The use of electric lights in the imperial palace of the Tang Empire was the first non-experimental large-scale application of electric lights in the history of the Tang Empire!
Well, this is not the first time that electric lights have been used. In fact, electric lights have been developed and used on a small scale several years ago. However, their lifespan is extremely short and their costs are high, so they have never been widely used.
Most of the ones used before were small-scale applications in some special occasions. The biggest ones are probably the military, especially the navy. In fact, electric lights were used for internal lighting of battleships several years ago, and they were also used as searchlights.
For example, the battleship Sichuan, which was built and launched more than 50 years ago, has six generators, more than 400 electric lights, and four searchlights. It was a battleship launched ten years ago!
So regardless of the fact that there are no electric lights in civilian or commercial applications, you might think that there are no electric lights in the Tang Empire. In fact, they existed more than ten years ago, but their service life was limited, their limitations were relatively large, and they were very expensive and difficult to promote.
As a result, although electric lights have been around for several years, they have never been popularized. Many people don't even know that electric lights exist.
However, with the further development of technology, the service life of electric lamps has increased from a few hours, to dozens of hours, to hundreds of hours, and finally to thousands of hours now, which ultimately led to the initial promotion and popularization of electric lamps.
Foundation.
The royal family's high-profile announcement this time that the palace is electrified is because it has reached a preliminary technical solution and is now barely ready for large-scale promotion.
The royal family's play with electric lights this time is actually to contribute to the promotion and popularization of electric lights!
To put it bluntly, it’s just an advertisement for electric lights!
In the Tang Empire, the first non-experimental, non-industrial, large-scale application of electric lights purely for lighting appeared in the imperial palace.
On the evening of the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, countless electric lights illuminated the entire palace extremely brightly!
Just after the Spring Festival, many official agencies of the empire announced the installation of electric lighting facilities in office buildings, taking the lead in promoting the electrification process of the Tang Empire.
Official institutions began to use electric lights, which was somewhat of a political mission. But when ordinary commercial companies also started to use electric lights, it meant that the era of electric lights had completely arrived.
In February of Xuanping 62, Shanghai North Shore Building began to fully use electric lights, and installed colorful lights on the exterior walls and two huge searchlights on the roof.
When night fell, the electric lights on the exterior walls came on and their huge searchlights shot beams of light into the night sky, the whole of Shanghai was shocked.
That night, countless people looked at the North Shore Building, which is more than 100 meters high!
Immediately afterwards, many other buildings and large commercial institutions quickly followed suit. In less than a month, more than ten buildings in Shanghai had already turned on the lights.
After electric lights began to become popular, the financial market also gave the most timely feedback!
Before the Spring Festival last year, the stock price of AIA Electric Company, a listed company under AIA Machinery Company, continued to rise. The price of a single share increased six times in three months!
However, AIA Electric Company is only the second strongest company in the Imperial Electric field, and there is a huge gap between this second strongest company and Zhaoqing Electric Company, which is the strongest.
Zhaoqing Electric Company is the most technologically advanced and largest electrical equipment supplier in the empire. It mainly develops and produces power generation equipment, electric motors, cables, lights and other electrical facilities.
However, because this company is so important, and it has always invested huge amounts of money and suffered losses year after year, it has always been wholly owned by Zhaoqing Machinery Company and has not been listed on the market.
After more than ten years of hard work, the electrification promoted by Zhaoqing Machinery Company finally received huge rewards!
Because of its layout more than ten years in advance and the huge investment in research and development over the years, Zhaoqing Machinery Company has surpassed many competitors in the electrical field by more than one level.
This move also allows Zhaoqing Machinery Company, which has developed somewhat slowly over the past decade and has even been overtaken or even surpassed by other competitors in some fields, to once again stand at the top of the wave of the times.
During the decades of development of Zhaoqing Machinery Company, many of its core businesses, such as various steam engine businesses and machinery manufacturing businesses, have been constantly challenged by competitors.
In the field of mechanical equipment, Zhaoqing Machinery Company has encountered strong challenges from AIA Machinery Company, so that its market share has been continuously compressed.
