The positioning and role of the royal industry within the Tang Dynasty is quite special, such as making money to subsidize the expenses of the royal family, but this role is actually the smallest, because there are few people in the royal family, and Li Xuan's family has just changed from a small landlord to a royal family.

Well, although the Tang Dynasty has gone through two dynasties, but the previous years were just jokes, and the real life of becoming a royal family is actually after moving the capital to Zhaoqing, but even so, the life of the Li Tang royal family is still not luxurious.

On the one hand, the Empress Dowager Bai was born as a small landowner, and she grasped the expenses of the harem tightly, to be honest, her knowledge was limited, and she couldn't be extravagant.

On the other hand, it is Li Xuan, now is the entrepreneurial period, he even repairs the palace so small, there is still willing to spend money to buy yachts and private jets, most of the royal funds are used as military expenses for the guards.

Therefore, although the living expenses of the royal family are much more than those of ordinary wealthy families, the total amount is still not high, so although the royal family industry is also required to supplement a certain amount of funds, it is not much.

Therefore, among the many functions of the royal industry, making money is only the smallest one.

And the more important role than making money is: as a supplement to the state-owned industry, it is inconvenient to fill some gaps in the industrial system of the Tang Dynasty or to invest in some state-owned industries, but Li Xuan is what he wants to see.

After all, the funds on the part of the Ministry of Industry are limited, and there are many factories directly under the Ministry of Industry, and almost all of them are in the defense industry, the investment is huge, and the return time is relatively slow.

Therefore, this also caused the Ministry of Industry to sometimes lack sufficient funds to invest in the construction of other livelihood industries needed by the Tang Dynasty.

In addition, there are some industries in which it is inconvenient for the Ministry of Industry to invest, especially those non-core industries that do not greatly enhance the combat effectiveness of the military.

And these responsibilities are now being borne by the royal industry!

Of course, the above situation does not apply to the Royal Bank, the Royal Bank is an extremely special existence, nominally belongs to the royal industry, but in fact its jurisdiction is not in the Royal Industry Section, but directly reported to Li Xuan, it exists as a policy bank in the Tang Dynasty, its role is to maintain financial stability, blood transfusion for the Tang regime, and the general sense of commercial banks is different, positioning is more similar to a central bank.

In the general sense, the royal industry is still Zhaoqing Soap Company, Royal Industry Holdings, and Guangzhou Hanchen Textile Company, Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard, etc., which have introduced a certain amount of private capital.

However, it is worth noting that the current royal industry is actually the same as the enterprises directly under the Ministry of Industry, and its own scientific research capabilities are relatively poor, especially when it comes to more advanced technologies, almost all rely on the Royal Institute of Technology.

The things they produce are basically licensed from the Royal Institute of Technology, and then mass-produced.

Therefore, don't look at the Royal Institute of Technology as just a school, but in fact it is very profitable, and it can earn a lot of patent dividends every month, but this situation is gradually changing.

For example, the Zhaoqing Machinery Factory, which previously existed as a branch of the Zhaoqing Arsenal, relied heavily on the technical support of the predecessor of the Royal Institute of Technology, that is, the Young Military Camp.

But now, they are also beginning to use various ways and means to develop their own technical capabilities.

At that time, even so, their level was still far from that of the Royal Institute of Technology!

For example, the Royal Institute of Technology recently made a kind of thing that other factories directly under the Ministry of Industry can't make even if they spend more effort, which is a microscope that is up to 150 times higher!

Speaking of this microscope, we have to mention glass, since the early years of the Tang Dynasty through crystal grinding lenses, and then created a military telescope, the Tang Dynasty is beginning to go further and further in the field of optical lenses, and even a bit of a momentum of madness, on the one hand, the navy needs a high-magnification telescope to find the enemy in advance.

On the other hand, it is also the direct promotion of Li Xuan, Li Xuan in order to make a rapid breakthrough in the medical technology of this era, so that he can live longer in this era, so he almost spares no effort to promote medical technology, and the development of medical technology is inseparable from the help of the microscope.

This is also a major measure to promote the continuous progress of optical lenses.

In the beginning, they were able to make microscopes twenty or thirty times larger, but this was still not enough, so they continued to develop them.

