Seven hundred and seventieth chapters through the artifact
The position and role of the royal family's industry within the Tang Dynasty was quite special. For example, it made money to subsidize the royal family's expenses. However, this role was actually minimal, because there were only a few members of the royal family, and the Li Xuan family had just become the royal family from small landowners.
It didn't take long either.
Well, although the Tang Dynasty has gone through two dynasties, the previous few years were just a joke. The real enjoyment of life as a royal family was only after the capital was moved to Zhaoqing. But even so, the life of the Li Tang royal family was still not luxurious.
On the one hand, Empress Dowager Bai was born as a small landowner, and she tightly grasped the expenses of the harem. To be honest, she had limited knowledge and could not afford luxury. Being able to wear silks and satins, wear gold and silver, and eat delicacies from the Tiantian Mountains was basically her.
A luxurious life in your mind.
On the other hand, there is Li Xuan. Now is his entrepreneurial period. He even builds the palace in such a petty manner. He is still willing to spend money to buy a yacht and a private jet. Most of the royal family's funds are used as guards.
Military expenditure.
Therefore, although the living expenses of the royal family are much higher than those of ordinary wealthy families, the total amount is still not high. Therefore, although the royal family industry also needs to supplement certain funds, it is not much.
Therefore, among the many functions of the royal industry, making money is only the smallest one.
The role that is more important than making money is: as a supplement to the state-owned industries, filling some gaps in the industrial system of the Tang Dynasty or investing in some state-owned industries that are inconvenient to invest, but this is what Li Xuan hopes to see.
After all, the funds of the Ministry of Industry are limited, and there are many factories directly under the Ministry of Industry, and almost all of them are in the national defense industry. The investment is huge and the payback time is relatively slow.
Therefore, this also caused the Ministry of Industry to sometimes lack sufficient funds to invest in the construction of other people's livelihood industries needed by the Tang Dynasty.
In addition, there are some industries that are inconvenient for the Ministry of Industry to invest in, especially those non-core industries that do not significantly improve the military's combat effectiveness.
And these responsibilities are now shouldered by the royal family!
Of course, the above situation does not apply to the Royal Bank. The Royal Bank is an extremely special existence. It belongs to the royal family in name, but in fact its jurisdiction is not in the Royal Industry Department, but reports directly to Li Xuan.
The Tang Dynasty existed as a policy bank. Its role was to maintain financial stability and provide blood for the Tang Dynasty regime. It was different from commercial banks in the general sense, and its positioning was more similar to a central bank.
In a general sense, the royal industry includes Zhaoqing Soap Company, Royal Industrial Holdings, Guangzhou Hanchen Textile Company, Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard, etc., which have also introduced certain private capital.
However, it is worth noting that the current royal industry is actually the same as the enterprises directly under the Ministry of Industry. Its own scientific research capabilities are relatively poor, especially when it comes to relatively advanced technologies, they almost exclusively rely on the Royal Institute of Technology.
The things they produce are basically licensed technologies from the Royal Institute of Technology and then mass-produced.
Therefore, although the Royal Institute of Technology is just a school, it is actually very profitable and can earn a lot of patent dividends every month. However, this situation is gradually changing.
For example, Zhaoqing Machinery Factory, which formerly existed as a branch of the Zhaoqing Arsenal, relied heavily on the technical support of the Royal Institute of Technology's predecessor, Youjunying, in its early days.
But now, they are also beginning to use various ways and means to develop their own technical capabilities.
Even so at that time, their level was still far behind that of the Royal Institute of Technology!
For example, there is something recently developed by the Royal Institute of Technology that other factories directly under the Ministry of Industry cannot produce even if they spend more effort. This is a microscope with a power of up to 150 times!
Speaking of this microscope, we have to mention glass. Since the Tang Dynasty used crystal to grind lenses and then built military telescopes in the early years, the Tang Dynasty has begun to go further and further in the field of optical lenses, and even
There is a tendency to go crazy. On the one hand, the navy needs high-power telescopes to detect enemies in advance.
On the other hand, it is also the direct promotion of Li Xuan. In order to make rapid breakthroughs in medical technology in this era so that he can live longer in this era, Li Xuan spares no effort to promote medical technology, and medical technology
The development of science and technology is inseparable from the help of microscopes.
And this is also a major measure to promote the continuous progress of optical lenses.
At the beginning, they were able to create a microscope with 20 to 30 times magnification, but this was still not enough, so they continued to develop it.
