When Zhuge Liang was proud to report his imagination to Master Li, the first thing he waited for was not Li Su's commendation, but the reprimand of his brother Zhuge Jin:

"You naughty boy, who is not rigorous in academic research, was rushed back by Gu Yuantan, Xi Hongyu and the others. He has a lot of ideas about how to serve the country in the future?

Brother Yuantan told me that you can’t even memorize your “Book of Rites”. Some of the other twelve or thirteen-year-old students, the Chen family and the Ren family, are more familiar than you.”

Zhuge Liang curled his lips dissatisfiedly: "What is the best thing to memorize in the Book of Rites? I know what to do if you have used it to this day. I probably can't just know those things that are no longer used. The "cross shuttle" mentioned by Master Li can make the world's silkworms and weaver girls work twice as much as they are half the effort, and it is no better than memorizing the book. Besides, I know that Master Li himself can't recite the Book of Rites, and he can't even recite the "Analects of Confucius" thoroughly."

Zhuge Jin was startled when he heard this and scolded: "Is there anyone who says that to you? You still don't apologize."

Li Su smiled indifferently and stopped Zhuge Jin: "Tiyu doesn't have to mind. I am indeed not good at reciting scriptures. A Liang is right. However, A Liang, you should not be proud. I let you dabble in these craftsmanship, and the original intention is to broaden your horizons and know the sufferings of the common people's labor.

Ziyu has high expectations for you, so you cannot abandon your true academic career. After reading the scriptures and the various schools of thought, you should also learn to govern the people, manage finances, and the law, so that you can achieve great success in the future. Your family can still rely on Ziyu’s salary of 600 stones to survive. How can you not respect your elder brother?”

Zhuge Liang then restrained his joking tone and respectfully stated that he had no other intentions. Then he said, "Sir Li, you have said that whoever made this 'cross shuttle' for woven brocade and cloth can reward 5,000 hu of grain or 3 million yuan will not count it, right? After taking this reward, the family will not have to rely on my brother's salary."

Of course, Li Su would not be able to pay for the debt. This is a reward he mentioned casually a few months ago. For him, it was only a few expenses for obsidian bathtubs. If he really made a shuttle, what's the big deal.

Zhuge Jin couldn't help but teach: "A Liang! When my father was there, he repeatedly taught us to be content with poverty and be content with the poor and humbleness, and that poverty and humbleness cannot be moved..."

Zhuge Liang defended himself: "I don't want this money, it's not my own luxury, nor is it a subsidy for the whole family to avoid you from working hard. Besides, my elder sister is about to get married, so she should prepare more dowry and not lose her decent style of Zhuge in Langya."

After saying this, Zhuge Jin was ashamed to stop preaching. His father had been dead for three years. Among his two sisters, the older ones should have negotiated when they were sent to the court. After all, they were over 16 years old, and they were considered an older single woman in this era.

My second sister is only fourteen years old and can still procrastinate.

In history, the two ladies of the Zhuge family married the famous Kuai family in Jingxiang (the family of Kuai Liang and Kuai Yue) and the Pang family (the family of Pang Tong). However, now they have entered Shu early and have not gone to Jingzhou with their uncle Zhuge Xuan, it is impossible for them to marry into the famous Jingzhou family.

A few months ago, Zhuge Jin asked Li Su to have a favor and asked Li Su to come forward to make peace and betroth his sixteen-year-old sister to Lu Su as his wife.

After all, Lu Su is only one year younger than Li Su who lied to the public and one year older than Zhuge Jin. It is almost time for Lu Su to start his family.

In addition, Zhuge Jin's sister is indeed good (Zhuge Liang is so handsome and has a good family genes), Lu Su directly agreed that by this autumn, Lu Su will become Zhuge Liang's eldest brother-in-law.

Li Su didn't want to see the two brothers argue about the topic of "being content with poverty and being happy to talk about it". She stopped talking and asked Zhuge Liang to introduce the new thing he had created and how to use it.

Zhuge Liang took the shuttle in his hand, which was shaped like a crossbow machine, and put it on a wide-face loom with a width of five feet wide, and showed it.

...

The brocade weaving machine used by Zhuge Liang was customized by Li Su. Its structure is exactly the same as the traditional jacquard brocade weaving machine of this era. It is no difference, it is very wide.

The horizontal width of the traditional Shu brocade jacquard loom is one foot or eight inches, while the machine Li Su is five feet wide, so when he sees the lively Guan Yu, he is amazed at first sight.

