Li Xunxue, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, died, but he died of a normal illness.

When Wang Yuan returned to Guizhou to get married, Li Xunxue suddenly fell ill, and the big seal of the Ministry of Rites was handed over to Wang Zhan, the right attendant.

The new secretary of the Ministry of Rites is called Mao Cheng, because the emperor is not in Beijing, the imperial concubine presided over the court on behalf of the crown prince, and the ministers jointly elected Mao Cheng as the secretary. In fact, it is Yang Tinghe's people, Lao Yang is very good at tandem, I don't know what benefits he gave Lu Wan, but he actually asked Lu Wan's faction to help vote.

That is to say, Wang Yuan and the emperor returned from the south, and the power of the Ministry of Rites returned to Yang Tinghe.

At the same time, the head of the household has also been replaced.

Shi Jue belongs to the real clear stream, not a person who sells fame and reputation. He stopped Zhu Houzhao from going south to no avail, and he was persuaded to return after three days, but the emperor was stunned and did not return to Beijing for a year, and Shi Jue was so angry that he went directly back to his hometown to "recuperate".

Strictly speaking, this is an unauthorized departure from duty, and it can be deprived of merit and fame if it is really investigated.

But the imperial court could not be so cold, and the imperial concubine sent people to visit the sick many times, asking Shi Jue to return to Beijing as soon as possible to be the head of the household. As a result, Shi Jue really fell ill, contracted a cold on the way home, and was too old to cause a bunch of old diseases, so he could only lie on the hospital bed and drink medicine all day long.

So, the imperial concubine once again presided over the court push, and the ministers elected Huang Ke as the secretary of the household department.

Wang Yuan's father-in-law was in charge of the household department, which was purely the result of a compromise between many parties.

Yang Tinghe and Liang Chu mainly promoted Yang Tan, Yang Yiqing, Jin Gui, and Wang Qiong mainly promoted Yang Lian, and Lu Wan mainly promoted Zhang Jun. The three parties disputed, Tingtui did it twice in succession, and the third time Wang Qiong suddenly pushed Huang Ke.

Huang Ke was originally a left waiter, and he used to be the right waiter of the household department, and he was fully qualified to be promoted to the head of the household department.

In addition, Huang Ke is Wang Yuan's father-in-law, and he usually likes to make friends and not offend people, so he immediately received the votes of many ministers. Lu Wan couldn't fight against the other two factions, so he simply changed it to recommend Huang Ke, and the right was to show favor to Wang Yuan to pull the relationship.

Yang Tinghe and Liang Chu were helpless, and Huang Ke was still Yang Tinghe's confidant before, so he agreed to push the boat along the way.

Wang Yuan and the emperor were busy tossing in the place, and the officials and ministers were busy tossing in the court, which had some irrelevant meanings.

It's another morning day.

Wang Yuan suddenly pointed his finger at the wat board: "Your Majesty, the Ming Dynasty has not minted money for nearly forty years, and the world's coins are not enough for a long time. Please cast Zhengde Tongbao! ”

Wang Yuan has already explained this matter in advance, and the cabinet has also approved it.

Zhu Houzhao nodded and said, "If you are allowed to mint money, let Erlang do it." ”

Yang Tinghe and Liang Chu glanced at each other, and they both felt that something was wrong, because the cabinet approved the Ministry of Households.

Liang Chu hurriedly came out: "Your Majesty, the matter of minting money should be co-organized by the Household Department and the Ministry of Industry." Wang Shilang is an important member of the Ministry of Rites, and according to the system, he is not allowed to be in charge of the affairs of the household department, and he also asks His Majesty to choose another candidate. ”

Zhu Houzhao began to perform according to the script: "Minting money is a major matter of the country, and I believe in Wang Erlang." Ordered Wang Yuan, the left attendant of the Ministry of Rites, to supervise the Baoquan Bureaus in various places, and to lead the Ming Dynasty to mint money. Jiro remembers, I want to mint new money, and you have to think about the style of the coin. ”

"Your Majesty thinks twice, and the six departments must not make mistakes." The officials dissuaded one after another.

Zhu Houzhao immediately compromised: "Then order Huang Ke, the secretary of the household department, to personally supervise this matter." Wang Yuan, the left attendant of the Ministry of Rites, is responsible for co-organizing the coinage. The style of the new money is formulated by the Ministry of Etiquette, which is not a break in the rules, right? ”

The hundred officials are satisfied, although the two sons-in-law are not separated from each other, but they really can't mess around with the household department and the ritual department - at least not in terms of form!

After retiring from the dynasty, Huang Ke invited his son-in-law to his home, set up a banquet and asked, "Virtuous son-in-law, I'm afraid it's not just as simple as minting money, right?" ”

Wang Yuan said with a smile: "Lord Taishan, wait and see, the new coin machine has been made, and the details are still being improved." ”

Historically, Chinese coins have been minted, while European coins were made by melting gold and silver into small pieces and then striking them with a hammer to print the corresponding pattern.

Just twenty years ago, coinage machines appeared in Italy, using spiral presses. It had to be operated manually, with no animal power or water power, and only gold and silver coins could be pressed, and copper coins were too hard to press the pattern - until the late Qing Dynasty, this type of coin machine (improved) was still the mainstream in Europe, but instead it was changed to press coin molds, and the coins were handed over to the steam engine.

Faculty of Physics.

It took several years for the craftsman to finally complete the transformation of the steam engine. Two-way cylinder, external condensation, the work efficiency is several times that of the original version, but unfortunately the gasket is still made of cotton, which is not as good as the air tightness of the rubber gasket.

