I want to be emperor

After Huguang Arms Company produced a gas-operated air-cooled machine gun prototype, it quickly conducted frequent and high-intensity internal live ammunition tests.

And the test results were very gratifying.

Regarding the weight of its key performance, although there is no cooling water sleeve, in order to improve the air-cooling and heat dissipation performance, five heat sinks are installed. At the same time, in order to ensure sufficient continuous shooting capability when the air-cooling and heat dissipation performance is limited, Uses a thick barrel.

Therefore, the gas-operated air-cooled machine gun of Huguang Weapons Fortification is about the same weight as the short-barreled water-cooled 29 machine gun of Shaanxi-Gansu Weapons Company. The gun body weighs 56 kilograms. When equipped with a tripod, the total weight is [-] kilograms.

The weight of these two machine guns is basically the same level, because the difference in gun body weight is only a few tenths of a kilogram.

As for tripods, the tripods of the two are similar tripods, and they use the standard gun frame and gun body interface mandated by the military, so the weight of the tripods is actually similar.

The military is now very keen on various so-called universal standards and wants to make everything universal in order to reduce costs...

They even want to universalize artillery shells of the same caliber, but in fact this is very difficult to achieve. Even if it is a 75mm mountain gun and a 75mm field gun of the same caliber, even though they have the same caliber, in fact because of the chamber pressure Different, the length of the cartridges is also different. It seems that the caliber is the same, but in fact it is not universal at all.

目前真正能做到同口径炮弹通用的，只有两广武器公司生产的35式75毫米山炮和湖广武器公司生产的34年式75毫米山炮……而这两者用的炮弹之所以能一样，那是因为两广35年式75毫米山炮，其直接根据陆军制定的标准75毫米山炮弹，也就是34年式75毫米山炮弹设计研发的。

The same goes for the generalization of bullets. There are 11mm metal bullets and 8mm metal bullets first, and then firearms are designed based on these bullets. The same type of firearms can fire the same bullets.

But it is limited to the same type of firearms, the same 11 mm, the Tianwu-type pistol cannot use the bullets of the Type 25, Type 11, and Type [-] rifles... Because although the bullets have the same caliber, the actual bullet lengths are different. The length of the [-]mm bullet in the Tianwu pistol is shorter.

There is a big difference between pistol bullets and rifle bullets. Let alone using them, the sizes of the bullets are different and you can’t even fit them in...

Similarly, there is a big difference between mountain artillery shells and field artillery shells.

Therefore, the Army's delusion that the same cannon shell or bullet will be used for the same caliber in the future is purely wishful thinking... However, even if reality does not allow it, you cannot stop the Army's bosses from still thinking about universal ammunition.

However, bullets and shells cannot be universalized, but some interfaces can still be made, so the interfaces of the two heavy machine guns are the same.

This also results in the weight of the two being highly consistent.

In the live ammunition test, short burst fire, long burst fire and automatic fire mode were also purchased. The theoretical combat rate of fire can reach [-] rounds per minute. Of course, the shooting interval structure used is different... There is no way, Huguang Weapons Company It is necessary to circumvent the Shaanxi-Gan Weapon Company’s patent for the bullet firing buffer mechanism.

Not only is the buffer structure different, but even the ammunition supply does not use a canvas belt. Instead, a straight magazine is used to supply ammunition, and the ammunition supply is [-] rounds.

However, they are still working on a disc-type spring magazine that can hold more bullets. It is expected that the ammunition supply can reach fifty rounds, but it will not be available for a while.

Because the straight-plate magazines they provided were not very good, when engineers from Huguang Weapons Company designed the ammunition supply interface, they made it compatible with ammunition belts...

This means that our Huguang Arms Company does not sell ammunition belts, but users can make their own ammunition belts for use. That is the user’s own problem and has nothing to do with me... The military purchased machine guns from Huguang Arms Company, and then purchased them from Shaanxi-Gan Weapons Company. bullet chain, and then use them together, you can't blame it...

Of course, the bullet chain belongs to someone else after all, and they still want to get their own disc magazine out.

However, even if you have a bullet chain or a large-capacity magazine, you can't shoot too many bullets continuously. After all, the air-cooling mode is here, and the heat dissipation performance is not good in a short period of time, so after firing a few hundred rounds of bullets in a short period of time, it will It can't continue shooting. It's not like the 1000 machine gun, which can easily fire more than [-] bullets in a row.