Although adult men usually don’t go into the weaving room to see women weaving cloth, they have seen finished brocade and fabrics. Therefore, everyone knows how wide a normal textile should be. If you see it that is obviously several times larger than the normal width, you will naturally be surprised.

Silk fabrics and linens of this era have one common feature, that is, the cloth is much narrower than later generations, each one is only one foot or eight inches wide, and a set of robes must be made by splicing and seaming them. Including the clothes of Li Su and Guan Yu, they all have many seams. (It can be seen from some costume dramas that are more subtle and detailed, that brocades are all very short, one volume after another)

Therefore, in history, the idiom allusion "seamless" from the late Tang Dynasty seemed so rare. Because until the Tang Dynasty, even the richest people had their clothes made of several pieces of cloth. If anyone could make the main part of the robe with a whole piece of fabric (not counting the sleeves) without sewing it, it would be an incredible miracle.

This "one foot and eight inches" did not come out of thin air, it was precisely because the Weaver Girls were restricted by the shuttle-pulling action of pulling the weft line-

Before the invention of the shuttle, the action of weaving and brocade was to hand the shuttle to the right hand with the left hand, then tighten the weft line with a ruler, then alternately stepping on the pedal that lifts the longitudinal warp line, clamping this with the weft line, and then handing the shuttle back with the left hand with the right hand, pulling the weft line back, and repeating this.

Therefore, the standard of one foot and eight inches is actually the length of the two forearms of the adult Weaver Girl in this era, plus the length of most of the shuttle itself. When you build a loom, you have to take care of short girls with very short arms. After weighing the pros and cons, you can only make that wide in the end, otherwise it will not be enough.

Later, after the Tang and Song dynasties, a "double-person loom" was created for a period of time, that is, two women cooperated, one sitting on the warp pedal and was responsible for the shuttle to the right. The other bent down from the left and extended his body into the warp lifting opening and took the shuttle back.

In this way, the width of the cloth can reach the height of a woman from waist to hand over her head, which is more than five feet. The cloth woven is three times wider, but the manpower is also consumed. Moreover, the woman who bent over and fetched the shuttle was very tired. It is equivalent to the labor intensity of sitting ups every time she weaves a weft thread. After bent over several thousand times a day, the lumbar muscles and lumbar spine will not work after not long, and it will not be promoted.

Historically, Western textile technology was similar. Until the end of the 17th century, the emergence of shuttles allowed the shuttle to pull the weft line no longer to "cross the left hand with the right hand, and the right hand with the left hand". Instead, it directly used elastic potential energy and locking mechanism to bounce the shuttle bullets back and forth through the weft line, and the width of the fabric was greatly improved.

Of course, a truly stable shuttle is made of metal springs, which not only has a long range, but also has much faster shuttle speed.

Zhuge Liang now does not have metal springs, so according to the research and development goals explained by Li Su, he thought of using a caulking structure similar to a crossbow and shooting shuttles with tendon strings. The caulking of the shuttle is relatively slow, and it is not a "fly", and it is about the same as the delivery speed of a man.

On the other end, there is a machine expansion similar to Zhuge's continuous crossbow that controls the launch rhythm. It can be temporarily locked when it is received and pressed again to bounce back. To be honest, if Zhuge Liang's mind had not come up with a "continuous control mechanism", this design that automatically catches the shuttle and bounces back will never have imagined.

I can only say that although young people have no experience, they have a big imagination and rich imagination. Today, Zhuge Liang is still not a question about political experience. After all, he is young, but occasionally a flash of inspiration can make some small ideas often unexpected for adults like Li Su, who are restricted by technical prejudice, who are unexpected.

After joining the loom after the crossbow, he could free the hand from the handover and get rid of the constraints of "range". With the same workload of hands and feet, the woven fabric increased from one foot to eight inches to five feet, which was directly close to three times the production speed.

Zhuge Liang ejected back and forth dozens of times in front of everyone's interview, and the shuttle was accurately caught and popped up again, which was very stable. It seemed that it could be promoted.

Of course, the cost of the new textile machine will also increase, and the cost of the main machine alone will also increase to nearly three times the original. In addition to the main machine, the ejection, jamming and winding structure of the crossbow, the cost of this set is similar to building a military light crossbow.

In other words, spending an extra crossbow can save the manpower of the two Weaver Girls.

Moreover, in the previous period of the silk reeling/spinning process, the efficiency of the new hydraulic reel was already several times. Now the brocade weaving process has been increased by two or three times to match it, so as not to have too much cooked silk backlog.

