I want to be emperor

The winter of Chengshun 45 was the time for the Chu Empire to officially start electrification.

During this period, electricity began to be used in factories in some special industries for industrial production, improving production efficiency.

It was also during this period that electric lighting began to move out of laboratories and top-level battleships, and began to truly enter people's vision. Although only the royal family, the rich and powerful, and commercial buildings used light bulbs, there was still a long way to go before they could enter the homes of ordinary people. Time has to go, but in any case, electric lighting has entered commercial applications.

At the same time, more manufacturers are providing electric motor versions of their products.

For example, the leading elevator manufacturer in the Dachu Empire, Guangzhou Tianhe Elevator Company, has modified the original steam engine-powered elevator and is preparing to launch an elevator using electric motors on the market. The "elevator" is expected to be available after the year appear on the market.

The same goes for refrigeration equipment. The core component of refrigeration equipment is the compressor, and the compressor requires external power. In the past, steam engine power was used, and this steam engine power can be directly replaced by an electric motor.

Bell Refrigeration Company, the largest refrigeration equipment company in the empire, has launched a research and development project for electric refrigeration equipment. Since it is just a simple replacement of power, the research and development progress will not be too slow, and it is expected to be successfully launched on the market after the year.

This winter, as Songjiang Electric Company officially launched a new generator to the market, and Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company also promptly launched a new DC high-power motor to the market, the application of electricity in industry is very rapid.

Although many projects are still under research and development, they have not yet been put into the market. Even the motor-powered production lines of many companies are still in the equipment procurement, installation and commissioning stages. There are very few companies or industries that actually apply electricity.

But it is undeniable that almost the entire industry already knows that the electric age has arrived, and it is approaching rapidly with an unstoppable momentum.

The industrial applications of electric power, electric lighting and other sporadic electric power applications appeared in a blowout manner during the winter of 45 in Chengshun, which made Luo Zhixue very happy.

After so many years of hard work, electrification has finally been put on a shelf.

Even this level of electrification is actually very backward and primitive; at the same time, limited by cost, technology and other limitations, there is still a long way to go before the large-scale popularization and application of power equipment. A simple estimate is that it will take at least ten years. It will take several decades to complete the industrialization and popularization of electrical equipment, and it will probably take even longer for electrical equipment to enter ordinary people's homes.

However, no matter what, we have finally made a start, and we only need to continue step by step.

When all kinds of power equipment appear one after another next year, Luo Zhixue can even boast that the empire has officially started the second industrial revolution.

The reason why I'm just bragging and don't really think so is because I still lack an internal combustion engine...

The core symbols of the second industrial revolution are the application of electricity and the application of internal combustion engines. Without one of them, it would be incomplete.

In response to this situation, Luo Zhixue ordered the Hanlin Academy to conduct a thorough investigation of the internal combustion engine research in the empire. He first needed to know the current progress of internal combustion engine research, and then he could take corresponding measures to support and stimulate development.

And this investigation is simpler than imagined... Because currently, there are only three domestic companies conducting research and development of internal combustion engines... Those are the three major domestic agricultural machinery companies, and their research and development directions are also highly unified, that is, gas engines... After all, in the 30s When they started developing internal combustion engines, the petroleum industry had not yet started... and there was no gasoline or diesel. As for kerosene, it was available, but before petroleum could refine kerosene, kerosene was extracted from coal, and the cost was very high. Difficult to popularize.

Therefore, the three major agricultural machinery companies at that time wanted to develop a convenient, small and high-efficiency power system. However, due to fuel problems, there were no other good solutions except gas engines.

That’s why the three major companies all rushed to research gas engines. However, the gas engine research of these three companies is not smooth. Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company’s gas engine research and development progress is the best, and it has even been completed. It has a four-stroke internal combustion engine structure.

However, their research was also the most unsuccessful. The safety of the gas machine they developed was very worrying. It failed three times in three actual machine tests. It was a complete scam.