Continuous live-fire testing allowed the executives of Huguang Arms Company to see the great market prospects of this machine gun. At the same time, engineers continued to discover some problems that had not been discovered before, and then made detailed improvements to the design to address these exposed problems.

While Huguang Weapons Company was undergoing intensive research and development and testing, the military also received news, especially the Army, which was more concerned about new machine guns.

It didn’t take long for Army representatives to come over to inquire about the situation and watch the test.

After seeing the test, representatives of the Army expressed their approval of this machine gun. They believed that although the continuous shooting ability of this thing is poor and the barrel is easy to overheat, these flaws still cannot cover up its greatest advantage: no cooling water is required!

It is excellent to use this kind of machine gun in areas where water is scarce. There is no need to worry about the lack of cooling water.

At the same time, there is no need to worry about the cooling water freezing in severe cold areas. The Army recently conducted extensive tests on the [-] machine gun. This test is not conducted in a fixed weapons test site, but in different environmental climates and different conditions. region, tested under different usage conditions.

For example, during previous tests in desert areas, it was found that when there was a lack of local water sources and the [-] machine gun could not obtain cooling water, this thing was just a decoration.

For example, I recently went to the Arctic zone to conduct severe cold tests. It was found that it is very inconvenient to use the cooling water after it freezes. Although I have found a way, such as adding some additives to prevent the cooling water from freezing, or using some methods to make the cooling water freeze. Quick thawing and other methods, but there are always problems.

The water cooling fan heating mode of the [-] machine gun has equally obvious advantages and disadvantages.

The air-cooled machine gun of Huguang Weapons Company has the opposite advantages and disadvantages. It does not require cooling water and can be used anytime and anywhere, but its firepower sustainability is relatively poor.

The military representatives were not stupid. They simply looked at the parameters and then watched the live ammunition test. They figured out the basic situation and quickly reported it to the superiors.

Soon the Army conveniently sent a team directly to provide some practical military experience to assist them in development, and promised that after the research and development is completed, as long as the performance in all aspects reaches the design specifications, the Army will purchase a batch of these wind turbines. Cold machine guns are mainly used to equip troops stationed in areas with severe cold and water shortages.

The Army's statement made Huguang Arms Company very excited, and the person in charge of its project was even more fortunate. Fortunately, Ma Qin's hometown was right next door. They found them as soon as the new design came out, and the company's senior management did not have any questions. Big mentality.

He quickly came up with generous terms and won all the patents for this air-guided air-cooled machine gun. ,
For this reason, they paid a one-time payment of 5.00 Chu Yuan plus a [-]% share of the selling price of all machine guns during the limited period of the subsequent patent.

It seems that this 5.00% share is lower than the 5.00% sales share that Shaanxi-Gan Weapon Company obtained for the core patent of the [-] machine gun.

However, there is a quantity limit on the core patent authorization share of the 15 machine gun. If it exceeds this number, there will be no share. And there is not only a quantity limit, but also a time limit, which is limited to 15 years, because the patent period is only [-] years. Only years.

As for Huguang Arms Company's share-sharing model, the time limit is still within the 15-year patent period, but the quantity limit has been removed...

On the whole, Mark Qin will not suffer any loss.

Moreover, the one-time patent licensing fee in the early stage also reached [-] yuan.

For Ma Qin, it was a huge profit... In the past four or five months, he earned a one-time sum of 11 yuan from selling patents on two machine gun designs, and there will be more in the next 15 years. It is very impressive and is expected to reach hundreds of thousands of Chu yuan.

From now on, I can just lie down in peace for the rest of my life.

And that's exactly what Mark Qin did... After returning to his hometown with the money, he built a big house, hired a few servants, and paid more than the market price to hire two personal maids to serve him... Don't you have money? Enjoyment, in Mark Qin's opinion, means his brain is burned out.

He worked so hard to go to school, and finally went to a junior college, and then started to engage in weapons research and development. What was his purpose?But he doesn’t have any lofty ideals. He just wants to make more money and live a better life...

Now that I have money, I would be sorry if I didn't invite two personal maids to enjoy myself. I have been studying hard for more than ten years in a humble window.

Before, he was still thinking about starting a business, setting up a machinery company, but now he has no idea... Nowadays, the market competition is also extremely fierce, and it is difficult to survive without large capital. The most important thing is that starting a business is too tiring.

