Looking at the steam engine in front of him, Li Xingchen felt a little dazed.
After coming to this era for so many years, he himself has almost become an ancient person.
The emergence of firearms finally made Li Xingchen more or less aware that he had survived under the glory of modern civilization. The emergence of steam engines at this time made Li Xingchen realize that he was not so far away from modern times.
The age of steam, the beginning of the first industrial revolution.
With the steam engine, we can say that we have entered modern times.
From modern times to modern times, there are not many years.
With your own guidance, everything will only go faster.
It's just that I probably can't see it anymore. After all, from the beginning to the development of an era, it doesn't mean that it has passed. But Li Xingchen believes that as long as the path is correct, all this should not take a few generations.
If it can be realized, Li Xingchen doesn't know what the thinking in society will be like by then, whether capitalism or the wandering ghost mentioned by a certain great sage will appear.
This is not your own business, your children and grandchildren will have their own blessings.
After all, he is just a human emperor, not a god, so all he can count and see is only the people and things of this era.
It is naturally impossible for him to set up a trap that affects several generations.
Therefore, this thought flashed through Li Xingchen's mind. Compared with this, what he was more concerned about was actually the application of steam engines.
It is inevitable that the steam engine will replace human equipment and become the main source of power in the workshop. The Ministry of Industry has still allocated so many people to develop the steam engine despite its busy schedule. Is it just to make you look novel? Is it not because
With this thing, the current production speed can be greatly accelerated.
In particular, the Ministry of Industry has successively discovered a large number of coal mines in the Central Plains and Hedong. Although some coal mines are not easy to mine because they are buried deep, at least they exist and are widespread in China.
of.
This naturally gave the Ministry of Industry enough confidence.
Just research and develop steam engines. There is enough coal, which is much more efficient than firewood, and it can naturally support the operation of steam engines.
Li Xingchen expected that the steam engine would be transformed into a variety of production equipment in the workshop according to local conditions. But what he really cared about were actually the derivatives of the steam engine.
car?
train?
After all, the former requires wheels and a flat road to run, and using a steam engine to drive a car is really a bit difficult for a steam engine. Such a big guy is driving a car slowly forward, so it is better to just use horses.
Woolen cloth.
But the latter is not impossible. As long as the rails are laid, trains driven by steam engines will run very fast!
Especially now, a problem that Li Xingchen urgently needs to solve is how to integrate the world more closely.
Li Xingchen's previous headache was actually the problem of information transmission, but this is not bad. At least now the Han Dynasty has built a large number of Chidao in the south and repaired many stations. This means that there is really an emergency. Eight hundred
There is absolutely no problem in rushing to Liga, even if the emergency occurs in a small ravine.
What's more, if the matter really needs to be handled, he won't wait for Li Xingchen to give his opinion before handling it.
For example, if there is a rebellion in a certain county, the county government that gets the news will definitely send troops directly and ask for help from the state government. The state government will mobilize surrounding soldiers and horses to cooperate with each other to form an encirclement and suppression. In other words, when the news of the rebellion is sent to Li Xingchen's desk, the local Han people will
The army should have surrounded the enemy's lair. When His Majesty orders the state government to cooperate with the county government, even the day lilies will be cold.
This is why it is necessary for the state government to have certain real power.
The transmission of information is actually not too slow anymore, so what Li Xingchen sees more from it is that there are actually certain obstacles to communication between the world.
Regardless of whether it is a Chi Dao or a canal, the speed is still slower after all, and anyone who has studied geography in junior high school knows that road transportation consumes a lot of manpower and material resources. Even if there is a Chi Dao, these commodities and goods must be used.
Horse-drawn carriages are transported bit by bit. Inland water transportation such as canals is cheap, but the speed is too slow. Especially many small and medium-sized ships cannot even be equipped with paddle wheels on both sides, so they can only rely on human oars to drive.
, where can we go quickly?
If the rulers of the Ming and Qing dynasties knew that Li Xingchen disliked the speed of cargo transportation in the Grand Canal, would they be helpless?
Dahan now has canals as its backbone and Chidao as its branches. It has been able to connect places more quickly and efficiently than before. In the eyes of many people, this was something they could not even imagine before. Newspapers praised Dahan.
There are also a lot of articles on infrastructure construction policies, and slogans such as "If you want to get rich, build roads first" have been put forward, which made Li Xingchen feel a little dazed when he read the newspaper, thinking that another time traveler had come out.
Especially with the development of commerce and trade, people are becoming more and more aware of the importance of infrastructure. Now when building roads and the like, they are eager to sign up one by one. Even if the salary is low, there is no problem.
But as a time traveler, Li Xingchen knew that this was simply not enough.
too slow.
What he wanted was railways, a transportation method that was faster and had a larger cargo capacity than horse-drawn carriages. The emergence of steam engines naturally made the emergence of railways possible.
Therefore, under the watchful eyes of Zu Qun, Liu Zhuo and other master craftsmen who came after hearing the news, Li Xingchen drew two horizontal lines on the paper, and drew many vertical lines in the middle, and then drew a
Roughly what a motorcycle looks like.
Everyone was stunned.
In their view, the greatest significance of the development of the steam engine was to make the workshop's production more efficient with half the effort. It was precisely this goal that spurred everyone to be very active.
I have never thought about using steam engines for transportation.
Now that I have seen it with my own eyes, everyone feels like they have been enlightened.
As craftsmen, they didn't even need Li Xinchen to explain too much. They just took a look and roughly understood what His Majesty meant.
Vehicles and separate routes powered by steam engines.
Repaving a special route may be very costly, but once the steam engine serves as the power provider, the benefits are self-evident.
Everyone is engaged in science and technology. Of course, we know very well that from the idea to the implementation on paper to the successful production of an invention, it is a process of continuous exploration and is likely to cause waste. However, when the product is mass-produced and functional,
, it is necessary to invest first and then produce output.
This is also true.
There is no doubt that laying tracks and building vehicles costs a lot of money.
But looking at the huge demand for material transportation by the Han Dynasty, it is conceivable that it will not be long before this thing can pay for itself.