When it comes to academics, the royal family is not just enlightened, but also personally involved.

As far as Chinese tradition is concerned, if the emperor wastes time on matters outside of state affairs, he is undoubtedly a sign of mediocrity. Jiajing's cultivation and the carpenter of the apocalypse are all manifestations of his mediocrity. It is also against the traditional standards of Mingjun.

In this regard, the European society is undoubtedly more lenient in the requirements of the king, whether it is the English king or the French king, in the 17th and 18th centuries for nearly two hundred years, the kingdoms were obsessed with science, in addition to funding scientists, many of them were personally involved in research. Just like King Louis XVI of France personally participated in the improved design of the guillotine blade. Since guillotine decapitation blades were prone to curling blades, Louis XVI modified them into triangular shapes. In the end, he himself was thrust into the guillotine of his own design - a black humor that the masses loved to see.

In the Ming Dynasty, of course, there was no such relaxed environment as in Europe, and the emperor's "unscrupulous work" would still be criticized, but as we all know, Emperor Xingqian never asked other people's opinions, and even when planning the palace, he personally designed a "Gewu Palace", which was where the emperor engaged in research.

Although in the past years, Zhu Mingzhong has been tied up a lot of energy by state affairs, but as long as he has time, he will still conduct research in the "Gewu Palace", unlike in the past, now except for a few assistants, more often, he himself conducts some experiments, and then sends the experiment process to Qinghe Academy, where students and professors will copy his experiments and finally make industrial products.

Just like the thunder mercury "developed" by Zhu Mingzhong a few years ago, although it was produced by the laboratory he completed, the final industrial production was jointly completed by the scholars of Qinghe Academy, and it was precisely with their efforts that the daily output of thunder mercury at the beginning was less than ten taels to more than ten catties now, which met the demand for the production of mortar shells.

In fact, at the beginning, it was the demand for mortars that prompted Zhu Mingzhong to produce thunder mercury, after all, the instantaneous impact of mortars and the primer fire must have thunder mercury. Thundermercury is an initiating charge, and the shells and grenades of bronze field guns can be improvised, but if you want to improve the effectiveness of mortars, you have to have thundermercury.

In pyrotechnics, the process of thundermercury is not complicated, and it can even be said to be extremely simple, only need to react mercury with nitric acid to produce mercury nitrate, and then react with alcohol to make it. It can be used to make detonating detonators, and it is also necessary to make primers.

In Daming, mercury is not a rare thing, whether it is traditional Chinese medicine or alchemy, a large amount of mercury is used, so there is no problem with the production of mercury at all. After solving the safety of industrial production, the production of mine mercury is on the right track, and the detonators made of mine mercury are not only used in mortar shells, but also widely used in grenades and artillery shells to improve their power. As early as the fifth year of Xingqian, the monthly output of thunder mercury exceeded 500 catties, and it was precisely because of the smooth production of thunder mercury that Zhu Mingzhong decided to carry out the current research.

"Your Majesty, the arsenal has made a new fire cap according to your request."

A few months ago, Shao Wujie, who had just graduated from the sixth place in the Martial Arts Academy, became His Majesty's attendant officer, like the other top ten, and as a chamberlain officer, he was running errands a lot of the time, just like now taking His Majesty's customized fire hat from the arsenal.

As a military cadet, Shao Wujie is no stranger to the fire cap, whether it is the impact fuse of a mortar shell or its bottom fire pipe, it leaves the fire cap. But this fire cap was clearly different from the fire cap he had ever seen.

Opening the iron box, the box was full of copper fire caps, Zhu Mingzhong then picked up one, unlike ordinary fire caps, it had an extra circle of lace around it.

"Your Majesty, this fire cap seems to be different from the fire cap on the mortar."

Shao Wu asked in a loud voice.

"There is no difference in essence, the charge in the fire cap is the same as the mortar bottom fire, and it is also an initiating agent made of thundermercury and potassium chlorate......"

Explaining the structure of the fire cap, Zhu Mingzhong picked up a fire gun, and when he picked up the fire gun, Shao Wujie noticed that the fire gun was different from the ordinary fire gun. Its tail does not see the lid of the powder pool, and there is no flint on the hammer.

How do you use it without flint? Could it be...... Fire caps?

"Your Majesty, did it start the fire with a fire cap?"

Shao Wujie's reaction was faster than Zhu Mingzhong expected, and he nodded and said.

"That's why the fire cap needs an extra circle of lace, fasten it to the fire cap, and after firing, you can easily buckle it off with this protruding lace."

Buckling the copper fire cap with a diameter of more than 6 mm on the fire transfer head, Zhu Mingzhong enthusiastically picked up the rifled gun in his hand.

