In an office in the Linde Machinery factory, more than a dozen people are seated, some Chinese wearing traditional horse coats and robes, some are blonde foreigners in suits, and some are wearing braids but suits.

The leader is naturally the chief shopkeeper of the Shanghai branch of the Lin Commercial Bank, and on the left hand side is a Chinese man about 30 years old, wearing a suit and dragging a braid behind his head, this person is named Qin Shenyun, and is one of the many shopkeepers of the Shanghai branch of the Lin Commercial Bank.

Because he is good at English, he has been mixed with foreigners for a long time, and he can be regarded as a person who has the most contact with foreigners among the people of Lin's firm in Shanghai.

However, this person is young, and he mingles with those foreigners every day, and he has a deep understanding of the new affairs of the West, even if most people have never even heard of the steam engine, he also knows a little.

In the process of the Lin firm's establishment of the steam silk reeling factory and the Linde Machinery Factory, all the equipment was purchased by him, and most of the foreign technicians were also hired by him.

As the Linde Machinery Factory was related to Yu Shengjun's ordnance supply, as one of the treasurers of the Shanghai Branch, he was also personally responsible for the affairs of the factory and served as the general manager of the factory.

On the right hand side of Pan Lixuan, he is just a blonde and blue-eyed foreigner, named Auston Walker, an Englishman, about forty years old, according to his own words and the introduction of Sindh & Co., this person worked in a large arsenal in Britain in his early years, and later went to the colonies to seek development opportunities, and has worked in arsenals in India, Hong Kong and other places, not only an excellent technician, but also many years of experience in large arsenals makes him very proficient in the operation of arsenals.

In order to recruit him, the Lin firm offered a high salary of fifty pounds a month to serve as the chief engineer of the Lin Deji factory.

Basically, if Qin Shenyun is in charge of the administrative and financial affairs of Linde Machinery Factory, then he is mainly responsible for production management, technical solutions and other affairs.

The other people in the conference room are also the Huayang management and key technical personnel of Linde Machinery Qì Factory.

"There is no doubt that this order is unprecedented, not to mention that in the Far East, even in Britain, an order for 20,000 rifles and fifty cannons is enough for those big arsenals to fight for it!" Auston was full of yearning: "If we can complete this order, it means that the technology and production capacity of our Linde Machinery Factory have entered the ranks of large factories!" ”

For a technical manager, there is nothing more exciting than seeing the factory he or she is responsible for growing.

Although Lindeji is said to be Lin's industry and Qin Shenyun is the general manager, the internal technology and management of the factory are actually in charge of Alston, so in a certain sense, Auston is the actual person in charge of Lindeji Qì Factory.

And as a technician, there's nothing more exciting than designing a gun or artillery yourself.

You must know that in Lin Zhe's order order, Lin Deji Qì Factory is required to design and manufacture a small-caliber rifled front-loading rifle by itself, and who will hand over the specific design work?

Naturally, in the hands of Auston!

At this time, Auston couldn't help but imagine that he had designed a weapon equipped with tens of thousands of troops, and his name had gained great prestige with this weapon.

But as soon as he finished speaking, Qin Shenyun on the side said in a deep voice: "To design a new gun and artillery, even if I am not a technician, I understand that it will not be so light!" ”

"And even if the design is successful, we need to make so many weapons, we also need to buy a lot of equipment, hire more workers, and the investment required is more than 100,000 taels of silver, we can't come up with so much money to invest, even if we have Yu Shengjun's advance payment of 20,000 taels of silver, but it is far from enough!"

At this time, Pan Lixuan on the side spoke: "In terms of funds, I have already discussed in detail with Yu Shengjun's General Office Han, in addition to the advance payment for this batch of ordnance, he said that once we design a qualified foreign gun, then we will pay an advance payment of 30,000 taels of silver." In addition, Han Zong's office also said that now Yu Shengjun will continue to expand the army in the future, and the training intensity is very large, the consumption of guns is very fast, and Yu Shengjun will have sufficient demand for new guns in the future! ”

The service life of guns in these years, especially rifled rifles, is actually very low, and it can be used for several years or even ten years in peacetime, but if it is a continuous high-intensity battle, then a rifle can be used for a year, not to mention the battlefield wear and tear and failure problems.

Since Yu Shengjun became an army, the cumulative loss of rifles has reached more than 500, which also leads to the fact that Yu Shengjun must continue to purchase rifles in order to maintain the full strength of the troops.

With Yu Shengjun's continuous procurement, especially the procurement of bullets and shells, it is enough to feed a medium-sized arsenal, you must know that it is a time of war, Yu Shengjun not only needs a large number of rifles and artillery, but also consumes a lot of seemingly inconspicuous bullets, gunpowder, fire caps, shells and other consumable materials every day.

Now most of Yu Shengjun's ammunition is still imported, if Yu Shengjun can supply, Lin Zhe will naturally give priority to purchasing products from his own arsenal.

Lin Zhe gave a lot of promises and support to Linde Machinery Factory, which is to let these people in Linde Machinery Factory boldly and reassuringly invest in expansion.

After another argument, Pan Lixuan personally made a decision: expand the scale of the machine and accept this order!

