With the large-scale development of railway construction, a headache began to arise, that is, the life of wrought rails. Although the carrying capacity and running frequency of horse-drawn trains are not high because of the problem of power, the quality of the early rails is different, resulting in the life of the rails is generally not long, about a year for the poor, and about 3 years for the good.

Although the cost of these rails has been recouped before they are replaced, recasting them is also extremely labor- and fuel-intensive. The development of the steel industry over the years has also allowed workers and technicians to have a better understanding of the three industrial products of pig iron, wrought iron and steel.

Therefore, since the beginning of this year, workers and technicians at the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant have been trying to add broken wrought iron rails and other slag-making agents directly to the molten iron smelted in the blast furnace, trying to make steel products in one go.

On October 14, Xu Xingsheng and the steward of the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant stood in front of the blast furnace, preparing to witness the 27th steelmaking test. The manager of the steel plant said confidently to Xu Xingsheng: "Lord Xu, we will definitely succeed this time, we have learned the lessons of the last failure, and have made improvements to the tanks for transporting molten iron and the converters for steelmaking, and the amount of additives has also been readjusted..."

After listening to Xu Xingsheng, who had been paying attention to the blast furnace, he asked the steward: "So if it is successful, how much is the difference in the cost of the steel produced in this way compared to the steel made by the crucible steelmaking method?" Are there any problems with the subsequent processing? ”

The steward couldn't hold back his excitement and said: "If it is successful, the steel produced is about twice as low as the cost of crucible steel, about 100 yuan a ton, which is 2-3 times higher than the tonnage price of pig iron we produce.

Crucible steel is 3-400 yuan a ton, and Suzhou steel is nearly 300 yuan per ton, even if we have enough profits even if it is 150 yuan a ton. If it were to replace the rails, it would have a much better lifespan than wrought rails. As for processing, as long as it can be produced, it can be processed. Isn't the crucible steel also processed..."

Four hours later, the first furnace of molten steel finally began to be poured into the ladle for pouring, and the experienced workers quickly noticed the subtle differences between the molten steel and the molten iron and decided that the steelmaking experiment should be a success. Three days later, the steel blocks were physically tested, and finally all the technicians decided that they should be called steel, and no longer belong to the category of raw and wrought iron.

Of course, the performance of this steel is only better than that of wrought iron, and it is far from being comparable with the performance of crucible steel, and can only be called inferior steel. However, no matter how inferior steel is, it is better than the best fine iron, and can be used in most places where higher performance is required than fine iron, and can be used as a supplement to the high price and scarce crucible steel.

In addition to the rest, steel plates used to make blast furnaces alone have become cheap and readily available. When Xu Xingsheng returned to the capital with first-hand converter steelmaking materials, the door to the steel age was finally opened.

Almost at this time, the first Daming fleet to Europe, after three years of sailing, finally returned to Daming and arrived at the port of Shanghai. This is the first time that a Ming ship has successfully visited Europe thousands of miles away, so after the citizens of Shanghai got the news, they couldn't help but go to the dock to see what overseas curiosities the fleet had brought back.

However, to their disappointment, it was only some Westerners who got off the ship, and they were not beautiful women. The ships did not carry corals, pearls, gold or silver, only some seedlings, plant seeds, and some animals. After seeing the unloaded goods on these ships, the citizens left in disappointment.

However, the staff of the Shanghai branch of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences regarded these animals and plants that the citizens disdained as treasures, and carefully loaded them back to the base of the branch.

When Galileo, protected by his daughter and disciples, finally landed safely on the bluestone steps of the Shanghai dock, his long life at sea made him dizzy on land. The year-long sea voyage not only did not exhaust him, but seemed to make him a few years younger.

Although life at sea in this era was no different from serving a prison in a mobile prison, Galileo felt that during this voyage, he felt as if he had returned to the days of living in Padua. Except for the fact that the living area is a little smaller, there are many more places to wander the soul than in Italy.

On board, no one threatens him with the 1616 prohibition order and Catholic teachings, and a priest sent by the Holy See to monitor him quickly realizes whether to listen to God or the ship's owner on board. Therefore, during this voyage, Galileo could study not only the force of the sails on the ship, but also the relationship between the flora and fauna on the South American continent and the flora and fauna on the Pacific islands, the causes of the monsoon, the trade winds, and the formation of warm and cold currents.

A scholar who is fully focused on scientific research will not be aware of the passage of time, so when everyone boarded the Shanghai docks, Galileo was still a little reluctant to see the end of the voyage.

This made him see Shen Tingyang and Song Yingsheng who came to greet him, and he couldn't wait to ask in Chinese: "Where are my observatory and laboratory?" I want to see them as soon as possible, and I also want to find a craftsman who can make lenses for me, and I came up with a new way of grinding lenses while I was on the boat, maybe making astronomical telescopes that can see farther..."

Hearing Galileo talk to them in northern official dialect, Shen Tingyang and Song Yingsheng were quite surprised, although the other party's tone was still a little stiff, but there was no problem in conducting ordinary conversations. Xu Gao, the eunuch on the side, looked at the surprised appearance of the two, but he was quite complacent, Galileo was able to speak such a fluent Beijing official dialect, which was mostly due to him.

