The history of the horse-drawn carriage is extremely long, it is almost as long as human civilization, whether it is in the East or the West, whether it is civil or military, everyone has used it in large quantities.

In the West, during the time of the ancient Roman Empire, its territory was vast, and its economy and trade were very prosperous, so they needed advanced and extremely numerous transports.

Around the 1st century B.C., Roman chauffeurs discovered the Celtic four-wheeled chariots and reformed them by using a rotating front axle to rotate in the direction of rotation, and using a whole rim and hoop to increase strength, and a hub with metal edges to reduce friction, so that the performance of their carriages was greatly improved.

Around the year 2oo AD, this sturdy Roman four-wheeled transport vehicle rumbled along the avenues of the Empire, and historical sources show that horse-drawn mail wagons and coaches could travel 16o kilometers every 24 hours, stopping to change horses along the way.

At the height of the Roman Empire, they built public facilities vigorously, so they had good conditions, nearly 80,000 kilometers of smooth roads, which were free of charge...... This makes this four-wheeled carriage very popular.

At that time, the Roman Empire, in order to maintain its strength, built an extremely excellent road system, with the city of Rome as the center to radiate to the twelve provinces of the country, to the British Isles, the Iberian Peninsula, Asia Minor, North Africa, and Arabia.

One of the main uses of these roads is military mobilization and military transportation, so the entire road system strives to be wide, straight, gentle and well-equipped.

The pavement of the road is well-paved, and in order to meet the needs of the march, the pavement itself is paved with sand and gravel in four layers.

The lowest layer is the foundation layer, which is paved with marl or sand and tamped to serve as a roadbed; The second layer is paved with a mixture of stones and ash, and the stones are about the size of a fist to enrich the road surface and ensure a certain height; The third layer is lime concrete, which is firmly bonded to the lower layer to provide a solid base for the pavement; Sometimes workers lay gravel or coarse sand mixed with marl, which is then flattened with a rolling machine.

The last layer, the surface of the road where the military cavalry came into direct contact, was paved with smooth stones, the joints were very tight, and the stones were neatly aligned, each about one meter to one and a half meters long. The middle of the pavement is slightly raised, forming a small arc, so that when it rains, the water does not collect, but flows to both sides and disperses to the sewers on both sides. The roadside is protected by stone masonry and has drainage ditches.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, roads fell into disrepair over the centuries and fell apart. At this time, the most practical is the two-wheeled carriage again, because it can be driven in rough terrain conditions...... Europe's transportation technology is on the downward trend at the mainstream exhibition.

However, in the following 1ooo years, this kind of four-wheeled carriage used for long-distance transportation still existed in a certain area, and it did not completely die out, because Europe can be said to be the flattest continent in the world, and four-wheeled carriages can still find room for survival, and more importantly, because they still have a certain demand in commerce.

It was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that after the Renaissance in Europe, with the development of production technology, the four-wheeled carriage also began to revive, and for a time became the main transportation vehicle in various countries and regions. Of course, these wagons were not only used to haul goods, but also to carry people on long journeys.

At this point, it is nothing more than a case with a window, suspended from a reed frame with a belt, and the passengers sitting opposite each other have to endure constant shaking and jumping.

By the 17th century, four-wheeled public stagecoaches had taken on almost all long-distance passenger duties, bringing prosperity to travel on 6 years, and the elaborate private carriages became a symbol of royal status.

It has the advantage of a large carrying capacity and smooth operation. The disadvantage is that the carriage needs to be driven on a relatively flat surface, which in turn increases the need for public facilities such as roads......

The corresponding promotion between them is self-natured, that is to say, the commercial exhibition should be bigger and faster four-wheeled carriages, and the larger and faster four-wheeled carriages need better roads, and better roads will promote the exhibition of commerce, and the exhibition of commerce will promote the exhibition of handicrafts in the direction of industry...... That's it, of course, it can't be smooth sailing, but as long as it is possible in one area...... Then the close relationship between European countries can be realized.

Of course, this takes time, in units of time measured in hundreds of years.

In the east, in that side of the world, archaeologists have excavated a copper four-wheeled car model from the Qin cemetery in the early Spring and Autumn period, which shows that the Ming Dynasty 6 already had a four-wheeled carriage in an earlier period than the Spring and Autumn Period.

In addition, there are other archaeological evidence, and even earlier, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, there were three-wheeled carriages, because experts used more than 3,000 pieces of ceramic fragments to restore a model.

But these oriental four-wheeled carriages have one feature in common...... None of them had a steering device, until the sixties and seventies of the twenty-first century, when a technician of the Hantang Group was still in that world, and saw a four-wheeled ox cart without a steering device...... According to his description, he had seen four-wheeled ox carts on the plains of northern Anhui.

It is said that because the ox cart does not have a steering mechanism, it is completely lifted horizontally by manpower behind the car, and the rear of the car is moved a little bit to steer, if there is a heavy object on it, it is really a kind of hard work.

The two-wheeled carriage with a history of more than 2,000 years on the Ming University 6 is technically backward compared with the four-wheeled carriage.

The wheels of the two-wheeled carriage are rigidly connected to the body, so when the horse walks or runs, the vibration is transmitted directly to the body.

The body and wheels are also rigidly connected, even if there is a so-called Futu, a simple shock absorber, but the shock absorption effect is also very limited, so the ride is very uncomfortable.

In addition, the size and carrying capacity of the vehicle were limited, as the horse had to bear the weight of the two-wheeled carriage itself while pulling it.

The wheels of the carriage are hinged to the body, and the ups and downs of the horses are not directly transmitted to the body.

The volume of the vehicle can be made larger, especially in the later design, after the addition of spring shock absorption, the ride comfort has been improved.

So why can't the Minta 6 show a really practical four-wheeled carriage, is it difficult to have a small steering device?