I am a person with a net worth of 10,000+ and will be worth hundreds of thousands in the future. How can I start a business... Countless entrepreneurs have struggled all their lives and never made so much money.

So I don’t bother to think about how to make it bigger and stronger, so I just maintain the current small workshop model. If there is an order, I will make it. It doesn’t matter if I don’t have an order. Anyway, I only hired an office clerk and a technician, and there are two more that I don’t need. The wages of a skilled apprentice are very low in this small workshop.

There was no order for a while, but more of it was to serve some of his personal weird design inventions and prototypes.

It is said to be a machinery company, but in fact it is more like Mark Qin's private laboratory.

Ma Qin started to enjoy life at a young age, while Huguang Arms Company, which spent a lot of money to obtain the patent, was also in the process of intense and continuous development and testing.

And after quickly solving some problems, it was officially finalized. The Army was also very considerate. As soon as the prototype was finalized, an order for [-] missiles was placed over there, preparing for use in water-scarce and cold areas.

However, several other military services have no idea about this thing for the time being. The main reason is that the Army is a global garrison. It is stationed on a large scale in water-scarce and cold areas, and when fighting in these areas, it often conducts field maneuvers.

But the other three branches of the military do not have these problems.

In the Navy, the [-] machine guns are mainly used to equip ships. There is no shortage of water on the ship. Even if there is no fresh water, seawater can be used for emergencies.

The Marine Corps is not large in size, only tens of thousands of people in total, and the Marine Corps is mainly stationed at various naval bases. Most of its missions are landing operations, fighting near the coastline, and rarely going deep into inland areas.

Therefore, whether the navy is a ship or a marine, there is no problem of lack of cooling water for machine guns, so the navy uses [-] water-cooled machine guns.

The Guards, people long to stay at home, although they will regularly rotate part of the troops to fight overseas to maintain the overall combat effectiveness, the scale of the Guards' rotation operations is not large, so although the Guards has the intention, it is estimated that the number is not It would be too much.

Armed tax police, their scale is too small, domestic armed tax police are rarely equipped with these heavy weapons, even if the equipment is not short of water, after all, they will not go to the desert to fight, and the armed tax police deployed overseas are about the same... ...After all, the nature of armed tax police is too special, and they rarely engage in large-scale field operations...

Generally speaking, the current two types of machine guns are mainly equipped with ships, the army, the Guards, a small number of marines, and overseas armed tax police.Among them, ships and the army are the absolute majority.

Among them, the Army decided to equip two types of machine guns at the same time... Anyway, the bullets used are the same type, so the bullet supply is not a big problem, and the ammunition supply system uniformly uses bullet belts. The Army saw the straight magazine from Huguang Weapons Company. Don't want it at a glance.

Huguang Weapons Company does not have ammunition belts, but Shaanxi-Gan Weapons Company does. Just purchase an extra batch of ammunition belts for air-cooled machine guns.

After the Army officially purchased and conducted preliminary equipment testing, the military also officially awarded the new air-cooled machine gun of Huguang Weapons Company the official equipment number: 43-year-old machine gun, which can also be referred to as the [-] machine gun.

And when the Army began to equip and test this 43 machine gun on a small scale, it also meant that Chengshun [-] had arrived.

In the past year, the Great Chu Empire has done several major things. The 'Eastern European Grain Production Plan' is one of them, but it is not the most important. Even within the Great Chu Empire, the importance of this matter is Not even ranked among the top three that year...

After all, the Chu Empire is expanding globally every year and fighting wars every year. Nowadays, attacking Eastern Europe is a routine operation. Not to mention the high-ranking officials of the empire, even the ordinary people of the empire have become accustomed to it.

The real top priority in Chengshun's 42 years was the large-scale construction of cable telegraph.

Since the success of the wired telegraph test line at the beginning of the year, the Dachu Empire has invested huge resources in the construction of wired telegraph lines.

Moreover, the construction of the telegraph was not just a matter of the General Post Office, but also involved the Ministry of Industry and the Railway Department.

The Ministry of Industry needs to provide a large amount of telegraph equipment, including communication wires, telegraph sending and receiving equipment, batteries, etc. In order to ensure supply, the Ministry of Industry instructed the special materials company under its Tongling Mining Company to establish the Tongling Wire Factory. A huge amount of money was invested in building factories and purchasing equipment to expand the production capacity of wires on a large scale.