Wang Yuan wrote to Ling Xia to develop a coin machine, and it has been almost a year. This disciple gathered a group of classmates, and he has been busy with this matter for more than half a year, and he has come up with several versions.

"Sir, look!"

In front of Wang Yuan was not a machine, but a group of three supporting machines.

The first is a large balance, made by Wang Hui and others, which can weigh 300 kilograms of materials at a time, and the accuracy is very, very, very high. The raw material is weighed on this balance and then blended so that each coin is alloyed in the same proportion.

The engraving machine is not available for the time being, and the coin mold needs to be engraved manually.

There is also no turning equipment, and it is still all handmade, so there must be slight differences between the coins from place to place.

The second is a sheet mill, a type of steam rolling mill. The manual rolling mill is not complicated, it is said that Leonardo da Vinci invented it, and the disciples of physics designed their own simple rolling mills, and they were powered by steam. The cast gold, silver, and copper bars are rolled into a standard thickness with a sheet mill, and then they can be used to make coins.

The third is a cake press, a steam punch that presses metal sheets into the shape of a coin.

It seems that there are not many machines, but the disciples of physics have worked hard to make various parts countless times.

Compared with modern coins, the process is very crude, and the intermediate process often requires manual involvement. And there is no edge crimping machine, so if the edge of the coin is geared, it is easy to wear out the edge of the coin during use.

Wang Yuan took the machine to the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Households, asking for the recipe for the previous coinage. Of course, the coins are not pure silver or pure copper, they are all alloys, and ancient Chinese copper coins are also copper alloys, which need to be added with lead, tin and other substances.

In the winter of the fourteenth year of Zhengde, Wang Yuan has been busy with this and spent three months adjusting the formula.

The style design also has to be painstaking, and the materials cannot be too sufficient, so as not to be melted by the people. The materials should not be too poor, leaving room for private miners to make profits, otherwise counterfeit coins will inevitably run rampant.

In the process of trial production of coins, a serious problem was discovered, after the metal sheet was cold-rolled into a cake, it would become hard and brittle, which was not conducive to pressing the pattern. Wang Yuan and his disciples thought of many methods, and finally tested that they could be annealed back to the furnace, but after annealing, the surface would oxidize and turn black.

If you want to remove the oxide layer, you have to throw it into the acid solution and clean it. Wang Yuan didn't know that this could be done, and he didn't bother to care about the aesthetics, but the blackening of the coin was a sign of anti-counterfeiting - such as the Daenglau paint money, so the copper coin was specially baked black to increase the difficulty of preventing counterfeiting.

In the late spring of the fifteenth year of Zhengde, Wang Yuan came to his father-in-law's house again.

"This is the new money you made?" Huang Ke was surprised.

Copper coins have one text, two texts, and five texts, a total of three systems. It is a copper coin, which is larger and thicker than the one circulating on the market, and the whole body is black and shiny.

There are the words "Zhengde Tongbao" on the front, and the reverse is a pattern, printed with small characters such as "when X text" and "Zhengde fifteen-year system" (year money was very popular in the Song Dynasty, and occasionally appeared in the Ming and Qing dynasties). The edges are in the shape of fine gears, which are pressed directly out when the cake is pressed.

Huang Ke is not a straw bag, he is very familiar with household affairs, picked up a copper coin and asked: "Such a beautiful coin, it is only worth a penny, so won't it be a loss to mint money?" ”

Wang Yuan shook his head and said, "No, there is still something to be earned." As long as the copper material is sufficient, I will make as much as I want, and I can earn as much as I want. ”

"Really?" Huang Ke was overjoyed, clapped his hands and praised, "If you can really make a large amount of money, within three or five years, the fake money on the market will be extinct." ”

There is a deep reason why bad money drives out good money.

If you can't get a complete set of coining machines, the folk imitation will definitely lose money. If you don't want to lose money, you have to cut corners when imitating, and normal people can distinguish the counterfeit money that you make.

In the beginning, the wealthy people must have collected these new coins and only used inferior counterfeit coins. But when new money continues to flow out, it loses its collectible value, and bad coins are automatically eliminated by the market.

Huang Ke picked up a larger silver coin again, which was still black: "This is also a copper coin?" Why is there no hole in the middle? ”

Wang Yuan explained: "This is a silver dollar. There are three systems: one yuan, five corners, and one corner. ”

"Horn" and "cent" are both silver units in the Ming Dynasty, a dime of silver is a corner of a silver ingot, and a penny of silver is 0.01 taels of silver.

The silver dollar made by Wang Yuan has "Zhengde Yuanbao" on the front and Zhu Houzhao's head on the back.

Don't worry about the circulation credit of silver dollars, because historically, foreign silver coins were all the rage in Jiangnan in the late Ming Dynasty.

It is only because the use of Daming silver is complicated, and the foreign standard silver coins are intuitive, so the people especially like foreign silver coins, and they also give nicknames to silver coins from all over the world. For example, the Spanish silver coin is called "Benyang", and according to the different patterns, the silver coins of various countries are called big buns, small buns, unkempt heads, bats, double columns, horse swords, widows, three workers, small flowers, small clean, rotten boards and so on.

The Ming silver dollar is also very intuitive, one yuan silver coin is one tael, and the five-pointed silver coin is worth five coins.

The household department and the inner government need to cooperate, and in the future, officials and soldiers will be paid, or the emperor will give rewards, and the yamen will collect taxes, and only silver dollars and new copper coins will be recognized.

In the summer of the fifteenth year of Zhengde, the new money has been made on a small scale in the capital, and its first appearance is to pay salaries to hundreds of officials.