"The mountains are full of gold, the water is full of silver, and the pedestrians are called cornucopias."

Wu Pinhong, who was in the bow of the boat, pointed to the town by the lake and introduced it to the Jinglu beside him.

"This is the Liguoyi in previous years, this Liguo was far away in the Qin and Han dynasties, and copper and iron smelting had begun here. He also began to use the copper ore of Tongshan Island to set up a furnace to smelt copper coins for the princely kingdoms, and later used them as mirrors. From the Qin and Han dynasties to the Song Dynasty, after thousands of years of development, the iron-smelting industry of Liguo reached its heyday. ”

Although he is not from Xuzhou, Wu Pinhong is not inferior to many locals in his understanding of Jiangbei, and he naturally knows this country very well.

During the reign of Song Zhenzong, the privy envoy general Di Qing led his troops to Liguo to mine iron, and set up 60 iron furnaces along the south of the village from east to west, smelting on the spot, making armor, forging weapons, and digging the iron river to facilitate transportation. The waste slag dumped on the side of the Shilong River still exists today, commonly known as the "slag shed" ......"

In Wu Pinhong's explanation, Zhu Mingzhong just looked at this riverside town that is not much different from ordinary towns, at this time the country has disappeared for thousands of years of prosperity, to the Yuan and Ming dynasties, due to the reduction of surface iron ore, coupled with the gradual formation of Weishan Lake, the mining pit mouth and smelting furnace are also flooded by the lake, and then limited by mining technology, the deep underground iron ore can not be mined, so that the smelting industry of Liguo, which has lasted for hundreds of years, has gradually declined, and the mining and smelting industry has basically stopped decades ago. At this time, Liguo was just an ordinary town on the bank of the 3,000-mile canal, and the prosperity and hustle and bustle of thousands of years have become a cloud of history.

At this time, the reason why the declining economic status of Liguo was able to attract Zhu Mingzhong's attention was because there were still exposed iron ore seedlings in the mountains around the lake, and this was the only iron ore that could be mined under the rule of Jiangbei.

The results of the exploration are gratifying, according to the report of Sun Mingyue, who is in charge of this matter, "the coal seedlings in Xuzhou Tongshan are extremely prosperous, the iron ore produced by Li Guoyi is especially abundant and good, the mountains are surrounded by Weishan Lake, majestic and lush, not all black, the iron is hidden, and they are rich in enthalpy."

It is precisely because of this that the opening of mines and iron smelting in Liguo has been put on the agenda. Otherwise, after all, the production scale of the Qingjiang Small Iron Factory alone cannot meet the needs of Jiangbei, and it cannot be satisfied with just the iron used for casting artillery, let alone the manufacture of weapons and ships.

It is precisely because Liguo Iron Mine is related to the lifeblood of Jiangbei that Zhu Mingzhong will come here in person.

Under the paddle hand, the boat soon reached its destination, and the watermills used to drive bellows and wrought iron had already taken shape, and there were more than ten of them distributed along the river. Even across the wharf, you can see that people are busy on the shore, and the coolies who are working are all prisoners of war, and they naturally dare not slack off under the whip or even the knife.

A man-high boulder rolled on the ground of the ironworks under the pull of several oxen, and thousands of coolies in shackles built the ironworks like ants, under the supervision of leather whips. Although the scale of this iron factory is not even as large as that of a small community more than 300 years later, it is still a little shocking to be in it.

"The benefit of the country is all about iron. Iron and stone are all over the mountains and fields, it can be said that the use is endless, and the local coal can be used to smelt the local iron, and its profit can be dozens of times. ”

Although Sun Mingyue's words were a bit exaggerated, Zhu Mingzhong knew very well that with the daily production capacity of 30 tons of brick-built iron-making blast furnace he designed, the iron ore of this country was indeed endless.

"Can the iron-making furnace be completed this month?"

Although he did not graduate from metallurgy, he had a partial understanding of ironmaking technology and borrowed from the furnace structure of the Chinese-style iron-making furnace, Zhu Mingzhong designed an iron-making blast furnace with a brick-built furnace body equivalent to the technical level of the early 19th century in Europe, although the furnace body was made of bricks and stones, but its structure was the standard iron-making blast furnace structure in the 20th century.