The gas engines produced by the other two companies are not very good, and they are not even four-stroke.

Apart from these three companies, there are very few institutions or companies in the empire that research internal combustion engines. There is only one Royal Institute of Technology left... After all, the Royal Institute of Technology has people researching basically everything, and internal combustion engines are no exception.

However, the research on internal combustion engines within the Royal Institute of Technology has not produced much results... The reason is also very simple. There was not even a petroleum industry before. Things like gasoline and diesel still only existed in laboratories, not to mention being supplied to the market in large quantities. .

If we want to do it, we can only develop gas engines, but the research progress is just like that. Compared with the three major agricultural machinery companies, the theoretical results are much ahead, but the practical application results are not much better.

After Luo Zhixue found out the internal combustion engine research situation in the empire, he began to instruct the Royal Institute of Technology to increase investment in the field of internal combustion engines. He also instructed the Ministry of Industry to appropriately support the development of the field of internal combustion engines.

Luo Zhixue's simple instructions had a great impact on the development of internal combustion engines.

The first is the Royal Institute of Technology. Although the Royal Institute of Technology has many scientific researchers and generous funding, they also have many scientific research projects.

In terms of power system research, the Royal Institute of Technology has spent a lot of manpower and material resources on research in the field of steam engines. This is why the level of steam engines in the Dachu Empire is getting higher and higher, even reaching far beyond other fields.

However, with Luo Zhixue's instructions, even just a few simple instructions, the Royal Institute of Technology quickly increased the weight of research in the field of internal combustion engines, and more personnel and funds began to tilt toward the field of internal combustion engines.

In addition to the Royal Institute of Technology, the official scientific research institutions of the empire, mainly professors engaged in internal combustion engine research at some universities, have also successively received strong scientific research funding support.

In addition to the scientific research community, support in the industry is also very strong.

To the surprise of the three major agricultural machinery companies, superior officials began to conduct inspections one after another, and the inspection projects also went directly to internal combustion engine research.

This left Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company speechless... Brother, our gas engine research has been stopped for several years, and now there is nothing left except a lot of useless gas engine patents.

Now you want to inspect our internal combustion engine research?I didn’t even show it to the project team.

However, as a purely government-run enterprise, senior officials from the Ministry of Industry want to inspect and inspect the internal combustion engine project by name. What they can do is to restart the internal combustion engine project team that has been dusted for several years and divert it to other projects. The researchers of the project temporarily called back twenty or thirty people to show off.

I originally thought I would just deal with the situation and let everyone do whatever they wanted.

What they didn't expect was that right after the inspection, the superior officials asked them thoughtfully if they had any difficulties, what kind of help they needed, whether the R&D funds were sufficient, and whether they needed to coordinate project R&D funds...

The people of Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company were stunned by this appearance of coming to do good things for others. The company has been through many ups and downs in the decades since its establishment, even if they were the most prosperous and became the leading enterprise in the agricultural machinery market. I have never seen superior officials be so polite.

After asking around, I found out that for some reason, the boss of the Ministry of Industry attached great importance to the field of internal combustion engines, and suddenly arranged for people to inspect the internal combustion engine projects of the three major agricultural machinery companies, and prepared huge support funds.

Under such circumstances, the management of Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company could not bear it. They immediately asked for policy support and financial support.

What’s even more surprising is that the Ministry of Industry actually accepted everyone who came and agreed to almost all their requests... but then came back with a sentence: Next year, the bosses from the Ministry of Industry will come to inspect it in person. I hope you can Get results in a timely manner.

This makes the people of Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company both happy and scared... Of course, they are happy that all kinds of support are very strong, but what they are worried about is that next year there will be big bosses from the Ministry of Industry coming to inspect in person. If no results are seen by then, , I’m afraid it won’t be an ordinary pain if the board is knocked off.

If it is an ordinary private enterprise, then forget it, but they are a serious government-run enterprise, and the three main senior management of the company, the company supervisor, the co-organizer, and the conference organizer are all working Ministry of Industry officials.

