Go back in time and be a chaebol

Chapter 1178 High Technology is Expensive (First Update, Please Subscribe)
Among all the cities in Nanyang, Zhongxing and Yongding are the least noticeable cities in Nanyang, and compared with the former, the latter is even less noticeable. After all, the former has minerals and large factories, while in comparison, Yongding, as the capital of the Yongning Islands, has no advantageous industries.

Although this place was famous for its abundance of cloves, cardamom and pepper in ancient times, and was therefore called the Spice Islands, these spices have now spread throughout the tropics and are naturally no longer a dominant industry.

If I have to say one, it would be tourism.

In fact, this is also the focus of local development. Millions of tourists flock here every year. Although beaches and coconut trees are common in Southeast Asia, local island travel always attracts many tourists. After all, in addition to the island scenery, there are also some local natives who are good at singing and dancing. They have long been trained to be very service-minded and very docile.

As the center of the city, the streets become extremely lively at night - tourists from all over the world flock to the streets, enjoying the charming night and lingering in bars and amusement parks.

On the crowded streets, people from all over the world are relaxing here. Locals also go out of their homes and enjoy the cool sea breeze with their families.

Outside a cinema, a young woman pushing a baby stroller, full of feminine charm, was talking to her children. When she accidentally saw the person on the poster, she couldn't help but stop and her eyes fell on the poster.

The girl next to the young woman asked curiously:

"Mom, what are you watching? Do you want to watch a movie?"

The other children around them also turned their eyes to the cinema, but when they saw the posters, they immediately lost interest. For these six children, the oldest of whom was no more than ten years old, and the youngest was only three or four years old, animated films were their favorite.

Following his wife's gaze, the man next to her smiled with sudden realization.

"Haha, your mother saw someone she knows. That movie... is about Zheng Chenggong, an actress. She knew your mother back then. She was the runner-up of Miss Shanghai."

"Ms. Hu Hai? What is that?"

"She is the most beautiful woman in Shanghai."

"Her? She's not even as pretty as mom."

"That's right, that's right, mom is the prettiest! Mom is the prettiest in the world."

The children on the side said indignantly.

Holding the child, Zhang Xingde looked at his wife proudly and said,
"So, she is the runner-up. Of course, she is not as pretty as the champion..."

"Ade..."

Wang Yunmei rolled her eyes at her husband and signaled him not to tell the children about this, after all, it was all a thing of the past.

Turning around, she said to the children while pushing the stroller:

"Okay, what's so beautiful about that? Let's go, Mommy will take you to the amusement park, okay..."

As she spoke, she pushed the stroller forward, and the children cheered together.

The woman's slender figure did not look like a mother of seven children at all. Looking at his wife's figure, even after so many years, Zhang Xingde still remembered how she looked alone on the dock that year. She was wearing a cheongsam, just standing on the dock, looking into the distance in despair.

He couldn't bear it, so he went over and asked.

"If you want to leave, come on board with me!"

Then, she got on the boat. Later, when on the boat, he found out that she was actually Miss Huhai, the second wife of a wealthy family. Many people on the boat knew her, but she was still abandoned on the street in the chaos.

Later, she became his wife, and he was just an ordinary soldier who threw his gun into the Huangpu River.

But he married "Miss Shanghai". When I think about it, it feels like a dream...

Under the bright lights, the family walked on the street. The children's laughter and the woman's occasional shouts reminded the children to run slower.
Sometimes the happiness of life is so simple.

……

While people were enjoying the lively night in this holiday resort, in Yongding, Lange Watch Company, like many companies in Nanyang, also originated from Germany and was a well-known German watch brand. Before the war, it was a symbol of German precision manufacturing. However, because the Glashütte region where Lange was located was located in East Germany, all watchmaking companies were nationalized, including Lange's company and brand trademark ownership.

Moreover, since Lange had made a large number of precision military watches for NC during World War II, it was naturally implicated after Germany's defeat, and the Soviet Union took away a large number of inventory products, machinery and equipment, and drawings. The remaining movements were nationalized and established companies to produce some products, using Lange's reputation for sales. Later, the Lange brand was also cancelled and unified with the Glashütte or GUB trademarks.

Walter Lange, the fourth-generation heir of the Lange family, fled to West Germany after the war. Although he experienced many hardships, the fire in his heart to revive the family brand never went out. Later, he contacted the Allied task force and, with the help of a lawyer, transferred the Lange brand to the Borneo Company. Then, with the help of the company, he rebuilt the Lange Company in Southeast Asia.