Perhaps according to the standards of the 21st century, this iron-making blast furnace is not even an earthen furnace, but in this era, Zhu Mingzhong believes that with its advanced furnace structure and advanced blast equipment, it is enough to make this iron-making blast furnace a black technology in this era, and make it an ironworks with the most advanced equipment in this era.

However, even if it is quite conceited, the No. 1 iron furnace being built by the iron factory is still a small test furnace with a daily output of only about 5,000 catties, and the reason why the test furnace is built is to verify whether this technology is feasible.

"After a while, the foundation of the A-shaped furnace has been basically completed, although the A-shaped furnace will definitely be able to produce iron ...... this month."

Sun Mingyue's tone seemed very confident, he was a student of Qinghe Academy, although he was a scholar, but he was born in a craftsman's family, the Ming generation of families are all living on iron smelting, and he naturally knows very well about mining and ironmaking, and it is precisely because of this that he will be recommended to preside over the exploration of iron ore in Liguo and the construction of iron works.

"If you can get out of the iron one day earlier, you can solve the needs of my loyal army one day earlier!"

On the construction site of the iron factory, Zhu Mingzhong was full of interest, after all, this is the first "large enterprise" he founded after coming to this era, especially many of the equipment of this large enterprise are designed by him, of course, on the basis of combining the technical level of the times, the introduction of future "concepts", such as the blast furnace blast system.

"The heaviest furnace temperature for ironmaking, the use of cold air for ironmaking, high fuel consumption, low productivity, if the use of "hot blast" ironmaking, can significantly reduce the amount of coke used......

Even though he did not study metallurgy, Zhu Mingzhong also learned about the changes brought by "hot blast" ironmaking to the ironmaking industry. Before the 20s of the 19th century, blast furnaces used cold air to make iron, which had high fuel consumption and low productivity. In 1828, Nelson proposed the use of "hot blast" iron smelting in blast furnaces, and the following year in the Crait factory in Scotland first realized this proposal, although the wind temperature was only less than 150 degrees, but the effect was amazing, the fuel consumption per ton of pig iron dropped sharply from 8 tons to 5.16 tons, the fuel consumption was reduced by more than 30%, and the corresponding production increased by 46%, and the fuel consumed for heating the blast was only only 0.4 tons / ton of iron. A few years later, the plant raised the air temperature to more than 300 degrees, reduced fuel consumption by more than 50 percent, and doubled production compared to when using cold air to make iron.

Although in this era, it is impossible to achieve a wind temperature of more than 1,000 degrees in the 21st century, but it is easy to achieve a wind temperature of 1 or 200 degrees. And the technology is very simple, but the heating section is added to the air duct, although the temperature of the furnace temperature cannot be measured, but in the test of Qinghe Iron Works, the coke consumption was reduced by about 25%.

"What Jing Luo said is very true, although I knew that iron smelting needs a blow, but I didn't know that there was so much knowledge in this blow."

Although it is almost equivalent to being born in a family of iron-making, it is still difficult for Sun Mingyue to imagine that there will be so much knowledge in this iron-making. Not to mention the other fuel, from coal washing, coal blending to coking, in the seemingly simple coking process, there are many particulars from the initial coal preparation, what kind of coal is used, and the coal there needs to go through many test furnaces to be sure. The coal may seem the same, but the coal is used differently in each place, and using the wrong coal can lead to a surge in the amount of coke used in ironmaking, and it can also lead to excessive brittleness of pig iron. Therefore, at present, only a few coal coke sites are designated for coking in iron works.

"It is precisely because of the knowledge that you have a lot of knowledge, so you will be able to make a record, organize these experiences into a book, and figure out the reasons and truths, so that this ironmaking can become a science, don't worry about teaching the apprentice to starve to death the master, just like this furnace wind heating, the official will mention the patent money, 2 catties of iron per kilogram produced, and this is the law of invention and innovation in the future, if other people can improve the iron-smelting technology, can increase production and reduce costs, if it is adopted by the factory, it can naturally extract patent money......"

While using himself as an example, Zhu Mingzhong also stretched out his hand to the coal washing plant by the river, which was different from the Qinghe coke plant's earlier use of Zhu Mingzhong's invention of manual coal washing, but now uses hydraulic coal washing, and it is a craftsman of the coke plant who invented the hydraulic coal washing.