With just one word from the boss of the Ministry of Industry, they can be transferred to a small government-run workshop in an overseas colony...

But now that all the benefits have been taken, it is impossible to go back. We can only bite the bullet and continue research on internal combustion engines.

Fortunately, their company has been researching in the field of gas generators for many years. Although it has been stagnant for a few years, it has accumulated a lot of experience in the past.

At the same time, the core research backbone of the previous gas engine project is still within the company, but has been transferred to other R&D project teams.

Now that we have gathered the manpower back together, combined with previous research results, and spending a lot of R&D funds, we should be able to produce some results to fool the bosses above.

The same situation also happened in two other agricultural machinery companies.

These three agricultural machinery companies discovered that the empire's top brass suddenly paid more attention to internal combustion engines.

Not only the three major agricultural machinery companies have discovered this, but also some other large companies have discovered that the empire's top management seems to be paying attention to the field of internal combustion engines, but the field of internal combustion engines has more pitfalls than the field of electrification.

So far, there are no practical products for internal combustion engines, and most research is still in the state of theoretical research.

Unlike the field of electrification, although electrification only began to be applied on a small scale in the winter of 45 in Chengshun, in fact, relevant electrification equipment has been put into mass production for a long time, such as hand-operated generators with natural magnets as core materials, small DC Generators are already very common in the field of scientific research, not to mention that wired telegraphs have been in large-scale commercial use for many years.

There are several large electrification companies.

Therefore, the field of electrification seems to have just started, but in fact it has been accumulated for more than ten years. After more than ten years of small efforts and technology accumulation, it has now reached the point where technology and applications explode.

But the internal combustion engine is different... There are no examples of practical application of this damn thing, and even the prototypes studied in the laboratory have mostly ended in failure.

This is actually limited by materials and processing levels.

Internal combustion engines are actually more difficult to manufacture than steam engines.For example, the speed of an internal combustion engine is higher, and the pressure in the cylinder is greater during operation... How does this thing do work?In the case of gas, kerosene, and gasoline, the atomized fuel injected into the cylinder is electronically ignited, and then deflagration occurs... and then it expands and performs work.

You can imagine how much pressure the cylinder needs to withstand.

High pressure and high speed mean higher performance requirements for cylinder materials and piston materials, which must be more wear-resistant and have stronger pressure-bearing capabilities.

At the same time, the processing accuracy should also be higher.

Therefore, just looking at the design of an internal combustion engine, it seems that it doesn’t matter much. It is a very simple thing. However, if you actually make it, you will find that the requirements for basic materials and processing accuracy are very high.

Finally, the ignition mode of the three major types of internal combustion engines, gas engines, kerosene engines and gasoline engines, uses electric spark ignition.

The three major agricultural machinery companies have all chosen electronic ignition for their gas machine ignition modes.

This places very high demands on electronic components. The development progress of gas generators of the three major agricultural machinery companies was slow in the past. To a certain extent, it was also closely related to the slow development of domestic electronic technology. The supporting electronic ignition could not be produced. ah.

As for the diesel engine that does not use electronic ignition, this thing uses compression ignition, which requires higher pressure-bearing capacity of the cylinder... Nowadays, the basic processing technology of the Dachu Empire, such as gas engines and gasoline engines, are considered low-pressure internal combustion engines. Difficulty, let alone a higher pressure diesel engine.

Why was the internal combustion engine invented so early and related theories developed, but it did not appear and be applied on a large scale until the middle of the second revolution? It was due to limitations of materials and processing technology.

To put it simply, the technical requirements for materials and processing of internal combustion engines far exceed those of ordinary triple-expansion steam engines, and are basically at the same technical level as steam turbines.

In addition, if you use electronic ignition, you must first develop electrification to a certain level, otherwise you will not be able to produce electronic ignition for gasoline engines...

