Chapter 28 Irikawa

One of the outstanding achievements of iron smelting in the Han Dynasty was the emergence of ductile iron, and the modern nodular cast iron was not successfully developed until 1947.

The increasing maturity of the 100-steel making process and the invention of the steel frying technology are also the signs of the progress of steel smelting technology in the Han Dynasty. In the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, a new technology appeared in the use of pig iron to fry mature iron or steel, that is, pig iron was heated to a semi-liquid and semi-solid state and then stirred, and the oxygen in air or iron ore powder was used for decarburization to obtain wrought iron or steel.

The use of this technology can control the pig iron to the required carbon content, and then heat and forge into better quality steel, thus greatly promoting the development of 100 steel.

Zuo Ci asked people to make fire guns from 100 steel, although they can also be used, but the process of making 100 steel zuò is complicated, the output is extremely low, and the price is expensive. Just imagine, Cao Cao only has five "hundred refining weapons"; Sun Quan had three treasure knives, only one of which was named "Bailian", which shows the difficulty of making 100 steel.

Zuo Ci was also not well versed in smelting techniques, so Liu Hou asked him to set up an additional research group, which was mainly composed of highly skilled blacksmiths. One of the young men caught Liu Hou's attention, this person was called Pu Yuan, it was said that he was originally Zhuge Liang's subordinate, and Liu Bei must have a reason for arranging him to come over.

Sure enough, Liu Hou found that this Pu Yuan was very talented in smelting and building weapons, smart, studious, and creative. Liu Hou made him the head of the smelting research team.

However, the main task of this research team is not to smelt iron, but to search for a "black stone that can be burned" - coal - all over the world.

Liu Hou vaguely remembers that when he was in middle school, his teacher talked about blast furnace ironmaking, which is stacked with a layer of coal and a layer of iron. Liu Hou didn't know much, but he also knew that one of the key points of ironmaking was to get a higher temperature. And to get a higher temperature, one key is coal, and the second key is the blower.

Therefore, Liu Hou asked them to find coal as much as possible, and if they didn't have enough manpower, they went to Zhang Fei. Zhang Fei heard that finding a coal mine was the key to making that kind of magic gun, so he sent people to find it without saying a word.

As for the blower, Liu Hou plans to get a hydraulically powered one. Liu Hou discussed the design concept with Zuo Ci for three days and three nights, until he understood the principle of hydraulic turbines, and poor Zuo Ci went to discuss with the craftsmen for three days and three nights. Fortunately, the craftsmen are all experienced and can understand his meaning relatively quickly.

It's just that the transmission parts are not good, and the belt drive is good to say, it is not difficult to get some animal skins in this era, but there are some places where gear transmission is used.

Gearing may seem simple, but it actually contains some high-level knowledge. Liu Hou also learned some involute lines and conjugate curves in college, but since he did not study mechanical engineering, he did not focus on learning these advanced mathematics content.

After graduating for many years, most of the advanced math knowledge has been returned to the teacher. He could only explain some basic principles to Zuo Ci and Ge Xuan, and let Zuo Ci organize people with arithmetic expertise to deduce, prove, and improve the relevant content.

Poor Zuo Ci's two masters and apprentices, who had not even fully learned the mathematics in middle school, threw some high mathematics to Liu Hou, and couldn't understand it for a while, so they had to take out a notebook each, give full play to their shorthand skills, and record every sentence and word Liu Hou said.

Fortunately, after several years of training, the shorthand level of Zuo Ci's two masters and apprentices is also a master, and in later generations, it is estimated that he can barely be a stenographer.

Thanks to the paper, the notebook of the two is no longer a large and bulky bamboo slip, but a lightweight paper thread-bound booklet, which is easy to carry and easy to use.

The two of them regard it as a treasure, and they usually carry it with them, and they can write it down at any time when they meet Liu Hou's explanation, and they can also write it down at any time when they encounter some of their experiences, which is very useful.

Liu Hou is not used to using a brush, so he deliberately asked someone for a few goose feathers, wrapped several layers of cloth on the goose feather rod, and made the thickness of a ballpoint pen in later generations, revealing about 1 cm to make the tip of the pen, dipped in ink to write.