In fact, today's controversy is just a formality, because Lin Deji Qì Factory is the property of the Lin family's firm, and the Lin family is the property of the Lin family, and what decision Lin Zhe, the sole heir, wants to make, even Pan Lixuan cannot object.

After Yu Shengjun signed an intentional contract with Linde Machinery and paid the first 5,000 taels of silver in advance, the foreign technicians of Linde Machinery Factory, led by Oston, began to work intensively on the design of new guns and artillery.

In order to reduce the difficulty of the design, but also to control the risk of research and development, the foreigner technical team led by Auston carefully and conservatively selected the existing brown bass rifle as the prototype for an improved design.

One of the biggest changes is to reduce the caliber of the original Linde rifle from 0.753 inches to 0.57 inches, and other rulers, bayonets and other shots still largely follow the Linde rifle.

The Linde rifle is actually the British P1851 rifle modified by the Linde Machinery Factory, and the original gun is the P1842 Brown Bess Rifle, because after the modification, their brand will be engraved with the name of the Linde Machinery Factory's factory and the two English letters LD, so many people will directly call the gun the Linde rifle.

In order to reduce the design risk and manufacturing difficulty, it is inevitable to follow the design of the Linde rifle to a large extent, and perhaps the final design is not as good as the P1853 rifle that the British just equipped in 1853, but it should be much better than the existing P1851\Linde rifle.

The design of Alston and the others was very fast, not only the rifle, but even the two artillery plans designed were sent to Lin Zhe's desk a week later.

"According to the introduction of the Linde Machinery Factory, the new gun, which was temporarily named the Linde 1854 rifle, uses the original Linde rifle as a platform to carry out a caliber reduction design, and the final finished product design is a full gun weighing nine pounds, fifty-four inches long, with a caliber of 0.57 inches, a scheduled effective range of 500 yards, and a maximum range of 900 yards.

Lin Zhe listened at the same time, but also looked at the design books in his hand, if you just read the number of books, this weight is much lighter than the current Linde rifle ten .6 pounds, and the effective range of five hundred yards is also farther than the four hundred and fifty yards range of the Linde rifle, as for the maximum firing range, and the accuracy, the small-caliber rifled rifle is inherently superior to the large-caliber rifled rifle, and it should be able to improve a lot.

If this design can really become a reality, I am afraid that even if it is not as good as the P1853 rifle that the British just equipped, it should be almost there.

It is a pity that now the British have just been equipped with this new type of rifle, not to mention in the Far East of Asia, even the local troops are not equipped much, and they have asked several foreign companies, but they can't find a way to buy this kind of gun, and they can't even get one to be used as a model gun.

However, he didn't get this Mini rifle, but he got a rear-loading rifle, which is the famous German Delaisai rear-loading rifle.

When he first got this rifle, Lin Zhe was very excited to say to the foreign company that brought him this Dresser rifle that he wanted to buy it in large quantities, in his opinion, this rear-loading gun is a cheating weapon in this era, as long as there are a large number of rear-loading guns, who is Yu Shengjun afraid of, see who fights whom!

But the energy of the foreign bank is very helpless to say, I also want to do this business, but the Germans regard this as a treasure, not to mention large-scale export sales, even small batch smuggling is difficult, this is considered luck.

If you can't buy it, what about self-defense?

Auston, the chief engineer of the Linde Machinery Factory, told him very simply: Relying on the ability of the Linde Machinery Factory, it can be barely built, and other properties are not guaranteed, but he can guarantee that the imitation rear-loading gun will blind the soldier in one eye with one shot.

After a round of fighting, I didn't dare to say that the enemy was killed, but my own soldiers were definitely wiped out, not killed and wounded by the enemy, but blinded by the leakage of the rear-loading gun.

The original German Dresser rifles often leaked color, because the number of soldiers who were blinded by leaking guns and air leaks could not be counted, and the small workshop of the Linde Machinery Factory simply did not have the technical ability to make Dresser rifles with comparable performance to the original, let alone improve them.

If you insist on copying it yourself, the consequences will be very tragic!

In the end, Lin Zhe was very depressed and threw the broken gun to the Linde Machinery Factory, and asked them to continue to study the rear loading gun and find a solution that does not leak, as long as they can successfully find it, then he will personally give a huge reward to the technicians!

The rear-loading gun could not be bought, and he made his own imitation and did not have the technology, so Lin Zhe had no choice but to give up the idea of large-scale equipment for the rear-loading gun and continue to use the front-loading gun.

In this way, the new gun is required to be a small-caliber front-loading rifled gun, although this front-loading gun is not easy to get, but it is much easier than the rear-loading gun.

Now looking at this Linde 1854 rifle that still exists on paper, Lin Zhe can't help but let go of his obsession with the rear-loading gun and look forward to this rifle.

If it can be put into production, it will be of great significance to his Yu Shengjun, not only to be technically superior to other domestic armies, but also to be able to completely get rid of the situation of being subject to imports.

It's just that the paper number of this gun is so good-looking, and the technical requirements must be very high, and does the Linde Arsenal have the technical ability to mass produce it?