1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 359 Agricultural Area

Fremont invited Liang Yao to go to Nevada to check the construction progress of the railway.

Fremont was very concerned about the Pacific Railway, even more so than Liang Yao.

Liang Yao himself was also very concerned about the construction progress of the Pacific Railway, so he accepted Fremont's invitation.

However, before going to Nevada, Liang Yao still planned to visit the agricultural production areas in the Central Valley.

Walter told him that the steam tractor jointly developed by Walter Laboratory and Pratt & Whitney Laboratory had been shipped to the town of Stockton for experiments.

To test whether this kind of machinery is suitable for agricultural activities, by the way, evaluate the cost of using this kind of machinery, and whether this kind of machinery has commercial prospects.

At present, the most widely used place for steam tractors is not agriculture, but as a road roller.As for whether there is a prospect for agricultural use, it is still unknown.

Since Liang Yao introduced talents from the eastern region on a large scale in 1851, various laboratories and design bureaus have emerged in California.

However, there are not many experiments that can receive double subsidies from the American Group and the California state government.

There are only Nobel Laboratories specializing in chemical engineering, Pratt & Whitney Laboratories specializing in machine tools and machinery, and Walter Laboratories who seem to be proficient in everything. These three laboratories are not only subsidized by the California state government, but also supported by American labs. Strong support from the group.

These three laboratories are Liang Yao's treasures, and they are also the laboratories that have hatched the most practical inventions in California.

Stockton, where Liang Yao is going today, is 100 kilometers west of the San Francisco Bay Area, 540 kilometers south of Los Angeles, and 65 kilometers north of Saramento.

This is also a village and town that rose due to the gold rush. However, due to the special geographical location of the town, after the heat of the gold rush in San Francisco and Sacramento gradually subsided, the town of Stockton did not weaken and continued to develop. .

The San Joaquin River, which originates from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, nourishes the valleys on both sides. This is one of the places with the most abundant water sources in the Central Valley, and the development of agriculture has unique advantages.

This is one of the most affluent agricultural areas in the United States in later generations, and it is also the main agricultural production area in California today.

This agricultural production area supplies about 60% of California's grains, 80% of rice, and 100% of vegetables and fruits.

Since the Central Valley was designated as an agricultural land at the beginning of the state, any development other than agriculture must be approved by the state government, so there are almost no factories and pollution here, and the environment is much better than the Jinshan Bay Area and Los Angeles.

On the train to Stockton, Liang Yao showed Walter, Pratt, and Whitney his new idea: a four-stroke internal combustion engine.

At present, there is already a chemical industry in California, and the gasoline and diesel used as fuel in future generations can only be treated as waste because they cannot be used. Liang Yao feels that it is a pity.

If you can tinker with the internal combustion engine, it will be a multi-purpose thing.

If it were three or four years ago, Liang Yao would never have dared to have such an illusion.

But as the first five-year plan comes to an end, California already has a certain industrial foundation, and California's industrial level is relatively advanced in the world, especially machine tools, mechanical processing, and chemical industries. The existence of a file.

California currently has the basic conditions for the development of internal combustion engines.

In 1806, the French engineer Lenoir manufactured the first internal combustion engine, but it was gas-fired, and the volume was very large. Compared with the steam engine of the same period, it did not have much advantage.There wasn't much interest in the internal combustion engine.

In 1876, the German inventor Otto successfully manufactured the first four-stroke internal combustion engine, which is the originator of the four-stroke internal combustion engine in later generations.

Although Otto created the first internal combustion engine, Otto's idea was to use the internal combustion engine as a more efficient steam engine.Therefore, although he invented and manufactured the first practical internal combustion engine, it was his partner Karl Friedrich Benz who developed the internal combustion engine.

That is, the founder of Daimler-Benz and the inventor of the automobile.

Liang Yao was not an engineering student, and his level of drawing was extremely limited. The so-called sketches he provided for Walter and others were sketches in the true sense, very sloppy.

Whether they can comprehend the essence of the drawings depends entirely on the understanding of Walter and others.

"Mr. Liang's drawings are unpredictable. We can't comprehend Mr. Liang's whimsy for the time being. Mr. Liang has a copy of this drawing. We can take the copy back to the laboratory and slowly understand it." Pratt looked at Liang. Yao's internal combustion engine drawings scratched his head.

"There is no copy for the time being. If you want to take it back to read, just take it back and read it slowly, and ponder it slowly." Liang Yao said.

Hearing that there was no copy, Pratt and Whitney took out paper and pens from their carry-on bags and copied them on the spot.

On the contrary, Walter saw some clues from Liang Yao's internal combustion engine drawings.

When designing the pedal sewing machine, Liang Yao gave substantive suggestions, so Walter did not treat Liang Yao as an outsider, and he took every drawing provided by Liang Yao very seriously.

Walter, Pratt, and Whitney are all the best inventors of this era, but Liang Yao can't expect them to conjure himself an internal combustion engine right away. All he can do is provide an idea and a simple drawing.

As for whether the internal combustion engine can be fiddled with, it can only be tested by time.

An hour later, the train began to slow down, which meant that the train was about to arrive at the train station in Stockton.

Compared with the industrial cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, Stockton, an agricultural city, is another scene.

Compared with the workers and businessmen hurrying on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the farmers who ride horses or drive carts here obviously have a slower pace of life.

Looking at the approaching Stockton Town, Liang Yao looked up and saw that the gaps between the buildings in Stockton Town were very large, and the buildings with more than three floors could be counted with his fingers.

Rather than saying that this is a town, it is better to say that this is an enlarged version of the countryside.

Unlike big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, Stockton's population is not concentrated in the town.

The population of the town is only a small fraction of the population of the whole area.

A larger population is distributed in the suburbs and even further away in satellite villages.

There were no cars in this era, and people's main means of commuting were trains and horses.

If you live in the city, it is not convenient to work too far from your own fields.

"Farmers in Stockton generally live near their own farms and pastures." Chen Baoliang, Minister of Agriculture who accompanied Liang Yao on his inspection trip to Stopinkerton, introduced to Liang Yao by pointing to the neatly arranged farms and pastures outside the car window. road.

"Farmers with a little bit of money will choose to buy a house in the town. They will live in the town for a period of time during the holidays, or when the farming is slack, and then return to work on the farm when the farming is busy."

(End of this chapter)