So if you want to develop an internal combustion engine, there are pre-technological limitations... It doesn't mean that you can make a design and find two blacksmiths to hammer it a few times.

If you can really build an internal combustion engine, it basically means that the industrial level has reached the level of the early to mid-term of the second industrial revolution. This is still in the laboratory state and small-scale application state.

If the internal combustion engine is to be applied on a large scale...for example, if cars are developed and used on a large scale, it will basically have to reach the level at the end of the second industrial revolution...probably the level of the top powers before and after World War I.

Obviously, the current basic industrial capabilities of the Chu Empire are still far from this level.

Therefore, the research direction of internal combustion engines in the Dachu Empire does not mean to develop internal combustion engines for use in end-consumer products: automobiles.

Rather, it is used as a kind of industrial production power and power in special fields, such as some factory power, engineering machinery, agricultural machinery, military equipment, etc.

The research on internal combustion engines of the three major agricultural machinery companies is basically aimed at powering agricultural equipment and engineering equipment... Agricultural machinery equipment is their main business. As for engineering equipment, although they are not engaged in engineering equipment, the three major agricultural machinery companies Because of the technical and patent barriers established in the field of tractors, they have become chassis providers and technical solution providers for engineering equipment.

It is very difficult for new and emerging engineering equipment manufacturers to develop their own chassis... First of all, it is difficult to get around various patents.

One of the core businesses of Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company today is to provide crawler or wheeled chassis for various engineering equipment manufacturers.

Therefore, various engineering equipment manufacturers in the contemporary Dachu Empire can actually only purchase various chassis and then install self-developed buckets and the like. To a certain extent, they are more like assembly plants.

The steam engine belongs to others, the chassis belongs to others, and only the bucket structure belongs to me...

However, this is also an important feature of the large-scale industrialization system. The industry is too segmented, and it is difficult for a factory to produce parts by itself from beginning to end. Even large enterprises still need to purchase different parts from the industrial chain, and then add their own Products produced using core technologies.

Patents are not something that can be easily bypassed.

In the field of internal combustion engines, patents still exist, and they are even more prominent... The three major agricultural machinery companies are not just trying to develop internal combustion engines. Although they have not yet developed a practical internal combustion engine, it does not prevent them from applying for it during the research process. Got a lot of patents...

For example, Liaodong Hekou’s four-stroke patent!

Other companies that wanted to enter the field of internal combustion engines took one look at it, and then frowned and fell silent... Speaking of the basic structure of internal combustion engines these days, they are basically four-strokes... But the four-stroke thing is the exclusive patent of Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company. .

At the same time, two other agricultural machinery companies have also obtained a lot of internal combustion engine patents, such as Tangshan Machinery Company's electronic ignition patent, Liaodong Machinery Company's combustible mixed gas intake device (coal gas) with a jet nozzle as the core...

The three agricultural machinery companies studied and studied, and found that each other had a bunch of core basic patents that the other two companies could not get around. It would be difficult to leave anyone behind, so they had already negotiated in the field of internal combustion engines several years ago. Mutual licensing of basic patents.

Therefore, both Tangshan Machinery Company and Liaodong Machinery Company can use the four-stroke patent.

But other companies can't... You don't have the core internal combustion engine patents that they can't get around. In exchange, how can the three major agricultural machinery companies license their core patents to you?Don’t even dream about it!
There are no practical products for internal combustion engines yet, but patent barriers have been established by these three major agricultural machinery companies, resulting in companies that later wanted to be unable to enter.

Even Lee's Steel, a huge enterprise, after seeing the empire's rise in research in the field of internal combustion engines, investigated the possibility of entering, but simply gave up the idea.

Patent barriers in the field of internal combustion engines are already very serious, and it will be very difficult to get around them in a short time... What's more, the market prospects of internal combustion engines will not be great in a short time. Spending such a huge price to bypass these basic patents is not worth the gain.