The rifled gun is not a new weapon, as early as the time of the Loyal Army, there were hunters in green uniforms, who held flint rifled guns on the battlefield to hunt high-value targets, and their use was somewhat similar to that of later snipers, albeit very primitive. Compared with the smoothbore guns of ordinary infantry, the advantages of the rifled guns are obvious, his range is longer, and the accuracy is extremely high, compared to the flintlock smoothbore guns with an effective range of less than 100 fathoms (meters), the front-loading rifled guns have gone beyond the concept of 100 fathoms in terms of shooting accuracy and range, and it can even hit targets 300 fathoms away.

However, even so, it still failed to be popularized on a large scale, not only because the manufacturing process is relatively complicated compared to ordinary rifled guns, so the cost is slightly higher, but more importantly, because it is difficult to load. The reason why the range of the rifled gun is much higher than that of the smoothbore gun, and the high accuracy, is because the bullet rotates along the rifling in the chamber, which must be embedded in the rifling. The bullet must be embedded in the rifling, for this reason, when loading, even need to use brute force to blow the bullet to deform it in order to embed the rifling, in order to be able to reload smoothly, even a layer of deerskin must not be glued to the outside of the bullet, after all, it is easier to make the rifling compress deerskin deformation than to let the lead bullet itself fit into the rifling, but even so it is still much slower to load than the smoothbore. So until now, rifled guns have only been used to equip hunters on a small scale, and even in the civilian population, their use is not very widespread.

However, even so, over the years, the arsenal has accumulated a lot of experience in the production of rifled guns, especially with the change of processing equipment, the caliber of the guns has been consistent, which is the premise of large-scale equipment of rifled guns. And now with the beginning of the use of steam engines in the arsenal, the improvement of power and production equipment has further reduced the cost of rifled guns, and the only problem that needs to be solved is the reload speed.

"Bang!"

On the grass in the palace, Zhu Mingzhong took this firing gun and fired the first gun, but this gun was not filled with gunpowder, and then said.

"Compared to flintlock guns, flintlock guns are more reliable on rainy days, while flintlock guns are almost unusable on rainy days, especially rainy days. Therefore, in the future, the replacement of flintlock guns with firing guns must be an inevitable ...... for the development of weapons."

When he said this, Zhu Mingzhong took out a bullet, and then said to Shao Wujie.

"What do you think is different about this bullet?"

Throwing the bullet into Shao Wujie's hand, he took the bullet and looked at it.

"How is it pointed?"

Aren't all guns round?

"In the past, we weren't even allowed to put a layer of deerskin on the outside of the rifled gun in order to reload it smoothly, after all, it was easier to make the rifling force deform the deerskin than it was to get the lead bullet itself into the rifling, but even then it was much slower to reload than the smoothbore. A few years ago, Dai Zizeng designed a rifled gun in his design, the wall of the chamber of the infantry chamber was thickened, so that the inner diameter of the chamber was less than the caliber, when loading, the projectile was loaded with a projectile slightly smaller than the caliber, so that the projectile smoothly entered the chamber, when the projectile arrived at the chamber, it would be stuck in the chamber with a narrower inner diameter and could not continue to move forward. The lead projectile will be deformed by the dual action of the wall of the chamber and the bougie to fit the rifling. ”

When mentioning Dai Zi's invention, Zhu Mingzhong still can't help but want to praise the ingenuity of the Chinese people, and similar inventions were not invented until the mid-to-early 19th century. Less than ten years after the fire gun was fully popularized in the Ming Dynasty, Dai Zi had already developed a similar hair.

"I've heard of this minister, but it seems that I have encountered some problems when applying it, and when I tried it in school, the general response was not as high as the accuracy of ordinary rifled guns."

Because many weapons were first tested in the martial arts academy, Shao Wujie naturally heard of this kind of weapon.

"That's right, maybe this method increases the rate of fire, but it has a problem, although the projectile fits the rifling through very suppressive means, but its shape becomes slightly flattened, which affects the rotation and lethality of the bullet, so its accuracy and range are naturally not as good as ordinary rifled guns."

However, what Dai Zi admired most about Zhu Mingzhong was that he quickly began to improve it, and the effect of the improvement was not bad.

"However, it seems to have improved later, and now the army has begun to equip it with this rifled gun, which uses this round-headed bullet, but it doesn't seem to be the same as His Majesty's."

Shao Wujie said with a bullet.

"Although the experiment two years ago was not very successful, but later Director Dai improved his own design, he designed a cylindrical bullet, this bullet after being squeezed by the wall of the medicine chamber into a standard cylindrical shape, the stability of the bullet has been further improved, and now the army has begun to try a small number of them, I heard that the effect of use is still very good, very popular with hunters."