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Text Chapter 274: The new machine in the capital city

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.    Qiongzhou Prefecture, Changhua Prefecture.

    The original small county town.  Now it has become an industrial area.  On both sides of the main road, which are three horizontal and three vertical, there are spinning factories, weaving factories, silk factories, cement factories, pencil factories, glass factories, furniture factories, ironworks factories, and everything else. Hundreds of large and small factories are crowded.  Every corner within the city walls.  There are small private factories and large state-owned factories, all the way to the north outside the city wall.

    ??According to the perspective brought by the time travellers from later generations, those "factories" are not big, with only dozens or hundreds of people, at most the scale of small regional factories in later generations.  But it can¡¯t be compared like that in this era. In this era of handicraftsmen, this can already be regarded as socialized mass production.

    It is these factories that continuously spit out industrial products in batches that have earned Nanhai Country countless raw materials, manpower and money.  These factories support the increasingly prosperous economy of Nanhai Country.

    The environment in factory areas of this era is not very good.

    There is no steam engine or internal combustion engine. Currently, the only power available to Nanhai Country is waterwheels, cattle and horses.  For places without access to rivers, dozens or hundreds of Mongolian horses purchased from Liaodong are the only driving force for a small factory.  The entire city was filled with the stench of horse manure.  It is emanated from the horses that drive the machines.  If it was the first time for a Jin gentry to come to Changhua Prefecture, he would be afraid to enter the city because of the smell.

    The neighing of horses and the shouting of carriages were everywhere, mixed with the fishy smell, making the entire city's environment terrible.  If London in the 19th century was called the Fog City because of industrial pollution, then Changhua in the 17th century definitely deserves the name.

    But actually it doesn¡¯t matter, it¡¯s just the industrial area that smells bad.

    The residential area in Changhua Prefecture City has been moved to the hill to the east of the city, about two miles away from the factory area.  There are well-planned city walls, roads and drainage facilities.  Over the past year, people throughout the city have gradually moved there.

    There are many villas built in the new city on the hill, which were built by Changhua people hiring "construction companies".

    The so-called construction company is actually a few masons from Nanhai State, leading dozens of Guangxi refugees to set up a construction team, and then go to the government industrial and commercial bureau to register.  People say "food, clothing, housing and transportation". Nanhai Kingdom's food, clothing and clothing have already developed, and the wealthy people naturally have higher requirements for housing.  Attracted by this demand, many Nanhai masons established construction companies to design and build houses according to the employer's requirements.

    This industry is developing rapidly and has absorbed a large number of refugees from Guangxi.

    After Lu Ce occupied Guangxi, he was named the Commander-in-Chief of Guangxi in the Ming Dynasty. He was actually the Western King of Nanhai Kingdom.  Officials in Guangxi were still appointed and dismissed by the Ming Dynasty, but they angered the General of the Guangxi Army and the Pioneer Army shot them.  Therefore, basically no one in Guangxi dared to oppose Lu Ce's forced transportation of refugees.  Over the past year, Nanhai Kingdom has successively received 500,000 to 600,000 people from Guangxi.

    The new Guangxi immigrants to Nanhai Country are illiterate and have never operated machines.  Factory owners are unwilling to bear the cost of training them.  The easiest job for immigrants from Guangxi is the construction industry. If it takes two taels a month to hire a literate Nanhai person, it only costs eight taels of silver a month to hire an illiterate Guangxi refugee.  A large amount of labor has made the price of projects in the construction industry quite cheap.

    The procedure for buying land in Nanhai State was very simple. After the governor Zhao Bu built the foundation of a new city on the hill, he sold the land to the people at the cost of the infrastructure.  Cheap engineering costs and cheap industrial building materials make the cost of building this small villa very low, and the total cost is controlled at around six to seventy taels.  For the older generation of Nanhai people whose average annual income has long exceeded twenty taels, these six or seventy taels are really nothing.

