In addition to the steam engine, which is Li Tianyang's greatest favorite, the R&D Institute has also had other inventions that have helped Hongmen in the past two years.

The improvement of artillery has been carried out, and the insights brought by Li Tianyang from later generations have allowed him to provide countless ideas for the research of the research institute and reduce countless detours for them.

In addition to the development of the casting process of artillery, other more research directions are placed on the cannonball.

In this era, hollow bullets already existed, but the principle of action was more like a single grenade, and the success rate after launching was not too high.

Li Tianyang had learned about the structure of real hollow shells from the rich and infinite sea of knowledge in later generations, so he took all the knowledge he knew about hollow shells as a suggestion and gave it to the research group that the R&D Institute has been studying in this area.

The power of the solid cannonball is still a little worse for Li Tianyang, its greater power lies in destroying the armed armor of the city and the warship, but the lethality of the soldiers is too inferior.

Therefore, Li Tianyang began to let people study the improvement of artillery shells early on, and now there is some progress.

Of course, because there is no sensitive negotiating powder, the shells researched by the R&D Institute are still far from the thick shells, but compared with the previous bulky shells, the lethality of large-scale armies has been a great progress.

In terms of bullets, with the gradual increase in the scale of the Shilu mine, the high-quality iron ore resources obtained by Hongmen from the mine are also steadily increasing, so that Hongmen no longer has to worry about the lack of iron ore resources.

After having enough iron ore resources, Hongmen, which used to use mostly lead as bullets, has gradually begun to use harder iron bullets, and as the shape of the bullet changes from round bullets to conical bullets, the penetration of armor is stronger and the lethality is naturally more sufficient.

Of course, these small changes can only be regarded as icing on the cake for Hongmen, in addition to the steam engine, the invention in the past two years is afraid that it is also the invention of canned food, which has a great effect in Li Tianyang's opinion.

In fact, the actual principle of the juncture is not too complicated, but after the food is sealed, it is sterilized at high temperature, which has actually been discovered in ancient times, but everyone has never paid attention to these.

With the gradual improvement of glass firing technology, the sealing problem is no longer as cumbersome and prone to leakage as before.

Perhaps the R&D Institute did not pay much attention to the invention of this can, until Li Tianyang came to inspect, they only took a sample of this invention to Li Tianyang for review, but they had not yet handed over the process of this invention to Qixintang.

However, in Li Tianyang's view, this canned technology is widely used, such as for military use, such as storing vegetables at sea, and then storing fruits out of season, etc.!

Moreover, Hongmen also has a great advantage, that is, the iron ore they transported from the Shilu mine, because it contains unknown elements that Li Tianyang and they don't know, after being smelted into steel, seven or eight times out of ten will be more resistant to corrosion and less prone to rust than ordinary steel.

This gives Hongmen a greater choice in the packaging of canned food, and now a team of researchers is studying the iron ore transported from the Shiroku mine to develop its better corrosion resistance.

Of course, with the chemical knowledge accumulated by Hongmen now, even if they also combined the chemical knowledge gradually emerging in the West at this time, they still will not understand that the reason why the iron ore transported from the Shilu mine is more corrosion-resistant than the steel smelted by other ores is due to the rich chromium element in the Shilu iron ore, which will have excellent corrosion resistance, but this does not prevent the researchers of the R&D institute from using its characteristics to produce thin iron storage tanks for the manufacture of sealed outer packaging of cans.

Based on the characteristics of the steel produced from Shilu iron ore raw materials, the R&D Institute also named this special steel stainless steel, but it happened to be the same as the popular name of this thing in later generations, so that this special steel has just appeared nearly 300 years in advance.

With this kind of stainless steel winding, combined with the canning technology researched and invented by the R&D Institute, this has enriched the material options for Hongmen's future logistics supply, and also greatly increased the combat effectiveness of Hongtang's soldiers in the future.

In large-scale wars, the importance of logistics supply is self-evident, the so-called soldiers and horses do not move the grain and grass first, in ancient times, in order to transport materials often tens of thousands of people mobilized for war, it is necessary to at least the same number of logistics supply personnel to assist the operation, which is also in many major wars in history in the claim that there are 100,000 soldiers and horses, 200,000 soldiers and horses, but in fact there are less than half of the combat personnel, the reason is that they will be included in the logistics personnel who assist the operation.

The research and invention of canned food by the R&D Institute will allow Hongmen to store materials or transport materials in the future, without worrying about the deterioration and loss of materials and grain, which will greatly reduce the scale of the logistics supply team, which means reducing the burden on Hongmen.

Of course, the role of canned food in the military cannot be ignored, and in the civilian aspect, canned food can also create rich value for Hongmen.

A poem once said: When a concubine laughs on the red dust, no one knows that it is a lychee.

In the Tang Dynasty, Yang Guifei liked to eat lychees, but the lychee production area was in the distant Jiangnan generation, in order to make the concubine smile, Emperor Tang Ming sent people to transport lychees from the distant Jiangnan to Chang'an, which cost self-evident.

It is still so difficult for the royal family to eat the special fruits of Jiangnan, let alone those noble families or gentry families, as for the ordinary people, don't even think about it.

However, the canned food manufacturing technology of the R&D Institute means that fresh and unfamiliar Jiangnan fruits can be made into delicious canned food, not only can be transported over long distances, but can also be stored for a long time, and the fruits of spring and summer can still be stored in autumn and winter, and the practical value is extremely high.

Civil canned food will not be extravagant enough to use stainless steel packaging, but can use glass packaging, with the glass manufacturing technology that has now been broken, Westerners used to monopolize and can sell high-priced glass products, but now because of the mass production of Hongmen, the price of glass products has steadily declined, reaching the point that ordinary people in the Ming Dynasty can afford to use.

The mirror, which is one of the three magic weapons, has finally been mastered by Hongmen, and various models of mirror products have been launched soon, which are deeply loved by the majority of people.

Up to now, even if Hongmen uses glass products to fill cans, the cost is not too high, enough for Hongmen to earn a lot of money.

(End of chapter)