Although all its equipment was newly purchased, the company's engineers and technicians were all from the Glashütte area, including many extremely valuable senior watchmakers. Thanks to them, Lange quickly became the most famous watch manufacturer in Southeast Asia, and its various watches and timers also quickly entered the international market relying on the hundreds of years of heritage of "Lange" before the war.

In fact, this is often the case. People recognize brands.

Once a brand is formed, it is difficult to shake its brand recognition. 35% of Nanyang’s brands originated from Germany, especially East Germany. The reason is that the nationalization of East Germany after the war led to the burial of a large number of brand trademarks. Some brand holders fled to West Germany, and when there was no hope of revival, they sold their brands to Nanyang through lawyers to obtain funds to support their families. Some of them were purchased by Nanyang from the East German government through agencies.

The purchased trademarks certainly helped Nanyang products to quickly enter the international market under the guise of "well-known brands", but more importantly, the technology was what Lange attached great importance to. Not only did they further study watch technology, but they also made Nanyang Lange quickly appear in the watch industry as a top-level watch. At the same time, Lange's laboratory was also developing new watches.

“Is this our quartz watch?”

In Lange's laboratory, Walter Lange held up his glasses and looked at the watch in front of him, curiously looking at its internal structure. Its structure was completely different from that of ordinary watches. Because quartz clocks were produced before the war, he knew very well the value of this watch. It took a long time before he spoke.

"I really didn't expect you could make a quartz watch so small."

The quartz clock was successfully developed by Bell Laboratories as early as 30, with an accuracy of only 1 second in years. Since then, the quartz clock has become the global time standard until it was replaced by the atomic clock a few years ago.

During the war, Lange also produced a large number of quartz clocks. However, there were two major obstacles for quartz to enter the watch industry. The first was that the quartz oscillators used were natural quartz, almost all of which came from Brazil, which had production capacity limitations. The second was that they could not be shrunk to a size that could be worn on the wrist. In the early days, quartz could not be accurately cut into small pieces, and quartz clocks were equipped with bulky vacuum tube circuits, which were not only difficult to shrink into watches, but it was also believed that it was impossible to reduce the cost to a level that could be used commercially in large quantities.

However, post-war technology broke through these obstacles. Ten years ago, Bell Labs invented the hydrothermal synthesis method to synthesize quartz, and the development of semiconductor technology in Nanyang provided cheap electronic parts; especially two years ago, photo-etching technology was born in Nanyang. Although it was used to etch silicon wafers, it can also be used to etch quartz to cut out tiny quartz blocks, which can create smaller quartz oscillators. As a result, the technical foundation of quartz watches was finally ready.

As early as a few years ago, Lange had decided to design and mass-produce precise electronic watches - in fact, this was Li Yian's decision. He asked Lange to study quartz watches and even took out some samples from the mall.

Ostensibly, the development of quartz watches was a new goal set by management for the R&D team: to develop a portable quartz clock for the 1960 Olympics. Although Omega watches had a monopoly on Olympic timers, the host country could choose other brands of quartz clocks as official timekeepers.

So Lange started research in this area and hired several electronic engineers. Finally, in February 2, they successfully developed a portable chronograph clock, which was used in the Asian Games.

Subsequently, when small quartz clocks were put on the market, they were immediately popular. Then, engineers worked on miniaturizing the clocks. First, it became a large pocket watch last year, and now it is a wristwatch.

The world's first quartz watch!

"Have you figured out the selling price? How much is it?"

Walter asked.

"2500 dollars."

When this offer came out, even though Lange was a high-end watch, Walter still couldn't help but gasp, this was almost equivalent to a mid-range car.

Ordinary people can’t afford such high-end watches! Even Lange’s high-end watches are sold at about this price.

“What is the error?”

“The daily error range is plus or minus 0.2 seconds.”

Walter frowned upon hearing this, and he said to himself:
"How could this happen? There is absolutely no competitive advantage!"

The reason why he had such doubts was very simple, because at the beginning, they believed that quartz watches had more competitive advantages - lower prices and easier to enter the low-end market.

Although Lange has established itself in the high-end market, it faces tremendous competitive pressure in the low-end market. Not only does it face competition from brands in Switzerland, West Germany, the United States and other countries, but even cheap watches from the University of Tokyo are beginning to enter the market in large numbers.

Therefore, Walter hopes to occupy the low-end watch market with quartz watches, but the current price seems a bit cheap.

The engineer nearby explained:

"It's very expensive now, but I believe that as technology develops further, its price will definitely get cheaper, and high technology has never been cheap!"

Yes, the reason why it is so expensive is because it is technology!
(End of this chapter)