Because a large number of lenses were ground, and all crystals were used at this time, the cost was extremely expensive. This forced the Tang Dynasty to continuously conduct various experiments and try to create transparent glass.
This transparent glass technology also achieved a breakthrough at the beginning of this year. After more than a year of repeated experiments, the project team of the Royal Institute of Technology finally successfully found a method to make transparent glass and successfully manufactured it in the laboratory.
Clear glass came out.
Unfortunately, the technology at that time was still too crude, and the glass produced was relatively small. More importantly, its refractive properties were average. This kind of glass was actually similar to contemporary European Venetian glass.
This kind of glass is not suitable for use as optical glass!
It can be said that the people at the Royal Institute of Technology have no interest in the glass developed because they want glass that can be used to make high-magnification telescopes and microscopes, not just a mirror.
So they simply licensed the patent for this transparent glass to the Imperial Industrial Division. Li Xuan was quite excited at the time, and immediately ordered the Imperial Industrial Division to build a glass factory, striving to achieve large-scale mass production as soon as possible, and then carry out
Sales, after all, glass has long been a good thing that many time travel predecessors used to make a fortune. Now that it has been developed, it naturally needs to be put to good use.
but……
This kind of glass can only do this. Apart from making a little more money for the royal family industry, it has no big use!
There are many gadgets for the royal family to make money, not least of which is glass.
Even Li Xuan himself was only excited for a few hours at first, and then he forgot about this thing. This kind of ordinary glass mirror cannot be eaten or drunk, and it is also a luxury accessory. It was not suitable for the rule of the Tang Dynasty.
Words are basically useless.
What Li Xuan wants is optical glass, optical glass that can make ultra-high power lenses!
The Royal Institute of Technology is also determined to not give up. Members of the glass project team have clearly seen in the textbook that glass can be used to make high-power optical lenses. If the glass currently produced is not good, then
It means you are not looking in the right direction.
So they continued to work on it, and after spending a lot of money and time, they came up with a new kind of glass, and this kind of glass has a very unique name, lead glass.
Speaking of which, the emergence of this kind of lead glass is accidental and inevitable, because in order to improve the glass process, increase the temperature of the glass furnace, and also reduce the cost of large-scale mass production of glass, they tried to use coal as fuel to heat the glass furnace, thus
Replace the previous wood.
By doing this, they inadvertently obtained a new type of glass that was harder and more transparent, which was lead glass.
Although the people in the project team are generally young people in their teens or 20s, they are all veterans who have been engaged in scientific research for a year or two, and when funds are sufficient, various experiments are free.
Carry on indiscriminately, regardless of whether it is effective or not. Let's test it first. Although these young scientific researchers who spent money are not as theoretical as the high school and junior high school students of later generations, they have rich experimental experience. If something goes wrong, they will
You can see it!
As soon as they discovered this new glass, they immediately realized that it might be the optical glass they were pursuing.
So they started trying to make a high-magnification telescope using this kind of glass, and when they tried it, by chance, they actually made it.
Now for ordinary glass that can only be used to make mirrors, Li Xuan paid more attention to optical glass such as lead glass and microscopes. After learning that the research and development was successful, he asked them to send a test product and then tried it himself.
got this microscope.
Microscopes are an immeasurable contribution to medical technology, so as soon as they were developed, Li Xuan instructed the laboratory to directly manufacture more, and then use them for various microscopic observations, especially the observation of various animal and plant cells.
.
However, although microscopes are said to have greatly promoted medical technology, it is naturally impossible for such high-end things to become a widely exported industrial product.
But what can be mass-produced as industrial products or even exported is the ordinary glass from before.
After the construction of the glass factory of the Royal Industrial Division was completed and the first batch of glass was produced, they couldn't wait to bring mirrors made of this glass to the market.
Then those maritime merchants discovered that there was another product in the Guangzhou Trade Zone that could bring them huge profits: mirrors!
Mirrors are actually not a rare thing anymore. Venice in Europe has been producing glass for hundreds of years. However, glass is a fragile item, so it is still difficult to transport it to the East. Therefore, the price of glass in the East is very high.
high.
Although the glass produced by the Zhaoqing Glass Factory under the Royal Industrial Department is similar to European glass mirrors in the same period in terms of quality, size, and transparency, it is produced locally, and the Zhaoqing Glass Factory is the same as other factories in the Tang Dynasty.
, are all produced using a large number of the most advanced contemporary machinery and equipment, with lower production costs, larger output, and lower transportation costs!
Therefore, at the beginning of the listing, a simple and crude low-price dumping model was adopted!