It would be better to wait ten or eight more years for the core patent of the internal combustion engine to expire.

Under such circumstances, although other domestic companies are also paying attention to the development of internal combustion engines, few have invested a lot of resources in the research and development of internal combustion engines. Of course, there are not many... that is, there are still a few ironheads...

Guangzhou Machinery Company, one of the three traditional steam engine manufacturers, has recently started to develop internal combustion engines...but the internal combustion engines they develop are not miniaturized gas engines for mobile equipment. Their goal is It is very clear that they want to build a ship-based internal combustion engine.

Gas machines are not safe, so they focused on a waste product of the petroleum industry that has just appeared in the past two years: diesel.

In previous theoretical studies, this thing has proven to have high power, high torque, and good stability. From the perspective of prospects, it is very suitable to replace the triple-expansion steam engine as shipboard power.

Although it seems that the success of research and development is still far away...but it is normal for basic research to be planned in advance. For these large companies, they will carry out research only if there is such a possibility.

Just like the Tianjin Machinery Company of the three major steam engine manufacturers, they are currently frantically developing the so-called ultra-high pressure multi-expansion steam engine. They want to increase the steam pressure to an ultra-high level, and then pass it through ten, eight or even dozens of The cylinder performs work, which they call a super-expansion steam engine.

This ultra refers to the ultra-high pressure of steam and the extremely large number of cylinders.

Upon hearing the research and development plan for the so-called super-expansion steam engine, the outside world had to say that they are really fucking crazy... The mainstream steam engines on the market today are still triple-expansion steam engines, and even double-expansion steam engines are still used in low-end fields. It has not withdrawn from the market yet.

The most advanced steam engine is the four-expansion steam engine that has appeared in recent years... It is extremely expensive. Except for top oil tankers, even naval battleships cannot afford it.

The most critical thing is that researchers have found that after high-pressure steam passes through four cylinders, the power increase brought by adding one more cylinder is already very small, but the cost of this is huge, and there is a sense that the gain is not worth the loss. It feels like...it's not that the five-expansion steam engine is impossible to build, but it's just that the price-performance ratio is too low.

However, Tianjin Machinery Company has begun research on super-expansion steam engines, and wants to build ten, eight or even dozens of cylinders... It can only be said that they are very bold and take bigger steps... According to their approach, it is estimated that Before he even took a step, his eggs were already pulled.

Another one of the three major steam engine manufacturers, Dangtu Machinery Company, is also exploring a more powerful power model in the future.

It's just that they didn't build a diesel engine, nor did they use a multi-expansion steam engine that sounded unreliable. Instead, they explored a way to use high-temperature and high-pressure steam to directly drive a fan to obtain power... The source of inspiration is very simple. windmill……

Since the wind can blow the windmill and bring power, wouldn't it work if I directly use high-temperature and high-pressure steam to directly blow the windmill blades?

Their power mode is actually a steam turbine in the original space and time.

It's just that steam turbines are a proper super sinkhole for the basic industry of the contemporary Dachu Empire, and it is very difficult.

Diesel engines produced by Guangzhou Machinery Company, ultra-high pressure multi-expansion steam engines produced by Tianjin Machinery Company, steam turbines produced by Dangtu Machinery Company...

No matter what the future prospects are, for the contemporary Chu Empire, they are all black technologies, and it is very difficult to produce practical products.

But even so, it did not stop the three major steam engine manufacturers of the Da Chu Empire from their enthusiasm for research and development of future power systems... They were planning ahead to seize the market ten or even twenty years from now.

This situation can be seen not only in the field of steam engines, but also in many other fields... The existence and strict enforcement of patent laws make the value of patented technology very high, and even affect the survival of enterprises.

And where does the patented technology come from?Naturally, manpower and material resources need to be invested in technology research and development.

Therefore, even the slightly ambitious companies in the Dachu Empire will not neglect technology research and development... Even if you cannot get some core technology patents, you can still get an appearance patent...