I want to be emperor

Chapter 274 Iron and Steel Research Institute
After listening to Yuan Gaofeng's basic introduction to the industrial base, Luo Zhixue led everyone into the industrial base.

The first factory they inspected was the Daye Iron Works.

This ironworks can be said to be the absolute leading upstream factory of the entire Daye Industrial Base, even the Xiangyang Industrial Base and the many handicraft workshops in the vast Chu Empire-controlled area.

The iron material produced by this factory supplies all the iron material needs of Daye Industrial Base and Xiangyang Industrial Base, and also supplies most of the iron material demand of other folk handicraft workshops.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it is the industrial core of the Great Chu Empire.

Such an important Daye ironworks, even in the Daye industrial base, has a very prominent position. Its attention is at the same level as Hantian Armory, and it is directly under the leadership of the Ministry of Industry.

Du Minghui, the supervisor of the factory, is himself a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Industry. After being transferred to Daye to take charge of the construction and production of the factory, his rank is Cong Sanpin, which is one level higher than the rank of an ordinary prefect.

The scale of the Daye Iron Works is extremely large. According to the design, the plant occupies almost half of the entire industrial area.

It has more than 30 large ironmaking furnaces and hundreds of small and medium-sized ironmaking furnaces for various purposes.

And a large number of hydraulic machines were built along the river, and the hydraulic machines were used as the power source of the blower to drive the large blower required by the large ironmaking furnace.

As for the entire Daye Iron Works, it doesn’t matter how advanced its technology is. At least for now, it is still impossible to raise the furnace temperature to a high temperature of more than 100 degrees to directly smelt pure iron into molten iron. It contains many impurities, and the melting point is only more than [-] degrees of pig iron.

As for the direct training of steel, don't even count on it.

Nowadays, if the Great Chu Empire wants to obtain steel, it often needs to carry out the second smelting of pig iron, that is, to obtain it by frying steel or forging.

But it doesn't matter if the technology is low. The industrial technology of the Great Chu Empire has always been poor. After all, the rise time is too short, and there is no time to make any technological innovations.

The magic weapon of the Great Chu Empire is to throw money at people.

With more capital investment, by building a large number of original machinery and equipment, and then using more workers, to increase production through extensive assembly line operations.

What is played is the strength of the number of people.

It fully embodies a basic principle of the Great Chu Empire's industrial development at this stage: the principle of concentrating efforts on major tasks.

If it was replaced by other countries or regions, such as the Ming Dynasty, even if you killed them, it would be impossible to build such a large-scale ironworks as the Daye Ironworks.

This is only two to three million taels of silver for the initial construction capital investment. At the same time, there must be strong means to obtain enough raw materials, including iron and charcoal, and finally tens of thousands of workers must be recruited and trained.

Du Minghui gave Luo Zhixue a detailed introduction to the construction of the Daye Iron Works, the current production situation and the ongoing second phase of the construction project.

Regarding these situations, Yuan Gaofeng has actually said it before, but Du Minghui said it in more detail.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue listened more carefully. After listening to the introduction and seeing the production situation of the iron factory, Luo Zhixue gave instructions on the spot in the factory: "The scale of our iron factory is now large. The output is also there, but the efficiency is still too low, such a large factory, with so many workers, can only produce tens of millions of catties of iron material every year, which is too little!"

Luo Zhixue continued to speak the words he had prepared before: "Our ironmaking technology will continue to improve."

"Now we use charcoal to make iron. A large amount of charcoal needs to consume a lot of forest resources, manpower and material resources, and the cost is high."

"Then can we use lower cost coal to smelt iron? I know that the iron smelted with coal is relatively brittle. Now that we know the problem, let's find a way to solve it."

"Mobilize manpower, organize forces to do more research, why is the iron smelted with charcoal not brittle, but the iron smelted with coal is more brittle? Is there something more in coal than charcoal? Something we don't know for the time being, in the end This caused the iron material to become brittle during iron smelting."

"Furthermore, the temperature of our current iron-making furnace is still too low. If the temperature is too low, there is no way to directly smelt pure iron into molten iron, and there is no way to directly refine pure iron!"

"Is it possible to increase the temperature of the furnace by improving the blower? If coal is used in the future, combined with the improved blower, can the furnace temperature be raised to directly smelt pure iron?"

While talking, Luo Zhixue waved his hand, and an imperial court attendant behind him immediately stepped forward, holding a booklet in his hand. Luo Zhixue took the booklet and handed it to Du Minghui, supervisor of Daye Iron Works : "Here are some experimental reports and data from the Iron and Steel Research Institute. Recently, they plan to test coal to make iron. Come back and cooperate with us!"

"Also, this time, some people from the Iron and Steel Research Institute will be stationed in Daye for a long time, and a branch office will be set up here for large-scale experiments. Your iron factory will cooperate well. This research has produced something good. It is your iron factory. The factory benefits!"

