Technological change!

Even after returning to Nanbie Palace for more than an hour, Tang Haoran's eyes would still appear from time to time on the artillery range, Shang Dequan and the others were full of horror, they were all stunned by the mortar on the shooting range, the rate of fire in the minute was 25-30 rounds, in terms of extreme firepower, a mortar is equal to twelve to fifteen camp guns, although the weight and range of the 81 mm mortar projectile are less than the 75 line guns, but the potential it shows is something that Shang Dequan and others cannot ignore.

The weight of the cannon is less than 100 catties, the cost is not more than 100 yuan, and the power of military technological change is truly displayed in the eyes of Shang Dequan and others for the first time, even for Tang Haoran, although he is ahead of a hundred years of knowledge, he understands that those 81 mm mortars seem to be advanced, but in fact they have their shortcomings -- such as the use of gunpowder for firing medicine, and the explosives are also ordinary black powder.

Now it seems that we have grasped the technological change, but in reality, we have only scratched the surface. Maybe others will rejoice at the invention of grenades and mortars, and imagine using grenades and mortars to smash the enemy and dominate the battlefield, but for Tang Haoran, he clearly knows that this is just the beginning.

Only by truly grasping the technological changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and promoting the industrialization of the country can we truly realize the "dream of a strong country" in the heart, thus fundamentally reversing the tragic modern Chinese history.

Technological Change......

Saying this word, Tang Haoran returned to the study, where he recalled the memories he knew about technology, of course, more of which could be directly converted into money. To be precise, it is a profiteering industry that can quickly return on high profits after investment. This will make it a source of funds to support their own implementation of the New Deal.

What kind of industry can bring money quickly?

First of all. Tang Haoran still chose the metal he is most familiar with and its related smelting technology, after all, what he studied in college is metallurgy, although he is engaged in steelmaking, but because of the professional relationship, he also has a certain understanding of non-ferrous metal smelting such as electrolytic copper and electrolytic aluminum.

"Electrolytic aluminum ......"

Looking at the three words written on the paper, Tang Haoran felt five flavors in his heart, if he could travel back to ten years ago, with electrolytic aluminum, maybe he would be able to earn hundreds or even tens of millions of taels of silver. After all, before Hall invented cryolite-alumina molten salt electrolysis, aluminum was a rare metal as precious as gold.

While my heart was saying pity, the word gold came to mind again.

"Gold!"

Tang Haoran's eyes suddenly lit up, as if he remembered something, and hurriedly wrote three other words on the paper.

"Cyanidation!"

Perhaps for others, they can't realize the significance of the "cyanide method" to gold, but when Tang Haoran was in college, he read a material about the South African gold mine because of his interest.

Historically, South Africa's "gold rush" has been full of twists and turns, starting in June 1884. An explorer of Nata announced the discovery of a valuable gold mine near a small village called Barberton in the Dikapo region. New gold discoveries are announced almost every day, and this remote corner quickly becomes the focus of the world. This marked the beginning of the "gold rush" in South Africa, and for a time, southern African money was attracted to this humble place, and all kinds of mining companies were quickly formed, and the stock exchange in the small town of Barberton became the hottest place.

In the year that followed, the shares of mining companies linked to the gold mines were pushed to the top, with some stocks quickly being speculated from £1 per share to £105 per share, making the initial investors a lot of money. But there are very few companies that can actually produce it, and the vast majority of companies have never discovered gold at all, and even those that do do have no mining value because the yield is too low.

Among the many companies, only 5 are financial, and after this news broke, the investors who invested in the gold mines in the first place lost a lot of money, especially those who were far away in London, and almost lost their money. In the middle of 1885, whoever said that he would go to South Africa to invest in gold mines would be laughed at. After the bubble burst, only Bligh's Sheba Company remained in operation in all of South Africa, and 13,000 tonnes of stone eventually yielded 50,000 ounces of gold at 120 grams per tonne.

There are always people who don't give up. This time, however, the location was not in the eastern Transvaal, but in the south-central region. In 1886, Harrison, an Australian adventurer, passed by a farm called Lang Lahte, 60 kilometres south of Pretoria. Harrison was going to Barberton to try his luck, but the widow farmer, Ustutzen, asked Harrison and one of his British coal miners named Walker to build her a few houses, so the two of them stayed here. Inadvertently, the two men noticed something strange about the stones on the farm, and based on Harrison's experience panning for gold in Australia, they determined that there might be gold in it. In April, the two men signed a contract with the Ustutzen family, allowing them to come and explore for gold. In May, Harrison announced that he had discovered gold and hurried to Pretoria to meet with Transvaal President Paul Kruger. Under the Transvaal government's policy at the time, Harrison was offered a plot of land for free, but Harrison quickly sold it for £10. Harrison, who discovered this gold mine, did not know that there was more gold than all the gold in the world at that time.

