In order to further expand the market and defeat Hantian Textile Co., Ltd. in the competition, they entered into a strategic cooperation with Hantian Machinery Co., Ltd. The two parties jointly invested in the research and development of a new type of hydrodynamic spinning machine, in order to develop a new type of hydrodynamic spinning that can spin fine cotton yarn machine.

After several years of research and development, the mule machine was finally successfully produced in 12 of Chengshun.

As a result, Suqin Textile Co., Ltd. was able to directly produce fine cloth with water power, and seized the mid-to-high-end market that was still spun by hand on looms in the past.

This also completely opened up the textile industry of the Great Chu Empire and turned to the wave of mechanized production in an all-round way.

Twelve years ago in Chengshun, the cotton spinning industry paid equal attention to mechanical spinning and hand spinning. Hydrodynamic mechanical spinning mainly produced cheap low-end coarse cloth, while hand spinning mainly produced mid-to-high-end fine cloth.

However, 12 years after Chengshun, the appearance of the mule machine led to the production of fine cloth by water-powered mechanical equipment, and the cost of mechanical production was far lower than that of manual production. Gradually withdrew from the market, and then appeared one after another large textile factories.

However, there are still a large number of them in the family workshop industry and rural areas. Many farmers don’t care whether your machine-made cloth is expensive or not...People just sneak in from their busy schedules, do a little a day, grow cotton by themselves, and then spin and weave cloth for their own use. The production efficiency is lower. It doesn't matter to others.

Therefore, even though the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire was already very large and there were so many factories of all kinds, there were still a large number of men farming and women weaving in the vast rural areas, and they did not have the habit of buying machine-made cloth.

But it doesn't matter, it's the same for them to buy textile machines... Even if they don't buy textile machines, it's okay to buy parts for new textile machines.

What?You said that the parts are made by your own mother... With this technology, you can still farm a fart. You can make a lot of money by opening a small workshop, or even if you become a technician in those big projects, you can also make a lot of money. .

Therefore, even if men farm and women weave in rural areas, they seem not to participate in the market, but in fact they also participate in the market, but in an indirect way, the textile industry does not directly benefit.

However, even so, the huge urban population and some wealthy peasant families brought about a huge textile market, which in turn gave birth to the huge textile industry of the Great Chu Empire.

As of now, there are more than 500 mule machine factories in the Great Chu Empire, and this is only five years after the mule machine was invented and put into use, and we are only talking about medium and large mule machine factories.

As for those small spinning factories or family workshops with only a few mule machines, they are not counted... because there are too many, it is not easy to count

Most of the medium and large mule machine factories are actually improved from the original water-powered spinning mills, and there are not many purely new ones.

However, the mule machine factory is still increasing at an extremely fast rate. I am afraid that in a few years, the scale of the mule machine factory will break through a thousand.

This is extremely terrifying data.

In addition to the mule machine factory, there are also matching weaving factories and printing and dyeing factories. After all, the cotton yarn produced by the mule machine factory needs to go through the weaving process before it can be turned into cloth. At this time, the cloth is only pure white cloth. .

To enter the market, it needs to be dyed, and some cloth will also be dyed with some patterns to meet the different needs of the market.

Various cotton spinning factories, including spinning mills, weaving factories, printing and dyeing factories, and a small number of garment factories (mainly producing uniforms for special industries, such as work clothes, military uniforms, and various tents, etc.), all of which add up, Regardless of whether it is advanced or backward, overall, there are thousands of cotton spinning factories with more than 50 employees.

As for cotton spinning factories or family workshops with less than 50 employees...it is even more difficult to count, because many of them still exist in the mode of family workshops and still use new manual spinning machines and looms.

This is why the cotton cloth of the Great Chu Empire was able to be exported on a large scale, and it seized the overseas market strongly, and even aroused the resistance of the local indigenous people.

This output is too scary, and the cost is extremely cheap.

The combination of the two is a cross-latitude blow to the textile industry of those indigenous countries that are still stuck in primitive hand-woven textiles. Normal market competition simply cannot compete with the cloth of the Great Chu Empire.

This is why a large number of indigenous countries chose to use administrative means to ban the entry of cloth from the Great Chu Empire in order to protect their fragile hand-woven textile industry.

And this caused a war with the Great Chu Empire.

A considerable part of the reason for the series of wars in Nanyang and the many conflicts between the Great Chu Empire and the local aboriginals in India today is due to this.

This is why the Great Chu Empire has been shouting 'free trade'.

Because the free trade of the Great Chu Empire is actually unilateral free trade. If other countries really follow the Great Chu Empire to engage in free trade, then the trade between the two sides will basically be in deficit, and a large amount of wealth and resources will be used by the Great Chu Empire at various cheap prices. harvesting of industrial products.

In the wave of great development of the textile industry in the Great Chu Empire, Su Qin Textile Company has always been a leader. They have more than 30 comprehensive textile factories across the country.

These textile factories are comprehensive factories integrating spinning, weaving, printing and dyeing.

These factories are located in every important area of ​​the country. Even in Chang'an, Shaanxi, there is a branch of Suqin Textile Company, and there are a bunch of factories in the local area. However, in addition to cotton spinning, the local factories are mainly engaged in wool spinning.