When Du Minghui heard the Iron and Steel Research Institute, his eyes lit up immediately.

He knew about this Iron and Steel Research Institute. The institute had not been established for a long time, but its background was not small. It came from the Royal Institute of Technology, and its members were all students from the Royal Institute of Technology.

Speaking of this, I have to mention the Royal Institute of Technology. When the imperial examination was held last year, Luo Zhixue instructed the Ministry of Rites and Education, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other departments to select geniuses with supernatural powers from within their full control.

These so-called geniuses will be tested after being selected, and the tests are simple, one is memory, and the other is logical thinking ability.

How to take the test?

It's very simple, just like the traditional imperial examinations, first let them write the contents of the Four Books and Five Classics silently, and those with poor memory will not be able to write them silently.

Then let them temporarily recite the words or pictures temporarily written by the examiner, and then let them use their temporary memory to write and recognize.

In the end, let them write eight-legged essays, or intercept questions...

On the one hand, these geniuses and supernatural powers are familiar with stereotyped essays.

Secondly, the stereotyped essay seems very old-fashioned and useless to you, but what is the stereotyped essay about?It relies on memory, comprehension, and logic.

Without strong skills, you can't even solve the intercepted questions.

As for solving the problem, to put it bluntly, it is nonsense, as long as you have something to say and can make the nonsense come back, then it will be fine.

Because the title of the interception question itself has no meaning... other examiners just randomly intercept a few words from the Four Books and Five Classics, which is meaningless in itself.

But when you answer the question, the examinee must give the question meaning.

To put it simply, it is to let you talk nonsense about a meaningless thing. You win if you talk about meaningless things, and you lose if you talk about meaningless things.

And this requires imagination and logical thinking ability.

You can't answer this kind of question just by rote memorization.

And the Royal Institute of Technology does not require candidates to write stereotyped essays that are meaningful or not, what is required is that candidates have imagination...

As for the article specifically, the more bullshit the better, well, the premise is that it can be justified.

In short, if you bluff the examiner by bragging, then you will pass the test.

After preliminary screening, the so-called geniuses selected, let alone others, but at least one of them has a particularly good memory, and their ability to talk nonsense and brag is not bad.

You say one, and they can give you ten...

And this is the so-called genius that the Royal Institute of Technology needs for the time being, because they need to learn from Luo Zhixue's limited and many missing textbooks. During this learning process, they have to ponder on their own and fill in the missing content... …

Furthermore, scientific research is inherently very abstract, and without any imagination, it is impossible to learn it.

After passing strict examinations, the Great Chu Empire successively selected more than 100 so-called geniuses.

These geniuses were then sent to Hanyang, and Luo Zhixue even established the Royal Institute of Technology for them.

After these geniuses entered the Royal Institute of Technology, they held many science and engineering subjects that Luo Zhixue had written silently and compiled into books every day, including mathematics, geometry, physics, chemistry, astronomy and geography.

And Luo Zhixue would give lectures in person whenever he had time.

After a few months, the first batch of more than 100 geniuses selected has already been proved that most of them are parallel importers...

Facts have proved that the genius selection model in the early stage of the Great Chu Empire still has great flaws, and the proportion of parallel imports selected is too large.

But it doesn't matter, anyway, no matter how poor the selected person is, he still has a good memory.

Even relying on rote memorization, they are stronger than ordinary students.

After several months of study, these people's learning progress was mixed.

Those who are poor in basic mathematics are still at the level of the second and third grades of elementary school, and they are all parallel imports with no future...

The good ones have already started to learn the mathematics content of middle school.

Facts once again prove that mathematics depends on the brain.

And between the brain and the brain, the difference is vast!

And these people who are good at mathematics tend to learn other things very quickly. Seven or eight of them have already started to learn junior high school physics content.

And these people's study progress is so fast that sometimes Luo Zhixue even doubts his own IQ...

They are all human, so why is there such a big gap?

He remembered that when he was in middle school when he was a child, he couldn't learn so fast.

The more than ten main members of the Iron and Steel Research Institute are those who study steel in the Royal Institute of Technology, and the three leading members are still the ones with the best academic performance.

While learning various science and engineering knowledge, they studied iron and steel making.

In addition to the dozen or so young people, there are also a group of senior craftsmen who assist in research.

Although the Iron and Steel Research Institute was not established for a long time, and it was led by a few teenagers who didn't even grow hair, but the results have been quite a lot.

Now they are going to come to do experiments and set up a branch office, which Du Minghui welcomes and even looks forward to!
If they can solve the problem of raising the furnace temperature, or solve the problem of using coal to make iron, then Du Minghui can treat them as guests of honor.

If the production can be increased by improving the technological process, then Du Minghui can hold them in his hands!

The question is, can they do it?

(End of this chapter)