Lang Laht Farm is located in the whitewater range in the south-central Transvaal. Harrison's discovery of the gold-containing stone was found at Whitewater, and a year later, the area was already bustling with activity, with gold prospectors arriving every day from all corners of southern Africa, many from the eastern Transvaal, bringing their own gold panning tools. But the gold in Whitewater Ridge is not the same as anywhere else. The gold of Whitewater Ridge grows in the stone, and this stone is still very hard. Mining the stone is not difficult, but to get the gold out of the stone, the stone must be crushed with a steam engine, which is not something that a gold prospector with few funds can afford.

Although the speed of gold mining is too slow, it cannot delay the purchase of land. As a result, all sorts of companies emerged and began to buy plots of land everywhere. Even if no one knew where there would actually be gold, land prices in the surrounding area rose rapidly. Public companies also quickly appeared, beginning to attract money throughout the colonies and overseas. However, at that time, although people knew that gold could be mined by digging down, no one knew how deep the veins could be.

At the golden height of mid-1889, there were 450 companies listed on the White Water Ridge, large and small, with a total market value of more than £100 million. It can even be said that the white people who lived in Johannesburg at the time, if not the directors of several companies, were embarrassed to go out on the street to greet others.

But the good days are coming to an end soon. In March 1889, the gold veins of the White Water Ridge were getting harder and harder. Analysis of the ore shows that the relatively soft oxide ore that was originally easy to mine has completely become a hard sulfide ore. This change would be catastrophic.

The ore is harder, which means that crushing the ore will need to consume more energy and require a stronger machine, and the equipment that you already have cannot meet the crushing requirements, and the equipment needs to be replaced. More importantly, the amalgamation method used to extract gold has little effect on such ores, and the extraction efficiency is greatly reduced, which is equivalent to turning rich ore into poor ore, and poor ore will have no mining value. This is effectively saying that the shares of all gold companies that have been overvalued by the market will be worth less in real terms, and according to traditional geological experience, gold mines will no longer be worth investing in when mining gold meets sulfide ores.

In a high degree of secrecy, the news circulated only among a few people, who took advantage of the fact that gold investment was still at a high point, and immediately sold all the gold mine shares and plots under the name of the gold mining company, and stopped their own attempts at gold, such as the largest South African gold mining company completely turned into a diamond company.

This kind of information was kept secret for long, and within a few days, the news leaked, and at the same time, other gold mines were mining hard veins. After the news spread, the shares of all the gold mining companies in Johannesburg fell, and the gold bubble in Johannesburg also went bankrupt.

In some ways, this marked the collapse of the South African Gold Rush – a year ago, the market value of Whitewater Gold Mining was over £100 million, and now a year later, it has fallen to its lowest point!

A year later, with the maturity of cyanidation, it was quickly introduced to South Africa, saving South Africa's gold mining industry and making South Africa wear the crown of the "Golden Country".

If the current mass bankruptcy of South Africa's gold mining industry were to take advantage of the opportunity to buy mining companies and introduce cyanide into gold production, then ...... Gold!

In this era of the gold standard, Tang Haoran certainly knows the importance of gold to China, and also understands the benefits that South African gold will bring to him, and he also knows the world's thirst for this metal in the future.

Looking at the sodium cyanide written on paper, the leaching rate of sodium cyanide for gold and silver is greater than that of potassium cyanide, and the supply of sodium cyanide is wide and cheap, so sodium cyanide is almost without exception used in modern cyanide methods. However, the early research of European and American chemists on the cyanide method for gold extraction used potassium cyanide, which mainly originated from the practice of electroplating industry.

Thinking of the hundreds of thousands of tons of gold stored in Baishuiling, Tang Haoran, whose eyes were shining, leaned back in the chair again, the corners of his lips were slightly raised, and his face was full of greed for a while.

"My God, what kind of Baishui Ridge is there, it is clearly a gold mountain worth tens of billions!"

(In order to take care of the development of the plot of the novel, Speechless postponed the invention of the cyanide method for a few years, and postponed the introduction to South Africa by a year, which is a meme, I hope you can understand...... (To be continued......)