Because it was not long after dawn at this time, the brightness in the hall was not very strong, and it seemed a little dim, and because of this, when the light of the flashlight shone on the hall, the light spot could be clearly seen, and it was very clear.

"Before going to court, let's talk about this flashlight! I believe Zhong Aiqing also has such a flashlight in his hand, do you think this thing is good? ”

Li Longji asked straightforwardly.

"Your Majesty, the flashlight is much brighter than the lantern, and it is very light, not afraid of wind and rain, it is really a good thing to go out at night!"

"Your Majesty, such a good thing must be vigorously promoted, but I don't know what the cost is, if it is too expensive, it is estimated that ordinary people will not be able to afford it! It's not as affordable as lighting lanterns and holding torches. ”

"Yes! Oh, yes! The key depends on the cost, but even if the cost is higher, wealthier families can still afford it. ”

"Your Majesty, there are more and more workshops directly under the responsibility of the imperial court, and it is not particularly important to leave it to the merchants to take care of it! This can improve efficiency and save costs, and the imperial court only needs to charge technical fees. ”

The ministers expressed their opinions, and the atmosphere seemed to be very good, but it was also clear that many ministers were working on the idea of the flashlight industry.

All the ministers have found out the current predicament faced by the imperial court, although many industries let the imperial court directly responsible for the operation, in terms of security and other aspects have great benefits, but no matter how good the policy can not withstand the corruption of moths, at this time, although each workshop is making money, but this is because many are newly opened, the operation time is not very long, the railway has not been many years, and it has been in the process of expansion, in the face of huge income, corruption is only a small head, so the financial revenue of the imperial court will become more and more.

However, as the imperial court is directly responsible for more and more projects, and more and more personnel are recruited, then there will be more corruption and inefficient operation, which is likely to bring down the entire imperial court.

It is a good way to dispatch a supervisor of the imperial history and supervise all the personnel of the imperial court, and punish a few people from time to time can alleviate the occurrence of inefficiency and corruption, but the effect will not be too good, and it is certainly not as efficient as handing over to private people.

Regarding this experience, Li An is naturally the richest, in the past thousands of years, all the projects handed over to the imperial court to be responsible for, there is no inefficiency and corruption, this is a problem that there is no way to solve, and no great imperial court can solve it.

Because human nature is lazy and selfish, when no one forces them, it is easy for people to relax themselves, so that they are lazy and do not work well, and in the absence of supervision, people's greed is mobilized again, and they will think of the law to be greedy for something that should not belong to themselves.

In order to solve this problem, the best way is to hand over many industries to private individuals, so as to use selfishness to stop selfishness, and use the selfishness of the workshop owner to strictly require the people below to work hard and not to be corrupt, so as to greatly improve efficiency and prevent the occurrence of greed.

But because the technology was provided by Ang Lee, according to the theory of later generations, they should pay royalties to Ang Lee according to the quantity produced, but Ang Lee's money is enough, and there is no need to ask for a patent fee that can make money, and there is no such thing in this era.

But the imperial court cannot suffer losses, Li An feels that for some projects that are not particularly important, they can also be handed over to private individuals to do, but they must pay a certain fee to the imperial court, and they must pay a share for each production.

However, how to count the quantity of this production is a difficult problem, and it is worth dealing with well.

Li Longji listened to the words of the ministers, thought for a moment, looked at Li An, and said, "Li Shilang, this flashlight was invented by you, what do you think is the most appropriate?" ”

Li An smiled and said: "Your Majesty, just now all the ministers focused on the flashlight, in fact, the technology of the flashlight is not complicated, anyone as long as they study it a little, they should be able to make it, it is really not possible to make it with a bamboo tube, the key is that the internal battery is the most important, this battery can only be scrapped after a few hours, and there are many materials needed to make the battery, no one can make it without the technical information of the minister." ”

"Oh, the battery is the key, interesting, is it in there? How do I open it? ”

Li Longji asked curiously.

The flashlight was given to him in its entirety, and it was never opened, and after it was opened, no one knew what it looked like inside.

Ang Lee took the flashlight from a minister's hand, gently unscrewed it, poured out the battery inside, and showed it to everyone to see.

The emperor and the ministers saw that Lee Ang was spinning open, so they followed Ang Lee's example, opened the back cover of the flashlight, and took out the battery.

"Aiqing, this is the core! It's amazing that such a small thing can actually generate electricity, how much does it cost, will it be expensive? ”

Li Longji was a little fond of the battery in his hand, and asked in a low voice.

Li An thought for a moment and said: "Your Majesty, if it is mass production, the price will be very cheap, and the cheapest battery can be controlled at the price of a few copper plates, which is really not expensive, and large-scale mass production can be considered." ”

When Li Longji heard this, he nodded lightly and said: "There are only a few copper plates, and the price is indeed very good, but there are more and more workshop projects in charge of the imperial court, and it is very troublesome to manage, but it can be handed over to a private person to be responsible, what do you think Aiqing?" ”

"Your Majesty, this method is very appropriate, the battery has a good prospect, but it is left to the individual, however, this technology is Li Shilang's, how to charge is a problem."

A minister said.

Li An hurriedly said: "Your Majesty, you can charge according to the quantity made in the workshop, for example, charge a string of money for every 10,000 manufactured, the more you make, the more fees the court can charge, Weichen is using the technology obtained by the research and development center provided by the imperial court, and I really don't dare to take credit, as long as the imperial court can collect fees, it is enough." ”

"That's a good idea, but how do you determine the number of batteries you're making in the workshop? It would be quite cumbersome to supervise, and it would be more convenient to sell the battery technology to private individuals all at once. ”

A minister spoke.