At the same time, a large number of technical personnel were mobilized, and funds were provided to support three electromechanical equipment companies, Songjiang Electric, Yingtian Electrical and Xuzhou Electric, to produce telegraph machines and batteries used in telegraph machines, and began to further develop generators, motors and other related electrical equipment.

The railway department strongly supports the telegraph bureau in laying telegraph lines along their railways to reduce the laying and maintenance costs of long-distance trunk telegraph lines.

After all, laying telegraph lines along the railway eliminates the need to cross mountains and ridges. Trains can also be used directly as a means of transportation to transport materials such as poles and wires, which is easy and trouble-free.

The laying of telegraph lines these days is actually very simple. Just set up a wooden telegraph pole and pull the wires, and that's it... And the construction is basically done along the railway or the existing official road, and there is no technical content. There is no engineering difficulty.

The overall construction cost was relatively low and the progress was super fast. In just a few months, the Chu Empire built its first long-distance telegraph line, from Songjiang to Jinling City, in addition to the previously built Jinling to Dangtu line. In a very short period of time, the Chu Empire connected the two major industrial cities in the country and the capital Jinling through telegraph lines, realizing rapid communication of information.

By the way, telegraphy was also implemented in Zhenjiang, Changzhou, and Suzhou along the way.

And this was just a small test. After long-distance telegraph lines were proven feasible, the telegraph office launched large-scale telegraph line construction.

Several major telegraph trunk lines are under rapid construction, among which the north-south line is progressing the fastest. This north-south line runs from Liaodong in the north to Guangzhou in the south, and is laid along the main railway line.

Around this main telegraph line, there are many branch lines, such as Jinan to Qingdao, Xuzhou to Zhengzhou and so on.

In order to manage, construct and operate these telegraph lines, the Dachu Empire established a General Telegraph Bureau and established telegraph bureaus in each province to lay telegraph lines on a provincial basis, and then connected the telegraph networks of each province through a number of trunk telegraph lines.

The construction of telegraph lines this year is still in its infancy. Due to the fact that wires and telegraph transceiver equipment have just begun to enter mass production and production capacity is limited, Chengshun has only laid a total of more than 42 kilometers of telegraph lines in 3000 years.

However, by the 43rd year of Chengshun, the empire expected to build tens of thousands of kilometers of new telegraph lines. As the production capacity of telegraph-related equipment increased in the future, more telegraph lines could be built.

Within five years, the Chu Empire will build at least [-] kilometers of telegraph lines. It requires every province in its territory, including Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Siberia and other regions, to have telegraph connections in its provincial cities so that the empire’s center in Jinling can control any situation at any time. A province’s trends.

At the same time, the hinterland of the mainland, that is, the traditional eighteen provinces within the Pass, required every prefecture to have telegraph access.

The Da Chu Empire was even more enthusiastic about building telegraphs than when it was building railways... Because for the empire's top officials, commercial applications of telegraphs were secondary. The most important thing was to improve the communication between Jinling and the provinces. The speed of information transmission is to maintain the control strength of the imperial center over various provinces and places.

The Great Chu Empire was so big... Its territory spread all over the world. Even if we don't count those overseas territories, we only talk about the hinterland of the mainland, Nanyang and Central Asia, and now Eastern Europe. This also spans Asia and Europe... The scope is too large. , which also posed a great challenge to the rule of the Chu Empire.

In the past, it was because of the ships and railways that there were no big governance problems. But this was not enough. The empire's top officials also wanted more stable methods.

And fast communication is undoubtedly a great weapon for ruling remote areas.

With the telegraph, if there is a large-scale indigenous rebellion in Eastern Europe today, Jinling City will know the relevant news that day, respond in time, and mobilize the army for encirclement and suppression.

In this way, there is no need to delegate almost all power to frontline generals, and the power to mobilize large-scale troops is returned to the capital.

This is extremely important.

After all, to maintain the authority of the capital and maintain the imperial power, there are three major powers that cannot be given up no matter what. The first is personnel power, the second is financial power, and the third is military power.

As long as these three major authorities are firmly grasped, even if problems arise in other areas, the situation will not be completely out of control... Even in extreme cases, if there is a rebellion somewhere, Gyeonggi can calmly dispatch troops to suppress it.

This is why the senior officials of the Dachu Empire were so enthusiastic about building telegraphs, even regardless of the cost... You must know that when the senior officials of the Dachu Empire decided to lay telegraph lines on a large scale, they did not know whether the commercialization of wired telegraphs could be profitable and profitable. Maintain it.

