Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 285 Wireless communication can only be used as a makeshift

Wenhua Hall.

The conversation between Zhu Gaoxu and Zhu Zhanyu continued.

"Although a more practical steam engine has not yet been manufactured, Erchen believes that it will be a matter of time."

"As my father said in "The Original Purpose of the Steam Engine": 'A steam engine is a machine that converts the energy of steam into reciprocating mechanical power'."

Zhu Zhanyu was full of longing for the future and said: "In order to create a small and powerful steam engine as soon as possible, in the past 20 years, experimental groups at Changke Academies in various cities around the world have been trying to improve bulky steam engines."

Zhu Gaoxu put down the memorial in his hand, stood up, left the throne, walked to the main hall, and walked on the sidewalk with his hands behind his hands: "Steam engines replace human and animal power with steam power. This is a kind of progress and a source of prosperity for related industries."

His words are not an exaggeration. The internal structure of a steam engine involves many scientific principles, such as steam mechanics, mechanical mechanics, and manufacturing industries such as steel, glass, and Eucommia gum that are required to make steam engines.

The use and improvement of steam engines has indeed greatly promoted the development and prosperity of related industries.

Zhu Zhanyu said with emotion: "Father, I think exploring on the road of science is a bit like exploring the sea. We never know what will happen next moment."

"Indeed, science deals with unknown fields after all, and its progress, especially major breakthroughs, is unpredictable. Technology, on the other hand, is applied in relatively mature fields and can make more accurate predictions."

Zhu Gaoxu nodded and said: "Just like Mo Qiaosi created the spark transmitter in the tenth year of Yongle, after 15 years of exploration and improvement, the communication distance of the small transmitter has now reached a radius of thirty miles, and the medium-sized transmitter can reach Hundreds of miles.”

"Give Mo Qiaosi a few years or even decades, I believe that a large transmitter with a communication distance of thousands of miles will definitely be built."

When he said this, he changed the subject and said: "However, before that, we still have to develop a more stable communication method, not a fast horse station, but wired communication."

As mentioned earlier, in the first year of Yongle, the reason why Zhu Gaoxu asked Mo Qiaosi to research chemical reagents such as nitric acid and sulfuric acid was originally for two core purposes, one was to develop mercury fulminate, and the other was to develop wet batteries. (See Chapter 117)
Use mercury fulminate to make a projectile primer, and you can successfully create a firing gun.

As for the reason why he asked people to study wet batteries, it was to create a spark transmitter.

Because the structure of this most primitive wireless telegraph is very simple, it does not use transistors or any electronic components beyond the current level of technology.

A spark transmitter can be assembled with only seven accessories: keys, batteries, boost coils, capacitors, spark gaps, antennas, and ground wires.

It is not difficult to make a radio wave receiver. Just use the "iron filing effect" to build a metal filing detector.

The so-called "iron filing effect" means that when an electromagnetic wave is generated, the iron filings contained in the glass tube will immediately become active. They are tightly packed into a pile, allowing the current to pass relatively smoothly.

As long as both ends of a glass tube filled with fine iron filings are connected to wires and batteries, it becomes a simple metal filing detector.

Among the above accessories, the most difficult thing is the battery.

In the first year of Yongle, Zhu Gaoxu used a wet rag containing salt water, sandwiched it between circular plates of silver and zinc, and piled them into a cylinder to create the volt battery in his memory.

For a junior high school student in later generations, it is actually very easy to understand the principle of a volt battery.

Because in salt water, the electric potentials of metallic zinc and metallic silver are different, there is a potential difference between them.

When metal zinc and metal silver are connected by a metal conductor, electrons will move from an end with a low potential to an end with a high potential, thus forming an electric current.

But the craftsmen who participated in the electromagnetic experiments at that time found it difficult to understand.

Although there were not many craftsmen responsible for electromagnetic experiments at that time, in order to let those craftsmen understand the principles of electromagnetism, Zhu Gaoxu not only took time every day to give electromagnetic classes to the craftsmen for more than half a year, but also specially wrote a book called "Exploration of Electromagnetic Principles" Book.It was not until nine years later, in the tenth year of Yongle's reign, that the craftsmen of Mo Qiaosi's electromagnetic experiment team used sulfuric acid solution to create a zinc-copper battery that was non-polarized and could maintain a balanced current in Zhu Gaoxu's memory.

With the availability of this practical wet battery, a breakthrough was achieved in the improvement of spark transmitters.

After all, in an era when there were no integrated circuits such as transistors and electron tubes, the only way to invent wireless communications was through the spark wireless telegraph.

This transmitter uses an electric key to control the switch, thereby generating an electric spark to release radio waves, whose spectrum is very wide.

If placed in later generations, it would be a radio wave jammer, which would cause wireless signals such as TVs, computers, and mobile phones to not work properly.

As for the radio wave receiver, because Ming Dynasty's current technological level cannot produce an electronic amplifier, initially a simple antenna can only be used for amplification.

Specifically, a large antenna or antenna array is used, which results in the antenna being very large and bulky.

Like the small transmitter receiver mentioned by Zhu Gaoxu just now, the total weight including battery and antenna is about three to four hundred kilograms.

It is said that in history, the first wireless system to cross the Atlantic was the spark telegraph, which seemed to use [-] watts of electricity.

And this kind of [-]-watt generator, plus accessories such as antennas and telegraph machines, must weigh at least several tons.

The telegraph machine used in later generations between aircraft was the kind of walkie-talkie used to communicate with the tower when the aircraft landed. Its power was about [-] watts, and its communication distance was about one kilometer.

When the communication distance between the aircraft and the ground is ten kilometers, the power supply of the transmitter requires one kilowatt.

In the Ming Dynasty, when there were no internal combustion engines and only steam engines, a huge steam engine had to be used to generate electricity to produce a one-kilowatt power supply.

If you change to a wet battery, that is, a zinc-copper battery, it will cost several hundred kilograms.

Moreover, only one of this kind of telegraph machine can work within a certain range, otherwise communication will be impossible.

Of course, with the introduction of an internal combustion engine, the weight of the generator can be reduced to tens of kilograms.

Later, in the late Yongle period, craftsmen from Mo Qiaosi invented the resonant circuit antenna, which reduced the weight of the antenna.

But even so, a medium-sized transmitter with a transmission distance of hundreds of miles will still be very bulky.

As long as there are electronic amplifier tubes, superheterodyne amplifier circuits can be built. By then, the efficiency of radio wave receivers will be greatly improved. By then, wireless communications will no longer be a problem for Ming Dynasty.

However, the manufacturing of electronic tubes is inseparable from materials such as tungsten, zirconium, aluminum, and vanadium, which cannot be manufactured at the current Ming Dynasty's technological level.

After all, radio has developed for nearly a hundred years in history, and wired communications are still in use.

Therefore, after careful consideration, Zhu Gaoxu decided to build a set of wired communications in the Ming Dynasty to strengthen his dominance over the grassroots society of the Ming Dynasty.

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