Because a large number of various lenses are polished, and all the crystals used at this time are extremely expensive, which forces the Tang Dynasty to continue to carry out various experiments, and then try to manufacture transparent glass.

The project team of the Royal Institute of Technology, after more than a year of repeated experiments, finally succeeded in finding a way to manufacture transparent glass, and successfully manufactured transparent glass in the laboratory.

Unfortunately, the technology at that time was still too shallow, and the glass manufactured was relatively small, not to mention, its refractive performance was very average, and this kind of glass was actually similar to the contemporary European Venetian glass.

And this kind of glass is not suitable for use as optical glass!

The people at the Royal Institute of Technology are not interested in the slightest in developing this kind of glass, because they want glass that can make high-power telescopes and microscopes, not just a mirror.

So they simply authorized the patent of this transparent glass to the Royal Industrial Division, Li Xuan was quite excited at that time, and immediately ordered the Imperial Industrial Division to establish a glass factory, strive to achieve large-scale mass production as soon as possible, and then sell it, after all, glass is a good thing that has already been used by many predecessors to make a fortune, and since it is out, it naturally needs to be used well.

But......

This kind of glass can only be like this, and it is of little use except to make a little more money for the royal industry!

And there are many gadgets in the royal industry to make money, not bad for glass.

Even Li Xuan himself was only excited for a few hours at the beginning, and then he left this thing behind, this kind of ordinary glass mirror can't be eaten or drunk, and it is also a luxury ornament, which is basically useless for the rule of the Tang Dynasty.

What Li Xuan wants is optical glass, an optical glass that can make ultra-high magnification lenses!

The members of the glass project team have clearly seen in the textbook that glass can be used to make high-magnification optical lenses, and the glass that is made now is not good, so it means that they have not found the right direction.

So they continued to do it, and after spending a lot of money and time, they came up with a new kind of glass, and this kind of glass has a rather unique name, which is to make lead glass.

Speaking of which, the appearance of this kind of lead glass is accidental and inevitable, because in order to improve the glass process, increase the temperature of the glass furnace, and also to reduce the cost of mass production of glass, they tried to use coal as fuel to heat the glass furnace, so as to replace the previous wood.

And in this way, they inadvertently got a new glass with a harder texture and better light transmission, which is lead glass.

Although the people in the project team are generally young people in their teens and twenties, they are all old fritters who have been engaged in scientific research for one or two years, and in the case of sufficient funds, all kinds of experiments are carried out indiscriminately without money.

As soon as they discovered this new glass, they immediately realized that the optical glass they were looking for might be it.

So they started to use this glass to try to make high-powered telescopes, and when they tried it, it happened.

Now for the kind of ordinary glass that can only make mirrors, Li Xuan attaches more importance to the optical glass of lead glass, and attaches more importance to the microscope.

The promotion of medical technology is immeasurable, so as soon as it came out, Li Xuan instructed the direct laboratory to make more, and then use it for various microscopic observations, especially the observation of various animal and plant cells.

However, although the microscope is said to have a great impetus for medical technology, it is naturally impossible for such a high-end thing to become a widely exported industrial product.

And what can become an industrial product that can be mass-produced or even exported is still the ordinary glass that used to be.

With the completion of the construction of the glass factory of the Imperial Family Industry Division, after the first glass was produced, they could not wait to bring the mirrors made of this glass to the market.

Then those maritime merchants found that there was an extra product in the Guangzhou Trade Zone that could bring them huge profits: mirrors!

Mirrors, in fact, are not a rare thing, Europe in Venice has been producing glass for hundreds of years, but glass is a fragile item, which is still difficult to transport to the East, so it also leads to the price of glass in the East is very high.

The glass produced by the Zhaoqing Glass Factory under the Royal Industry Division, although in terms of quality, size and transparency, is actually similar to the glass mirrors of Europeans in the same period, but it is produced locally, and the Zhaoqing Glass Factory, like other factories in the Tang Dynasty, is produced in large quantities by using a variety of the most advanced contemporary machinery and equipment, with lower production costs, larger output and lower transportation costs!

Therefore, at the beginning of the listing, a simple and crude low-price dumping model was adopted!