But even so, the empire's top officials immediately launched an ambitious wired telegraph construction plan... Telegraphs were originally used to transmit military information and official documents. As for commercial applications, they were an afterthought.

However, the empire's senior officials did not expect that after the first long-distance telegraph line was completed and opened to the public for commercial operation, its profitability would far exceed imagination.

These days, sending and receiving telegrams is more troublesome, and the temporary use of frequency bands is exclusive... A telegraph line can only transmit one message in one direction at the same time. You cannot use one telegraph line to send two messages at the same time.

The amount of information transmission is extremely limited, so the price of telegrams is also very expensive. The price is calculated based on the number of words. According to the pricing of the General Administration of Telegraph, a ten-word telegram sent from Tianjin, Hebei to Guangzhou, Guangdong, has a straight-line distance of about two thousand. Kilometers, crossing multiple provinces along the way, for which a telegraph fee of one Chu Yuan is required.

(1860, New York-New Orleans, about [-] kilometers, spanning multiple states, the cross telegraph cost [-] US dollars, which is equivalent to [-] Chu Yuan in terms of gold content)

If the distance is shorter, or if there is no need to cross provinces, the telegraph price will be cheaper, but it is still very expensive.

Logically speaking, people should not be able to afford such an expensive telegraph, but in fact, when the telegraph was first launched, many people were already using it.

Especially business organizations and middle- and upper-class individuals, they don't care about the telegraph fee, they care more about timeliness.

Furthermore, the price of sending letters these days is actually not cheap. This is based on the fact that there are trains and ships that can easily carry letters.

In the [-]s before the advent of trains and ships, sending letters was very expensive. It was normal to spend a month's salary to send an ordinary letter hundreds of kilometers away.

Although it is cheaper to send letters now, it is still very expensive compared to later generations.

In comparison, although the telegraph was very expensive, due to its timeliness advantage and the fact that ordinary letters were also expensive, the telegraph achieved great success after entering the private market.

Especially in places like Songjiang where industry and commerce are developed, the volume of telegrams sent and received is huge, which leads the telegraph office to continuously build more lines to increase communication bandwidth and add more telegraph machines.

The commercial success of the telegraph also gave the empire more confidence to build large-scale telegraph lines. After all, commercial telegraphs could be relied on to raise construction funds, which was an extremely beneficial supplement to the huge telegraph construction costs.

Telegraph construction was similar to that of railway construction in those days, with revenue from commercial lines used to cover the construction and operating expenses of strategic lines.

The large-scale construction of the telegraph also began to rapidly change the lives of the people of Chu... The solution to the problem of long-distance communication brought not only great political and military significance, but also great commercial significance, and It has also brought great changes to people's ordinary lives.

These successes also strengthened the determination of the empire's top officials to build large-scale telegraph lines.

And began to think about building a cross-ocean telegraph to connect the mainland hinterland with the Americas and other overseas territories.

Especially in the Americas, there is no land that can directly connect to the mainland. If you want telegraph to connect the mainland and the Americas, you must set up a cross-sea telegraph line.

Based on such hard needs, the General Telegraph Administration, while laying large-scale telegraph lines in the country, also began to explore the feasibility of setting up cross-sea telegraphs, and allocated funds and related technologies for cooperation and technology research and development.

At the same time, Emperor Luo Zhixue, while approving the General Administration of Telegraph's development of submarine cable technology, also instructed the Royal Institute of Technology to carry out technical research on wireless telegraphy.

As a later generation, Luo Zhixue knew very well that in the telegraph era, wireless telegraph technology was the ultimate solution to long-distance cross-ocean communications.

Although the technology is still far behind now, it is precisely because of the poor technology that electromagnetic experts must be instructed in advance to conduct special research. Otherwise, no prompts or support will be given, and the scientific and industrial circles will be slow to follow the established pace. Do it slowly, and wait until everything is ready... If you can't guarantee it, the wireless telegraph won't be ready until he dies.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue directly reminded the telegraph project team of the Royal Institute of Technology that it was time to start working on wireless telegraphy, using electromagnetic waves to transmit information.

Luo Zhixue estimated that based on the current technical foundation, even if it is slower, it should be able to be initially developed in ten or eight years. By then, it will be able to form a global telegraph network together with the wired telegraph network.