Reborn Ming Dynasty as Emperor

Chapter 546 Railway Construction and Road Construction

Starting from the 12th year of the Apocalypse, after a full 14 years, Bi Maoshi, Galileo, and Fang Yizhi's research group finally succeeded in making electricity, a physical thing, be used by human beings.

The cost of this is huge, not only a lot of silver dollars, but also a lot of people's efforts.

At least he succeeded in turning Galileo, a classical physicist who was only studying mechanics, into a person who was familiar with optoelectronics and became the founder of Daming optoelectronics together with Fang Yizhi.

Ever since he came to Ming Dynasty, Galileo has been arranged by the imperial court to study this subject.

The same is true for Fang Yizhi, who was originally one of the four princes in the late Ming Dynasty. He spent more time on this subject than Galileo, and he was a Jinshi. Governor, and he is still just a scholar of the Royal Academy of Sciences with the title of reviewer of the Imperial Academy.

But the contributions created by these two people are naturally incomparable to the Governor and the Sixth Minister.

Because Galileo was a little older and language communication was still difficult, Zhu Youxiao asked Fang Yizhi to be the general manager of the newly established Royal Electric Power Company, and he was given the title of right servant of the engineering department.

It was the first time in the Ming Dynasty that he was directly promoted from the Hanlin Academy to the rank of the right minister of the Ministry of Industry.

But no one objected to this. After all, with Fang Yizhi's qualifications as a second-class Jinshi, even if he becomes an official again, it is possible to achieve the third-rank official position in more than ten years.

After the establishment of the Royal Electric Power Company, Fang Yizhi first selected an area with rich coal mines and water resources near Gyeonggi, which is now the Tangshan area, and established Daming's first thermal power plant.

The generator used in the power plant is a unit successfully developed by the Royal Academy of Engineering after five years. Excluding the loss due to resistance during cable transportation, it can transmit thousands of watts of electricity, and can basically support a small part of the capital's electricity consumption.

Of course, the imperial palace was the first to obtain the qualification to use electricity, and it is precisely because of this that Liu Rushi and other palace people exclaimed because of the appearance of electric lights in the above article.

However, Zhu Youxiao has no free time to explain to these palace people what electricity is and how it comes from. He is now summoning Fang Yizhi and asking him when he will be able to apply electricity on a large scale, at least to make several royal families Capital enterprises can use power equipment and residents of big cities can use electricity for lighting, which can lengthen working hours and nightlife time, thereby creating more labor value.

Fang Yizhi replied that now that the first thermal power plant has been successfully built, and the steps from power generation to electric lighting have been successfully completed, as long as coal and copper resources continue to flow in the future, Daming will be able to quickly popularize electrification.

In this regard, Xu Guangqi, Minister of the Ministry of Industry, who was also in front of Zhu Youxiao, said that with the massive mining of coal mines from Jiliao to Mobei and Siberia, Daming's coal resources can be guaranteed not to be exhausted for decades, while copper There is no longer a shortage of mines because of the capture of Java Island and many island countries in Southeast Asia, not to mention that Siberia is also rich in copper resources.

Zhu Youxiao was very satisfied after hearing this, but within half a year after receiving the compensation from England, he started another big move, ordering the establishment of the Ministry of Communications directly, with Huo Weihua as the first minister of the Ministry of Communications.

The postmen and postmen of the entire Great Tomorrow were immediately incorporated into the system of the Ministry of Communications, and carried out short-term training, while preparing for the construction of the railway.

Song Yingxing was also awarded as the left servant of the Ministry of Communications, fully responsible for the railway construction, and the first fund he got was 1000 million silver dollars from the British indemnity.

The first railway to be built is to build a railway from Shanhaiguan to the capital. Once this railway is completed, it will help Ming Dynasty to quickly transport troops outside the pass, and it will also be more conducive to exchanges inside and outside the pass.

Of course, building a railway is not a simple project. It involves the manufacture of locomotives and power equipment, as well as the manufacture of various special steel materials, the erection of bridges that can carry railway transportation, and the construction of tunnels. etc.

In this era, the construction of railways is not the construction of railways by the later Zhan Tianyou. There have been people in the world who have successfully built railways. In the current Ming Dynasty, these are the first attempts in the world. Without any technical assistance, the only reference is His Majesty today. I don't know how to give them data and models.

Each of these projects has many technical difficulties and challenges for Daming. Of course, every success means another breakthrough in various technologies of Daming.

Fortunately, as early as more than ten years ago, Daming had already established a complete scientific research system, and within five years, it perfectly combined industry, university and research into a production chain.

From theoretical breakthroughs to laboratory manifestations to practical applications and various personnel training, Daming is now able to quickly solve each technical problem through the most fundamental theoretical analysis and correction, and then to experimental improvement.

Moreover, the scientific research in the entire Ming Dynasty is under the unified management of the state, which can concentrate the greatest strength to break through difficult problems, instead of being scattered and everyone studies their own.

In short, because of the resumption of the opium trade, after a steady stream of wealth flowed into Daming, the development of Daming entered the fast lane again.

Not only has the construction of power plants and railways been put on the agenda, but road construction has also become more popular.

After the completion of the construction of the Liangjing Avenue, the highway from Guangzhou to Fuzhou and then to Hangzhou was built successively, and the road was connected from Hangzhou to Nanjing, which made the entire Pearl River and Yangtze River Delta more closely connected with the capital.

As a result, domestic trade became more smooth and prosperous, foreign goods from Guangzhou and Hangzhou could be delivered to the capital faster, and goods from Daming could also be shipped out of the country quickly.

Because of the further improvement and optimization of the steam engine, and the successful manufacture of chariots before, slightly smaller locomotives began to appear.

And these locomotives soon became the darling of the whole society, which also made the road construction must develop as soon as possible.

However, the most urgent road construction for Zhu Youxiao right now is to build an avenue from Beijing to Xi'an and then to Wuzhou, Chengdu. This avenue will directly affect whether Zhu Youxiao can gather heavy troops near Gyeonggi in the future. to the Southwest and expand into Southeast Asia and South Asia.

After all, after deterring England and annihilating the combined Western fleet last time, the European countries have no hope of moving eastward.

However, if Ming wants to plunder more wealth, it must continue to expand, and countries such as Myanmar that hinder Ming's Nanyang hegemony in Southeast Asia will be the first obstacles that Ming will remove in the future.

Therefore, Zhu Youxiao asked Huo Weihua, Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry, to be personally responsible for the popularization of road construction.

(End of this chapter)