In the field of steam engines, industrial steam engines are half dead. Although the field of shipboard steam engines is okay, they have not yet become the industry leader.
Subsequently, relying on the automobile business to make a comeback, Zhaoqing Automobile Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhaoqing Machinery Company, has gradually grown into the fifth largest automobile company in China, with a fairly good market share.
However, although the automobile business is profitable, for the huge Zhaoqing Machinery Company, just one automobile business still cannot allow them to maintain the development of the entire group.
You must know that Zhaoqing Machinery Company is very large, and their core does not rely on terminal products, but on various high value-added mechanical products.
All kinds of industrial equipment are the foundation of Zhaoqing Machinery Company!
Many years ago, Zhaoqing Machinery Company felt that its competitors were getting stronger and stronger. In order to find new development paths, Zhaoqing Machinery Company established many subsidiaries to explore new development areas.
Well, not including the car business!
The automobile business seems huge and profitable, but in Zhaoqing Machinery Company, it is just a sub-business that supplements cash flow. Even if it is engaged in the automobile business, Zhaoqing Machinery Company relies on selling various equipment for making cars, not the cars themselves.
In the past ten years, they have focused heavily on ballast electrification!
Over the past many years, they have cooperated with the Royal Institute of Technology to establish more than twenty joint electrification laboratories to develop a series of electrical equipment from generators to cables, motors, lights, etc., and established the Zhaoqing Electric Company.
Wholly owned subsidiary.
This subsidiary consumes a large amount of money from the group company every year. After so many years, last winter, they finally knew that they were going to get ahead.
In order to popularize electrification, they did not hesitate to donate free electrical facilities to the Palace Administration and some commercial institutions, just to make the lights turn on.
From last winter to March of this year, they spent more than half a million yuan just to promote electrification!
This year, there will be a series of subsidy promotion plans, involving millions of Tang Yuan!
Zhaoqing Machinery Company, which has spent such a huge amount of money, naturally has very huge ambitions. They need to promote the electrification development of the entire empire, and then obtain the largest profits from electrification development.
Just like promoting the development and application of steam engines back then!
The steam engine created the empire's first industrial revolution, and also created the huge Zhaoqing Machinery Company.
Now, electrification will create the empire's second industrial revolution, and their Zhaoqing Machinery Company will gain huge benefits in the second industrial revolution.
This is indeed the case!
The Ministry of State-owned Enterprises has just taken the lead in merging many local power supply companies, including Eastern Electric Power and Yangtze Electric Power, which are directly under the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises and owned by local state-owned assets, to form five major power supply companies: Zhili Electric Power Company, Southern Electric Power, Northern Electric Power and Western Electric Power Company.
At the same time, the Ministry of Industry established the Electric Power Department, which subsequently announced a large-scale power facility development plan!
In the next five years, large-scale power supply network construction will be carried out in five cities: Shanghai, Jinling, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Wuhan to provide industrial and domestic electricity and promote the empire to enter the electric and electric light era!
In addition to the above-mentioned power supply plan for the entire city, there are also plans to provide power to all 17 national key industrial zones and 26 provincial industrial zones, including Dangtu Industrial Zone, Zhenjiang Industrial Zone, Fengyang Industrial Zone and other industrial zones.
Provide electricity supply for industrial production.
The Electric Power Department's power development plan involves more than 20 provincial highways, and plans to build 16 large thermal power plants, 37 small and medium-sized thermal power plants, three large hydropower plants, and more than 100 small and medium-sized hydropower plants.
stand.
Who has benefited the most from such a large-scale power development plan?
There is no doubt that it is currently the only Zhaoqing Electric Company in the empire capable of supplying a series of electrical equipment on a large scale.
From generator sets to transmission cables, to end-use motors, lights, etc., Zhaoqing Electric Company will receive huge orders.
Because this company is an unlisted company, and the group company above them, Zhaoqing Machinery Company, is also an unlisted company and does not need to disclose financial reports to the outside world, it is difficult for outsiders to estimate the exact number of orders Zhaoqing Electric Company has received.
However, through the order and revenue data obtained by AIA Electric Company, we can already make a rough guess.