The Shaanxi-Gansu region has a lot of wool resources, and Chang'an, as the political and economic center of the empire in the Northwest region, also has a relatively good industrial foundation and supporting facilities, so Suqin Textile Company also set up a branch here, focusing on wool spinning and cotton spinning.

Suqin Textile Company, which has many factories, can account for about [-]% of the market share in the domestic cotton spinning industry.

But don't think that this data is too small!
In fact, this is already very exaggerated. We must know that the textile industry is actually very scattered, because the entry threshold of the cotton spinning industry is not high, so there are so many domestic textile enterprises or family textile workshops.

The high cost of transportation also makes it difficult for the products of large enterprises to enter markets that are farther away, especially where water transportation is impassable. It is often difficult for some large enterprises to enter products with low gross profit margins.

Because after adding the freight, it cannot compete with the products of small local factories in terms of cost.

Of course, products with high barriers to entry, high technical difficulty, and high added value are not included.

Under such circumstances, it is not easy for Suqin Textile Company to seize about [-]% of the domestic market. It is possible to do this because they have set up factories in almost every province in the country, adopting local production, local sales strategy.

If the cloth is only produced in Suzhou, or even in the Jiangnan area, it is impossible to buy Su Qin cloth all over the country, and the shipping fee will not be able to bear it.

However, even though Su Qin Textile Company has already spread out across the country, its business center is still in the south of the Yangtze River.

This is not only the place where they started, but also because the Jiangnan area is a province with a large population and an important economy in the Great Chu Empire.

The entire Pan-South region accounts for almost half of the empire's economic output.

Those who win the south of the Yangtze River win the world, this is not empty talk.

However, the competition in various industries in the Jiangnan area is also the most intense, and the cotton spinning industry is no exception.

Under such circumstances, Su Qin Textile Company has never dared to relax its investment in technology research and development, and has always paid attention to the emergence of various new technologies.

The birth of the steam engine was also closely watched by Su Qin Textile Company.

The steam engine is nothing new to the executives of the Suqin Textile Company. In fact, they have learned about the existence of the steam engine more than ten years ago, and even some executives have visited the Royal Institute of Technology to see the steam engine.

But the steam engines in the early years basically had no practical use value, not to mention ordinary industries, even the coal mining industry disliked them... People would rather use hand-carried water than those primitive steam engines.

After seeing the steam engine in the early years, the executives of Su Qin Textile Company came to the conclusion that the steam engine is still early... Now that the steam engine has finally successfully entered the industrial application, Su Qin Textile Company has to pay attention again.

Also specially sent technical experts to Dangtu Machinery Company for a visit!

However, the results of the inspection by Su Qin Textile Company were not very optimistic.

Does the steam engine work?

It will definitely work. The current models of steam engines are relatively stable and reliable. The horsepower varies from large to small. There are relatively moderate models with 32 horsepower, and there are relatively large models with [-] horsepower.

If you want more horsepower, Dangtu Machinery Company can also do it.

In terms of performance, today's steam engine is fully equipped for practical application, the only problem is that it is too expensive.

The purchase cost of a sixteen-horsepower steam engine costs four to five thousand Chu Yuan...while a water-powered device with the same horsepower only costs a few hundred Chu Yuan...the price difference is too great.

The later use and maintenance costs are higher.

Water power equipment does not cost much to use, after all, water does not cost money... But the steam engine needs to burn coal, and the price of coal is not cheap.

The same is true for maintenance. The structure of hydrodynamic equipment is simple. Although some wooden structures need to be replaced frequently, the replacement is easy and the cost is low. The steam engine is a big guy, and it is also a big guy with very advanced technology. It is not easy to maintain. Replacement equipment Not easy...even the replacement equipment isn't cheap.

Taken together, the purchase, use, and maintenance costs of steam engines far exceed those of water-powered equipment... This is not a difference of one or two times, but a difference of more than ten times.

Suqin Textile Company did the calculation...it made it difficult to purchase steam engines.

If they really use steam engines to produce cloth, they will suffer.

Just because it doesn't work now doesn't mean it won't work in the future.

After all, technology will continue to develop, and the reason why steam engines are expensive now is that a large part of the cost is due to the high cost of early research and development and production line construction. The early steam engines need to dilute these costs, so that the price is extremely high.

But steam engines are sure to get cheaper and cheaper as time goes on.

At the same time, the price of coal will continue to decline with the increase of production.

In the future, the cotton spinning industry will definitely be able to use steam engines, and Su Qin Textile Company has always been a company that is very interested in new technologies and is willing to spend money on it.

Even though the steam engine is useless for the cotton spinning industry now, they still signed a cooperation agreement with Dangtu Machinery Company to jointly develop a low-cost steam engine for the textile industry.

This is the consistent method of Su Qin Textile Company... It doesn't matter whether it is useful or not, and it doesn't matter when it will be used, as long as there is hope, invest money.

Once the results are obtained after investing money, the research and development results can be shared.