    The new area on the hill is now full of brand-new concrete buildings.  There is a front yard, a back room, upstairs and downstairs, a garden and a warehouse.  Because they are all built according to the requirements of the residents, they all occupy a large area, and no one is exactly the same.  Standing on the roadside and taking a quick look at it, it looks like a villa area from later generations.

    Changhua is developing rapidly, and it¡¯s not just this new city that has changed.  Below the new city, Taipingwang recently opened a strange factory, a factory that does not require cattle, horses, or waterwheels.

    This factory aroused the greatest curiosity among Changhua residents.  It's not time to get off work in the afternoon yet, so there aren't many things to do.  Workers who had slipped out of the factory crowded in front of Taipingwang's newly opened power substation, climbed on the courtyard wall, and peered into the magical new machines inside.  The endlessly rotating electric motor made them stare blankly, and they leaned on the wall of the factory and talked about it.

    "My dear, you really have to move on your own!"

    "It's connected to the waterwheel, right?"

    "No! There is no waterwheel near this factory. It moves by itself. It's the strange force transmitted from those thick copper wires!If the voltage drops any lower, it will not be worthwhile to spend so much time repairing the reservoir and building electrical machinery.  "

    Zhao Gu smiled, squatted on the ground and raised his head and said, "Master, the cost of the reservoir can be recovered just by irrigating the paddy fields. This set of generators doesn't take up much space, so why is it not cost-effective?"

    Shi Ban looked at Zhao Gu but said nothing.

    Zhao Gu¡¯s feet hurt from squatting, so he stood up, jumped around in the machine room and said, ¡°Master, this machine is really troublesome. Last time King Nan said we should just build a steam engine, what does that mean?¡±

    "It's no trouble. We've never done it before."

    Span thought for a while and said to his apprentice, "A steam engine is a machine that uses thermal energy to burn a boiler, generates steam in the boiler, and then uses the steam to push mechanical parts, converting the steam thrust into kinetic energy. It can be used on ships to burn coal.  .With steam engines, ships can do without sails. If done well, King Nan's ship can run up to twenty knots."

    "Wow! Twenty knots! That's really faster than a horse race."

    Zhao Gu has been following Shi Ban for so long and is very proficient in all kinds of machinery.  Shi Ban said casually, Zhao Gu understood the principle of the steam engine, smiled and said,

    "No wonder King Nan thinks about that thing all day long."

    Shaking his head, Shiban pulled out a small stool from under the table and sat down.

    "We'll get them some guns, and none of them will go back to Nanhai Country. If the steam engine comes out again, they probably won't recognize me, Shi Ban. I'd better get a generator that can't be moved."

    Zhao Gu smiled and sat on the table.

    "But I heard what you said, Master. It is a boiler, steam, and then converted into kinetic energy. This thing is really complicated. How to do it? It will leak, so I'm afraid it will be difficult to do. The structure of this generator is quite simple.  I figured it out after doing it a few times. It's just that the insulator is a bit difficult to deal with. If it doesn't work, just let the power station reduce the voltage. I don't think the loss will be much."

    Shi Ban looked at the yellowed coil insulation and said thoughtfully, "If the voltage is not reduced, let's change to other cloths and try them one by one. There will always be some cloth with better insulation than cotton."

    Zhao Gu grinned and looked at Shi Ban helplessly.

    ¡°Master, that¡¯s troublesome.¡±

    Shi Ban shook his head, "This is a key machine and cannot be improvised. Once this is done, all our cattle and horses can be removed and used for transportation. The power alone can double the profits of the industry."

    Seeing how insistent his master was, Zhao Gu jumped off the table.

    Without further words, Zhao Gu ran outside and called out all the dozens of workers on standby in the substation.

    "Lao Wang! Lao Liu! Go buy cloth! Go buy cloth

    !  Lao Zhao, get to work!  Buy me twenty pieces of all the cloth in the world, from all origins, and of all kinds.  Not only cloth, but also anything that can wrap wires was bought and tried. His Highness has important experiments to use!  "

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