"Just like the invention of hydraulic coal washing Master Hu, his invention saves a lot of manpower, although this technology is a one-time buyout, but after all, there are 180 taels of silver, in my opinion, it is less, it can be sold at least three hundred taels, but after all, it is a start, and it will become more and more standardized in the future, and this technology is naturally more and more valuable, only in this way, they are willing to take out their unique skills to share with others, communicate with people......"

When mentioning the hydraulic coal washing patent that sold for 180 taels, Zhu Mingzhong was very excited, after all, this is the first real "industrial patent" in Jiangbei. It was even this opportunity that he began to think about promulgating a patent protection charter, and the reason why he attached importance to patents was that the patent system was the key to the huge difference between modern China and Europe in terms of knowledge accumulation and technological progress, and then led to the industrial revolution in Europe rather than China. Before the establishment of the patent system in Europe, technological progress in China and Europe was driven by technical secrets, and the original and effective principle of artisan protection know-how was that the fewer people who knew it, the better. Therefore, most of the technical secrets are used and passed on in a way that is personally dependent on the innovator.

"In the past, many craftsmen's secret recipes were passed on from generation to generation, from man to woman, and from elder to young. This kind of inheritance can minimize the risk of leakage of know-how, but it hinders the sharing of knowledge between people, and will greatly increase the risk of loss of know-how. ”

If Zhu Mingzhong only understands the disadvantages of this primitive way of inheriting technology from the summary of later generations, then for Sun Mingyue, he was born in a family of craftsmen and has deep feelings.

"Jingluo said very much, this Qinghe has more than 10,000 craftsmen, these hundreds of years, I don't know how many skills have been lost because of no successor or natural disasters and man-made disasters, just like Jiashen Tianchang, the world is chaotic, not to mention others, that is, the Sun family, who is good at steelmaking, was killed by the rebels because his father was killed by the rebels, so that the steel-making technique was lost, and Li Laosan's bronze mirror, this Qinghe is still like this, not to mention this Qinghe?"

When Sun Mingyue lamented the loss of those skills, Zhu Mingzhong nodded and said.

"From the pre-Qin period to the present, for thousands of years, all skills are kept private, difficult to share with each other, can not learn from each other's strengths, so people often simply repeat the work of their predecessors, sometimes not as good as their predecessors, even if they have occasional intelligence, even if they are apprentices, often the other party is afraid that the apprentice will starve to death of the master, often leave a hand, often need him to accumulate more than ten years or even decades of experience, before he has a experience, and can not "stand on the shoulders of the predecessors" to accumulate innovation. In this way, what progress can we talk about? ”

China's demographic superiority over the West for thousands of years has directly led to China's technological superiority over the West, which is why China has been far ahead of Europe in terms of total technology for a long time. However, when the patent system was first established in Europe at the end of the 15th century, the way in which European societies accumulated knowledge and technological progress changed radically. Because the patent system solves the inherent contradiction between market expansion and technology possessibility under the protection of trade secrets, as an intangible asset, the size of the profit that people receive from patent rights is directly proportional to the market capacity. This has brought about a seismic shift in the technological revolution in Europe.

"In short, as stated in your previous Patent Order", "for a period of 10 years, any other person shall be prohibited from making a device identical or similar to the invention without the consent and permission of the inventor." If others rashly prevent it, they will compensate the patentee for a thousand taels of silver, and the imitation will be destroyed immediately", is not it to protect the interests of the craftsman, so that he will not be like in the past, the three points of the unique work in his hand are hidden at home and cherished by himself, so that in the future, my Jiangbei craftsmen will naturally benefit immensely! ”

Sun Mingyue's compliment made Zhu Mingzhong only smile slightly, people in this era will not know that patent protection is the promotion of technology. They had no idea that the patent system could be a key factor in facilitating the Industrial Revolution. During this period, the publicly disclosed technical knowledge accumulated day by day, gradually forming a huge public knowledge base, which laid a solid knowledge foundation for the occurrence of the industrial revolution. The exclusivity of patent protection also provides the necessary institutional guarantee for the results of technology and market. As a result, venture capitalists are willing to invest in technology inventors to make profits, just like the steam engine, and it is precisely because of the patent of the steam engine that Watt has received "venture capital" from entrepreneurs such as Baroque and Bolton, which in turn promotes the marketization process of steam engine technology - those entrepreneurs will actively promote the steam engine in order to recoup their investment.

Perhaps, they will not understand now, but when patent protection puts the development of Chinese technology on the fast track, who will be able to stop it from moving forward at that time?