Director Li Ziqiang said on the Internet at the time: "When I was a child, I stole the ball bearings from the factory to make a pulley scooter, and even I installed a steering bearing on my pedals at that time...... The people on the Minda 6 have had carriages for more than 2,000 years, so they won't be so stupid, right? ”

A technician knocked out a post...... At the same time, he also smiled and said: "Oh, what a coincidence, I also made a pulley scooter at that time, and I put it down the slope, which is very cool." ”

The other technician interjected, "What is the coincidence? Gunpowder guns and pulleys were the two major weapons of the year-"

Everyone then digressed, but someone still read the post seriously.

The post reads:

1. Environmental factors mainly refer to geographical factors.

Europe is the flattest continent on Earth, with an average altitude of less than 3oo meters, at least 6o% plains, and low mountains and hills except for the Alps. It is suitable for a four-wheeled carriage. The earliest known diagram of a four-wheeled carriage appeared in southern Northern Europe, also dominated by plains.

On the other hand, the topography of Mingda 6 is extremely complex, with plains accounting for only a small part, and being surrounded and divided by mountains, plateaus, deserts, and lakes.

Although the four-wheeled carriage is comfortable, it is not convenient in the Ming University 6. Especially in the Loess Plateau and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the source of civilization, the former wheels will have deep ruts when pressed, and the wheels will be unstable; The latter, which in ancient times were full of swamps and forest lakes, was equally unsuitable.

You can take a four-wheeled vehicle on the North China Plain, but the area occupied is too small, and officials and businessmen can't keep changing cars, so it's still suitable for two-wheeled vehicles.

At the same time, the land where they live has a large number of rivers and long flows. There are more than 5oooo rivers with a total basin area of more than 1oo square kilometers, 158o rivers with an area of more than 1ooo square kilometers, and 79 rivers with a total basin area of more than 10,000 square kilometers. The size of the 6 places in Minda is about the same as that of Europe and the United States, but the number of large rivers is much larger than that of Europe and the United States.

Even in North America, which has a total area more than twice as large as the six regions of Minneto, the number of large rivers with a length of more than 1ooo kilometers is only two-thirds of it. If its natural rivers are connected, the total length is 430,000 kilometers, and it can circle the Earth's equator 1o and a half times. Its topography is high in the west and low in the east, the river direction is mostly east-west, the east-west waterway transportation is convenient, although the north-south direction lacks large rivers, but the major rivers are mostly tributaries in the north-south direction, and the tributaries are parallel to each other and evenly spaced.

The opening of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal solves the problem of north-south transportation in the eastern region, although there is no large north-south canal in other regions, but the short distance between the tributaries makes the demand for four-wheeled carriages used for long-distance transportation on 6 is not urgent, and the natural conditions prompt the ancient people of Ming University 6 to be more inclined to solve the traffic problem through guò waterway transportation.

Moreover, no matter how much the four-wheeled carriage may have increased its carrying capacity compared with the two-wheeled carriage, the carrying capacity of the two instruments is very different from that of shipping, and it is more economical for shipping to rely on the power of nature than for horse-drawn carriages to rely on animal power. Waterway transport does not require the creation of dedicated transport hubs, and cities and villages along the river can become natural supply stations.

With the goal of water transportation, the six people of the ancient Ming University established a huge and complex waterway transportation network and developed advanced shipbuilding technology, which made the 6-way transportation, especially the long-distance 6-way transportation, failed to be paid attention to, or rather, it was not needed.

2. Horse factor.

For the agricultural civilizations of the Ming Dynasty 6 and European contemporaries, ancient horses were always expensive, even if Americans in the 19th century relied mainly on their feet to get around. This point is stricter in Ming Da 6, so that a considerable number of officials can only walk or ride donkeys when they take office, and the quality of the horses is also very poor, otherwise they will not be imported from the Hu people, and there is a lot of evidence in this regard, just look at the history books.

In addition, in order to prevent the people from rebelling, it is often forbidden for people to raise horses, and there are not enough two-wheeled carriages, let alone four-wheeled carriages.

3. The cost problem compared with water transportation.

Ming Da 6 has the concept of "family world" since the Zhou Dynasty, and although they were divided into feudal feuds during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, they were still the princes under the Emperor of Zhou. Since the Qin Dynasty, a unified state has been established, and although it has been divided from time to time since then, unification has remained the main axis and the goal pursued by successive rulers of successive dynasties. One of the most important problems these rulers faced was how to achieve a large-scale, large-volume, and efficient transportation of goods within such a vast empire.

The ancient European countries were small and had small populations, and the four-wheeled carriage could quickly meet the relatively long-distance and large-volume transportation within the country, but in ancient times, this was far from enough. Bulk goods, especially military transportation and taxes, because the ancient Ming Dynasty 6 taxes and taxes were mostly paid and released in kind, if long-distance transportation was completed by four-wheeled carriages, the cost would be far greater than that of water transportation, and the cost was really high. This situation also made the six people of Minda lose interest in the large-scale application of horse-drawn carriages to No. 6 transportation.

The above may be the main reason why the carriage, especially the four-wheeled carriage, was not used in the Ming University 6, and of course, the differences in road paving technology and vehicle manufacturing process also had an impact on this result.

Moreover, the Europeans, on the basis of the four-wheeled carriage, catalyzed by the Industrial Revolution, finally understood the automobile, which made a big difference in our world from then on.

Manager Mei Lezhi walked towards the Xiangshan community, while thinking about the free talk of the technicians at that time, hehe, although in terms of logic and classification, the technician's post was not strict, but he did not bother them - science and engineering people focus on thinking about problems from the perspective of material basis, which is not a bad thing-

But the core problem is not really in the carriage itself, nor in the material environment.

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