The first test of the new arquebus failed, which was a bit disappointing to Yang, but he was not discouraged because he was confident that he would solve the problems that had arisen.

Early the next morning, he summoned all the heads of his civil ministers, military generals and craftsmen to the conference room to discuss again.

After everyone arrived, he smiled confidently and said: "Everyone, I believe everyone already knows that the test of the new arquebus failed, but it doesn't matter, there is a saying that failure is the mother of success, as long as we are not knocked down by failure and continue to move forward, we will succeed one day." ”

Is failure the mother of success?

This is a bit too abstract, and everyone was stunned when they heard it.

Seeing this, Yang Cong patiently explained: "Everyone has heard the story of Dayu's water control, Kun stole the Emperor's soil to block the flood, but it was unsuccessful, the Emperor of Heaven ordered Zhu Rong to kill Kun, but Kun died at the age of three and did not rot, and cut it with a Wu knife, which was out of Yu. Dayu summed up the experience and lessons of Kun, and after arduous and unyielding struggle, he used the method of diversion to subdue the flood and achieved success. Kun failed, Kun gave birth to Yu, Yu succeeded, so failure is the mother of success. ”

As soon as he explained it like this, it was more intuitive, and everyone finally realized the meaning of this sentence.

Failure is the mother of success, the more this sentence is chewed aftertaste, the more you can understand the deep meaning, yes, many things can not be successful at one time, if you give up once you fail, it will never be possible to achieve success, only not for the difficulty, courage, in order to obtain success one after another.

Yang Cong saw that everyone's faces showed a sudden expression, so he continued: "Have you ever wondered why the musket is still the same after more than two hundred years of development? You must know that there were muskets before the establishment of our Ming Dynasty, why can't muskets replace bows and crossbows, or even swords, guns, swords, halberds to become the protagonists on the battlefield? ”

This time, everyone was confused again.

To be honest, no one really thought about this problem, because the development of science and technology in this period was basically passive, not active, that is, if there was no urgent need, or there was a genius, people basically would not take the initiative to consider the development of science and technology.

Yang Cong seemed to know everyone's psychology, and then he gave an example: "Everyone should also know that there was no paper before the Han Dynasty, and everything was basically written in bamboo slips, so there were very few readers at that time, because books were too rare at that time. After Cai Lun of the Han Dynasty invented papermaking, paper was slowly popularized, and there were more and more readers? Everyone imagines how many times more difficult it is to make paper and split bamboo slips, isn't Cai Lun successful? So, we have to have faith, you know? There is nothing difficult in the world, but we are afraid of people with hearts, as long as we have confidence, nothing cannot be done. ”

How difficult is this papermaking technique, even at this moment, few people present know how paper is made, but Cai Lun can come up with papermaking, what does this mean?

This means that it is possible to succeed if you want to, and never if you don't want to!

At this time, almost everyone present showed a thoughtful expression, and everyone seemed to be thinking about how to achieve success.

Yang Cong wanted this effect, and he then concluded: "Everyone should know that the reason why the musket cannot replace the bow and crossbow is mainly because of the rate of fire, in terms of range and lethality, the musket is better than the bow and crossbow, and we can also find ways to make the musket have a longer range and stronger lethality." And most importantly, the musket is easy to use, whether you have the strength or not, whether you are young or old, as long as you practice a little, you can basically use the musket. However, there are restrictions on the use of bows and crossbows, if there is no strength, who will make the bow and crossbow, so as long as the rate of fire of the musket is raised, it will replace the bow and crossbow as the protagonist of the battlefield. The Tartars still use bows and crossbows, which means that as long as we increase the rate of fire of the muskets, the Tartar cavalry will be wiped out. ”

When everyone heard this, they all rejoiced, yes, as long as the rate of fire of the musket came up, the tartar was a dish, because the range and lethality of the bow and crossbow could not be compared with the musket.

The previous paragraph actually has little to do with what is discussed today, Yang Cong just wants to strengthen everyone's confidence through this paragraph, and then he went straight to the point and said: "After going back yesterday, I thought for a long time, to solve the problem of musket explosion, we must increase the wall thickness of the musket barrel, add threads to the front and rear barrels, and connect them with threads, so that it is impossible to disconnect the front and back, and it is impossible for the musket to explode." ”

Everyone understands this reason, but increasing the wall thickness means that the front barrel cannot be rolled out with a thin iron sheet, it must be cast into a whole, and the middle hole must be drilled out with a drill bit, that guy is three or four feet long, how troublesome it is to drill!

Everyone pondered for a while, and Wang Xuan finally couldn't help but speak: "My lord, the barrel in front is different from the barrel in the back, the barrel in front is too long, and it is too troublesome to drill. ”

Yang Cong naturally thought of this question, and he asked unhurriedly: "Sir, didn't I say that we can use gears to accelerate, and besides, we can make more gears, ten sets if one set doesn't work, and a hundred sets if ten sets don't work, won't this output come up?" ”

When Wang Xuan heard this, he couldn't help but look strange, indeed, as long as the number of people and tools were increased, this problem would not be a problem.

Most people don't think about this, because it costs money to increase the number of people and tools, and everyone is used to thinking about saving money, and ordinary people who will think about spending money.

However, Yang Cong is rich, can you compare with him?

Wang Xuan shook his head helplessly, and then reminded: "My lord, there is another problem we have to consider, that is, the problem of the drill bit, the barrel is iron, and the drill bit is also iron, and it takes a lot of effort to drill, because the drill bit has to be sharpened after a few drills, even if it is accelerated by gears, this problem is unavoidable." ”

Yang Cong did ignore this problem, because there was tool steel in later generations, there was high-speed steel, the hardness was much higher than ordinary steel, and the processing of steel parts was the same as cutting tofu, which was naturally not much trouble, and the problem was that there was no tool steel and high-speed steel at all!

This problem seems to have returned to the original point, the industrial base of this era is almost zero, not only did there be no processing equipment, but many common materials in later generations did not have this time.

So, how to solve this problem?

Do you want to start developing tool steels and high-speed steels now?

Just kidding, don't even think about this problem, tool steel and high-speed steel are alloy steel, he doesn't know the alloy ratio at all, and even if he knows the alloy ratio, it's useless, many metal elements have not been developed at this time, just knowing the ratio, without materials, it is impossible to produce tool steel and high-speed steel.

()