Li An hurriedly objected: "No, it's better to keep a long stream, so that you can continue to get income, in addition, in order to increase competition, you can sell the technology to a few more, so that you can compete with each other, the efficiency will be higher, the more people who buy, the better the technical cost can be shared, and the risk can also be reduced, as for the number of batteries produced, it is not a difficult matter, all the packaging boxes of batteries produced from the workshop must have the batch number of the imperial court to be sold in the market, and when the imperial court opens the batch number, It's time to collect money. ”

"A battery can only last a few hours, which is a consumable! The demand for production is very high, it is definitely a profitable business, and it is completely feasible to involve a few more companies. ”

A minister supported it.

"Okay, no need to argue, this battery was invented by Li Aiqing, and Li Aiqing will be fully responsible for this matter!"

Li Longji clapped his head.

Li An said very happily: "Your Majesty Xie trusts, the reason why the battery was invented is because the battery is part of the Wanli Transsion plan, without the battery, there is no way to implement the Wanli Transsion plan, as for the flashlight, it is just a by-product of the Wanli Transsion plan, which is an invention incidentally." ”

When Li Longji heard this, he was quite excited, and said: "In this way, the invention of the battery means that the Wanli Transsion plan has taken another step?" Okay, great. ”

Then the early dynasty continued, and all kinds of major court matters were reported one by one for Li Longji to deal with.

After retiring from the dynasty, as soon as Li An walked out of the Xuanzheng Palace, he was surrounded by a large group of ministers who followed him, and they all came to the battery technology that Li Ang mastered.

"What is Li Shilang going to do with the battery?"

The ministers are very concerned about this issue, and they seem to want a piece of the pie as well.

Ang Lee's idea is actually very simple, that is, public bidding, but not one, but three, the three with the highest bid will get this technology, this is still a one-time fee, and the products produced in the future will also have to pay taxes, so that it can maximize the continuous income for the imperial court.

When Ang Lee told the ministers his thoughts truthfully, they all felt that Ang Lee was too insidious and came up with such a shady solution.

As long as this technology is promoted, as long as a businessman can see the commercial value of this, so, people who are willing to buy this technology must be very many, and the more people there are, the more fierce the competition, when the price is getting higher and higher, the income that the imperial court can get is higher, and many people who want to buy this technology are more at a loss, not only the early stage of buying technology investment is large, the mid-term workshop is a lot of investment, the later production of batteries, each of which has to pay taxes, is really too pit.

However, even so, because the future of batteries is very good, even with so much money, it is well worth fighting for.

These important ministers of the imperial court all have their own industries in private, and there are also many big businessmen who have a good relationship with them and often honor them, so they naturally take a fancy to this very useful technology and hope to win this technology.

In recent years, all the powerful people who have been taken care of by Ang Lee, who have unique technology, have basically made a fortune, such as the Hushubao products under the control of Yang Guozhong, which have been thoroughly promoted to the whole Datang, and can get a lot of income every day, Ang Lee's own glass industry is also an extremely profitable business, bringing huge income to Ang Lee's family.

In short, all the powerful people who used the technology provided by Ang Lee to produce monopoly products were all very rich, and the imperial court's monopoly on violent industries such as railways also allowed the income of the state treasury to continue to increase, so that more funds were used for large-scale construction.

Li An saw that these ministers had different expressions, and they all seemed to have their own plans, they were all eyeing the battery industry, but openly competing, most of them seemed to lack confidence, after all, there are so many rich and powerful people, only the top three can get opportunities, which is too rare.

Moreover, this time the technology is not a monopoly, but has to be divided into three companies to jointly operate, so that the three companies compete with each other, and the conditions for monopoly cannot be formed at all, and the effect is far better than that of only one mastery.

As a result, many ministers are entangled in a lot of ministers, and they are not very easy to judge, and they do not know what kind of situation will occur if these three companies jointly master this technology, and whether it will cause vicious competition, so that not only will they not make money, but they will lose a lot of money, and if they lose money, it will be more than worth the loss.

However, there are so many powerful people who own iron ore and carry out iron-making business, which one is not profitable, and I have not seen any powerful person who has lost money in opening iron mines, so it is also possible to give it a try, how can you know if you can make money without trying, and if you can make money?

The premise of fair competition is to let the people participating in the competition understand the characteristics and market prospects of the product, and only when they all understand the product and know that it is a money-making industry, they will be willing to spend a lot of money to compete.

Ang Lee has already given dozens of flashlights to the ministers, which is a good means of publicity, and Ang Lee believes that soon the powerful people in the entire capital will understand the whole novelty of flashlights, and will be willing to spend a huge price to compete in this industry.

Although since ancient times, officials have not been allowed to do business, but this is only a superficial rule, in fact, there are a few people who can really abide by this rule.

Of course, for the sake of superficial integrity, officials in office will not use their own names to blatantly do business, but they will privately let their servants or relatives and friends who can control them run business, so as to avoid the regulations of the imperial court that officials are not allowed to do business.

In addition, there are some children of merchant families who have taken the imperial examination because of their brains and become important ministers of the imperial court, and their families are all in business, saying that he will not help his family, who will believe it.

For example, if the son becomes a big official, but the father has always been a big businessman, in this case, in order to let the son be a good official, the father abandons all his businessmen, becomes a farmer or does nothing?

Or is it that after a person becomes a big official, can't his relatives in his family do business? This is obviously very unrealistic, and those who should be in business still have to do business, and they will definitely get the support and care of their own families who are officials.

Since ancient times, the imperial court has stipulated that officials cannot do business, just to appease some ordinary people, in fact, it is simply a very unrealistic regulation, and you can circumvent it by finding a way.