The most important thing is to be able to monopolize the new products in the early stage, just like the mule machine back then. Within a year after the mule machine was invented, it was basically owned by Su Qin Textile Company, because they used the research and development contract signed that year to monopolize Hantian for a year. Machinery company mule machine capacity.

In this way, Su Qin Textile Company has gained a great first-mover advantage in market competition.

On the low-cost steam engine, Su Qin Textile Company also wants to do it again. They have no control over other industries, but in the textile industry, especially the cotton spinning industry, Su Qin Textile Company must be the first factory to use low-cost steam engines.

As for the non-low-cost steam engine... whoever still uses it, use it!
Anyway, according to the improvement route forecast given by Dangtu Machinery Company, and Su Qin Textile Company’s own judgment, if the steam engine is to be applied in the cotton spinning industry and make the factory profitable without losing money, it will take ten years for a few of them!
The fact that steam engines are still unavailable in the textile industry does not mean that other industries cannot afford them either. Needless to say, in the coal industry, self-produced coal naturally takes advantage of low-cost use.

The cost of coal is almost nothing for them...

And the other mining companies are also very concerned!

Although other mining companies also need to purchase coal and have relatively high coal usage costs, mining companies have a rigid demand for steam engines.

But not only coal mines need to pump water, but many mines of iron ore and other types of minerals also need water pumping.

No, seeing that the coal mining industry took the lead in using the steam engine, other industries could not sit still, and the iron ore industry was the first to make up its mind.

Dangtu Iron and Steel Company is close to the water tower, and they are on the side of Dangtu Machinery Company. They have also become the first iron and steel company in the iron ore industry to purchase steam engine applications.

After Dangtu Iron and Steel Company, there is Daye Iron and Steel Company. This iron and steel company is a comprehensive iron and steel enterprise integrating mining and smelting. Well, it also produces some additional products, such as metals such as copper and silver.

At that time, Daye Iron and Steel Company was still the largest iron and steel enterprise in the Great Chu Empire, relying on the Great Smelting Steelmaking Method to make a lot of money in the past few years, and it was not short of money at all.

Ordered a dozen steam engines in one breath!
The steam engine purchase cost of tens of thousands of Chu Yuan is just a small sum of money for Daye Iron and Steel Company.

In addition to the mining industry, some special machinery companies also set their sights on steam engines, and Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company is one of them.

Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company, whose main products are relatively large equipment or parts, is also the largest large equipment factory in the empire.

They produced quite a few of the large iron parts used on the navy's iron-ribbed wood-hulled ships, and they were also good at some large hoisting equipment.

Their large equipment is widely used in various industries, especially port hoisting, shipbuilding, smelting and other industries.

The production of these large-scale equipment has relatively high requirements for the stability and reliability of the power source, and more importantly, the requirements for power are also very large.

If the power is too small, there is no way to process those large parts.

Although water power can also be used, there are some restrictions. Every year, in order to maintain the stability of water power, they spend a lot of money on the maintenance and investment of water power facilities and equipment such as aqueducts, dams, and water turbines, which is expensive.

Even so, the stability of hydrodynamics is not good, mainly because in order to obtain sufficient power, it is necessary to continue to have a sufficient amount of water and create a sufficient hydrodynamic potential energy.

That is to say, it often takes a long time to store water for production, and the continuous production time is relatively short, which greatly limits the production of Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company.

Coupled with the high added value of their products, they are also willing to spend a lot of money to improve the production line, so they are also eyeing the steam engine.

It's just that what they want is not the small machines with 32 horsepower and [-] horsepower used in mines today, but what they want is a large steam engine with a power of [-], [-] or even hundreds of horses.

So when they found Dangtu Machinery Company to buy such a large steam engine, Dangtu Machinery Company also looked embarrassed.

To be honest, in the past half a year, Dangtu Machinery Company has focused its energy on how to reduce the manufacturing cost of steam engines, and the main research and development has also focused on the 32-horsepower model, even the [-]-horsepower model. They all invested less in steam engines.

Because according to the feedback from various mining companies, mainly coal mining companies, their demand is for steam engines of this level, and higher horsepower does not mean that they are not necessary, but that they are too expensive and unnecessary.

Although other industries require high-horsepower steam engines, the total demand is relatively small. The demand is small and the market is small. Therefore, during the critical period of steam engine development, they can't care about these high-horsepower steam engines.

After failing to buy from Dangtu Machinery Company, Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company found Tianjin Machinery Company, and here they found what they wanted.

They can make steam engines with hundreds of horsepower!
Tianjin Machinery Company, although they also focused on small and medium-sized steam engines for technical research, their research on large steam engines did not fall behind.

Although the total demand for large steam engines is small, the unit price is expensive, and the competition is not that great.

Unlike steam engines with more than ten horsepower, the three major steam engine companies are all developing them, and they are investing a lot of money to develop them. If you think about it with your toes, you know that the pressure of competition will be very high.

So they plan to walk on two feet, while developing small and medium-sized steam engines with more than ten horsepower, while investing resources in large-scale steam engines.

The only problem is that Tianjin Machinery Company has not produced a prototype yet, so it needs to wait, and the price is extremely expensive!

(End of this chapter)