Shen Tingyang quickly returned to normal and said, "Mr. Galileo, you don't have to be in such a hurry, there will be observatories and laboratories, but not here." You have just traveled thousands of miles, please allow us to do a detailed physical examination of you, once your physical condition has been determined, we can take the railway from Shanghai to Nanjing, and then cross the Yangtze River and take the canal, and then we can reach the capital. ”

Galileo asked a little dazedly: "Railway?" What is a railroad? ”

After a period of silence, Shen Tingyang and Song Yingsheng decided to take Galileo to see what a railway was. Galileo, who was riding in the carriage, kept leaning over the window to watch the street scene along the road, and at the same time guessed what kind of shock absorption structure the carriage used, so that the passengers in the carriage could hardly feel any bumps.

As the place where the Renaissance began, and as the center of Mediterranean trade, Italy is not only the cultural and artistic center of Europe, but also the place where European wealth is concentrated. Although the financial and trade centers of Europe were shifting to the Netherlands and Britain with the threat of the Ottoman Empire and the development of the Age of Discovery, Italy, far from the war, was still in an era of great prosperity.

Of course, this kind of prosperity still cannot be compared with the Jiangnan region, which is the most prosperous economy in the Ming Dynasty. Shanghai, which is in the midst of vigorous development, is not rich enough to compare with Suzhou, Nanjing, and Yangzhou, which are famous cities in the south of the Yangtze River, but it has a kind of vitality that other cities do not have.

Galileo also felt the confidence and optimism exuded by the people on both sides of the road, which led him to reaffirm the authenticity of the Jesuit monks' writings about China. Leaving aside the houses and roads that are being built everywhere along the way, the clothing and mental outlook of ordinary Chinese people are enough to prove that this is a country that is no less civilized than Europe.

This was a far cry from the backward peoples he encountered on the American continent, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and the islands of Southeast Asia that Galileo saw the railway, and he was convinced that China, like Europe, had the same intelligent and curious scholars and imaginative and skilled craftsmen.

This made him even more eager to go north as soon as possible to meet the observatory and science laboratories that could be used by him. In order to let Galileo spend his days of medical examination and observation in Shanghai with peace of mind, he sent a large stack of journals printed by the Ming Royal Academy of Sciences to Galileo, saying that he wanted to let the European scholar first understand what is the difference between the current scientific research of the Ming Dynasty and Europe.

Shen Tingyang's idea really diverted Galileo's attention, and he began to quietly study the mathematics, physics and other issues published in these journals. In return, Shen Tingyang also obtained some replicas of Galileo's manuscripts on the ship to study sails and hull forces.

At this time, Galileo Galilei was one of the most important people in the field of mechanics, but no one else would have ventured on an ocean-going sailing ship to study the sails and the stress on their hulls. This is an extremely precious manuscript for the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau managed by Shen Tingyang.

Since the establishment of Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, although it has the largest shipyard in the country, Longjiang Shipyard, it is not as good as Tianjin Shipyard in terms of shipbuilding technology. This is not to say that the craftsmen owned by the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau are not as good as those of the Tianjin Shipyard, but that the Tianjin Shipyard has begun to break away from empiricism, separating the ship design craftsmen from the construction craftsmen, and has begun to use mathematical and physical means to verify the rationality of the ship design.

While the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau was still imitating the construction of Manila galleons, the Tianjin shipyard was said to have begun research on building a new 1,000-ton sailing ship. These manuscripts that Shen Tingyang got back undoubtedly gave the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau a good start.

In order for these craftsmen to better understand the mechanics in the manuscript, Shen Tingyang simply opened a school near Galileo's residence, and asked Galileo and his disciples to teach mathematics and physics to the craftsmen of the Manufacturing Bureau and some of the children of the Shen family.

This amateur school soon became a place for some of Shanghai's new-minded readers. In a sense, Galileo was not just a researcher of science, and he also gave lectures quite well. After all, he was able to easily instill such a deviant knowledge as heliocentrism into the citizens who knew nothing about science.

To be able to stand on the podium again and preach his knowledge without restrictions, Galileo even forgot the idea of going north. He did not hesitate to explain the mathematics and physics he had studied, and vigorously preached heliocentrism to these students, and by the way, ridiculed the stubborn and old-fashioned Catholic clergy.

Galileo attracted not only those who were interested in new learning, but eventually even those who opposed Catholicism. The profound knowledge and noble character of the Jesuit monks in China, combined with the emperor's new esteem, made the Catholic doctrine widely spread among the scholars.

In fact, this kind of ideological and cultural invasion also made many scholars and doctors extremely dissatisfied, but they could not find the flaws in the teachings preached by the Jesuit monks, and it was difficult for them to fight back at the academic level for a while.

But Galileo's lectures gave these scholars a way out to attack Catholicism, and who better understood the corruption of the Holy See and the incompetence of the clergy than Galileo.

After realizing the value of Galileo, the scholars and doctors in the south suddenly became like a treasure and began to preach Galileo and belittle Matteo Ricci and others. The school taught by Galileo was also rebuilt into Tongji University in Shanghai with the donation of well-meaning people.

Tongji University, which advocated liberal humanistic thought, and Yenching University, which emphasized the idea of freedom and humanism, and Yenching University, which focused on inheritance, had very different teaching and academic research styles.