In Li Su's opinion, this is very cost-effective, but he also knows that private retail investors will definitely not be able to pay a price to buy this new machine. Therefore, in the first year, they were handed over to the cooperative Zhenjia Business Company for mass production, and Li Su directly charged a commission for "patent fees".

For example, every time the Zhen family built a machine, they would give Li Su five pieces of finished Shu brocade in the future. The extra one would be considered the profit of the Zhen family. In the first year, because the scale was not large, the female workers used had to be slaves of the business, or the people of Li Su's own fiefdom, and conduct closed management to ensure confidentiality.

With the financial resources of the Zhen family, it is impossible to build too many at one time. There may be only a few thousand units. There are not so many supplies in Shuzhong to build new looms on a large scale. First, put them into commercial use, weave tens of thousands of pieces of brocade and sell them, and then exchange them for more materials with the outside world, especially Shuzhong cannot provide large-scale expansion of the machine for making ejected crossbow shuttles, so as to expand the second wave of production of looms. Li Su estimates that Yizhou's demand for importing animal tendons in the future may be equivalent to the cost of making tens of thousands of crossbows.

If we really want to promote it next year, we will find a way to formulate a system and ask the wealthy families in Shu who want to share their interests from it to negotiate terms.

Maybe, at that time, we can also bind several other tax systems and talent selection system reforms to allow them to support Liu Bei's other new policies in exchange.

The world is bustling with people, all for profit. Li Su Neng popularizes new productivity and allows them to make money together. It is normal for them to give in some other concessions. If you don’t eat toast, you will naturally have a knife to eat and punish you for wine.

Anyway, Li Su is not a weak person who is now "any man is innocent, but he is guilty of possessing a treasure". He is holding a knife in their hands. Who in Shu dares to infringe on Li Su's "intellectual property rights"?

...

"Good thing. In the future, the success rate of the plan to use Shujin as a hard currency will be greatly improved. At that time, as long as Brother Xuande is officially promised to guarantee it as the governor of Yizhou, all Shujin has an official recycling price, and it can be exchanged for any unlimited amounts of money. In this way, if you establish financial credit, merchants in each state will spend Shujin directly as money."

After visiting the machine, Li Su naturally praised it very much and was already fantasizing about the future hard currency prospects.

Any financial hard currency communication mind was initially based on "guaranteed recycling", such as the earliest flying money, Jiaozi, and paper money, which were accepted by someone. If you want to turn it back into gold, silver and copper coins, you will be exchanged for you at any time, and others will recognize you after a long time.

Although Shu brocade itself has great use value, if a guaranteed promised recycling price is set and the sign "Shu brocade is recycled in seconds, and the hoof gold is received in seconds" is also of great help to financial credit. For example, the conventional sales price of Shu brocade on the market is currently a narrow Shu brocade of two thousand coins per one foot or eight inches wide, and a 7 thousand coins per one foot or five feet wide.

Then Liu Bei's camp can get a discount and promise that "no matter how many Shu brocades there are on the market, as long as you want to exchange them for money, 6,000 yuan per Yizhou Mu official unlimited recycling" is absolutely enough. Everyone will know that no matter how the market fluctuates and falls, it will definitely not fall below 6,000 yuan.

After thinking about the routine of using this thing, Li Su, who was satisfied, decided to give Zhuge Liang a chance and reward him with the following.

Li Su asked with a smile: "Aliang, I will give you a chance, which is also a test of how you have learned mathematics over the years - I promised who could invent the "crosshoe" and give you three million yuan at a time, and I will have the benefits of the "crosshoe" from then on.

Now, you can just take three million yuan, or consider the second condition I gave: within the next five years, as long as you make this wide loom, you can also get a five-foot-wide Shu brocade finished product as a dividend commission."

Zhuge Liang and Li Su have been learning mathematics for a long time, much longer than physics. After a little calculation, he concluded: "Then Isn't I making a profit? As long as I build more than 500 new looms in the next few years, I will be more cost-effective to get the commission. With Master Li's courage, how could he not even build 500 machines? Even if no one buys them, the Zhen family business will make more than so many lives."

"Smart," Li Su patted Zhuge Liang on the shoulder, "Do you know why I give you this choice? In ancient times, King Zhao of Yan had a wealth of gold and a city. I don't want the world's talented and intelligent people to cherish themselves. I hope that they can see that they can make a profit and get long-term rewards, so that they can return to the water. There are many people with ingenious ideas in the world, but they are all too concealed."
Chapter completed!