As a listed company, AIA Electric Company is the second largest electrical company in the country. According to its financial report data for the first half of 2002, their revenue increased by 600%. This does not include the
A large number of orders have been signed but have not yet been delivered!
At the same time, it was announced that it had introduced multiple strategic investors and raised 5 million Tang Yuan through the issuance of additional shares.
All funds raised will be used for technology research and development and production line expansion!
In just the preliminary investment plan, it is planned to invest at least one million yuan in the research and development of electrical equipment within three years, and further increase investment in research and development depending on the situation.
At the same time, it will be announced to build new production bases in multiple regions to meet the explosive growth of market demand.
Stimulated by this, AIA Electric Company reached a new high.
By July of Xuanping 62, the company's stock price had soared more than 20 times compared to last winter. It had rapidly grown from a company with a market value of less than one million Tang Yuan to a company with a market value of more than ten million Tang Yuan.
large enterprise.
However, AIA Electric Company is just a little brother in the electrification field of the empire. At most, it has eaten some scraps in this wave.
It is difficult to predict how much benefit Zhaoqing Electric Company will receive.
The development of electrification has brought benefits to some commercial companies, but this is only secondary. The upper echelons of the empire do not even care whether Zhaoqing Machinery Company, a huge enterprise, can gain any benefits from it.
The upper echelons of the empire are concerned about the productivity gains brought about by promoting electrification.
The overall improvement of productivity is the core driving force for the empire's upper echelons to spare no effort in promoting electrification construction.
For this reason, the emperor's grandson personally stood up and waved the flag, and all the important ministers of the empire stood up to express their support. Even the palace put up a light advertisement for this purpose.
The empire seeks far more than the commercial interests of a few commercial companies.
Moreover, the promotion of electrification is only a link in the second great industrial development.
The entire second great industrial development included two major aspects.
Including electric power applications and internal combustion engine applications!
The focus of electric power application is not things like lighting or movies, but the supplement of electrical appliances with electric motors as the core, replacing steam engines as new power and new energy in production, and ultimately improving productivity.
The second is the application of internal combustion engines, and the purpose of the application of internal combustion engines is still to replace steam engines as a new driving force for industrial production and transportation.
The empire has been developing in the field of internal combustion engines for a long time, and automobiles have even appeared long ago. However, so far, internal combustion engines have still not been able to replace steam engines and become the main force in industrial production and transportation.
In the second major industrial development plan, further improving and promoting the application of internal combustion engines in industrial production and transportation is also a top priority.
And at this point, the Imperial Navy has also set a good example!
At the beginning of Xuanping sixty-three years, a newly launched cruiser of the Imperial Navy was powered by a pure diesel engine for the first time!
Realize the leapfrog development of large ships on diesel engines!
However, this is not the first time that fuel has been put on ships in the empire's shipping industry. In fact, the empire has already adopted coal-fuel hybrid power systems on many warships in the past few years.
This further increases the speed of the battleship!
It's just that the performance of the warships of the Daheng Empire Navy has been severely over-performance for decades. Therefore, many new technologies have appeared and their performance has been improved, but in fact, the outside world generally does not pay attention to them.
Just like the battleship Jiangnan, it was the first full-heavy artillery in the history of the empire, with unified fire control. It was known as the most powerful battleship in human history. As a result, except for the internal self-pleasure of the navy, the outside world did not pay attention to it at all.
This has to be said to be the tragedy of the contemporary Tang Dynasty navy!
Diesel engines have become the power for battleships, which also means that the empire's development in the field of shipboard internal combustion engines is relatively mature. However, the impact is still not large. What the empire needs more is the popularization and application of internal combustion engines in land transportation, especially
It is to provide assistance for production.
And if you want cars to truly become an important part of the empire's land transportation, then a complete road network is indispensable!
In the winter of the 63rd year of Xuanping, the Imperial Ministry of Transportation announced that it would upgrade and transform the original official roads to create a national automobile highway network.
The official road originally designed for carriages and pedestrians will be widened and leveled, and some key sections will be paved with asphalt or cement to harden the road surface to allow cars to pass.