Once Zuo Ci saw Liu Hou writing, he was surprised, and also made a quill pen according to the gourd painting, and after a try, he found that this kind of hard pen is much faster than the soft pen, although the writing is ugly, but it is very suitable for shorthand.

Because Liu Hou was worried that the longer the time dragged on, the more he would forget the knowledge he knew, so in the past two years, Liu Hou frantically instilled various scientific knowledge in them. This leads to shorthand becoming the first skill that Zuo Ci and Ge Xuan need to master, and the two have also made a lot of effort in this regard, and they have also received Liu Hou's guidance.

Liu Hou instructed them to replace certain words or meanings with some simple symbols. To this end, the two also specially compiled a simple symbol comparison table of some commonly used words, as long as they are familiar with these symbols, they can greatly speed up the shorthand. If you organize your notes afterwards and add the meaning of these symbols to your notes, you can make it a note that ordinary people can understand.

In doing so, they not only created the discipline of shorthand, but also laid the foundation for the creation of cryptography in the future.

As Liu Bei allotted them more and more people, Liu Hou established more research groups and expanded the scope of his research. However, it seems that most of the research is still in its infancy. Like smelting, it is still in the prospecting stage, as for what blast furnace, Liu Hou didn't want to build it in Jingzhou at all. Many other studies, such as hydroelectric turbines, are still in the stage of theoretical research and small-scale model making, and Liu Hou has no intention of realizing them now.

The reason is very simple, firstly, the current technical reserves are not enough, and many problems have not been solved; Second, the most important thing is that Liu Hou knows that he is about to enter Sichuan. With the great effort to build these large-scale industrial facilities here, it is better to go to Sichuan and then slowly do it. After all, productivity is very low nowadays, and it takes a lot of manpower and material resources to build a large thing. What could be built in three or five days in the next generation may now take months to build. And Jingzhou doesn't know if it will be able to keep it when the time comes. In case he fails to change history, Guan Yu is still killed, and Jingzhou will be occupied by Eastern Wu. Liu Hou didn't want to leave any industrial base for the enemy.

In the nineteenth year of Jian'an (214), Liu Hou was 7 years old and 9 years old. Liu Bei transferred Zhang Fei and Zhuge Liang to help in Sichuan, accompanied by about 2,000 catties of new formula black powder. This is already the result of collecting all the sulfur and saltpeter in Liu Bei's territory. Zhang Fei had coveted these artifacts for a long time, and sent people to find these two mines in a frenzy, but there was no news for a while.

Because of the small quantity, gunpowder did not play much role in Liu Bei's expedition to Shudi, but was only used when conquering one or two cities, which slightly accelerated the process of Liu Bei's capture of Yizhou.

With Liu Bei's seizure of Chengdu and the seizure of Yizhou, Liu Hou also started the process of entering Sichuan. He was accompanied by Zuo Ci's master and apprentice and his "subordinates", or "students". These people were all sent by Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang to name "help", but they were actually stealing teachers.

They generally call Zuo Ci "Zuo Immortal Master" and Liu Hou "Little Junior Brother". Because under Liu Hou's strong request, Zuo Ci reluctantly often gave lectures to them, and taught them various knowledge learned from Liu Hou according to different majors.

For the convenience of the march, Zhao Yun organized these people into a separate battalion, called "Jiang Zuo Battalion". Because Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang, two outstanding military strategists of the time, were keenly aware of Zuo Ci's great potential, especially the great role that gunpowder could play in the military, they repeatedly increased the manpower of the "general camp". By the time Liu Hou and the others were about to leave for Sichuan, there were more than 300 people.

These were mainly craftsmen of all kinds, blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, tailors, tanners, and even smiths. There were also people who were proficient in arithmetic and the so-called "well-educated" (intellectuals) of this era. These people have one thing in common, that is, they admire Zuo Ci so much, and they absorb the new knowledge he throws out from time to time.

These people are equivalent to Liu Hou's "diners", they can have 300 diners at only a few years old, how can they be regarded as "Saimeng taste". In fact, Liu Hou also regarded them as his future team. But now they can't do anything, many things are still in their infancy, Liu Hou is only 7 years old, and it's still early.

Under the planning of Liu Hou and the command of Zuo Ci, the process of entering Sichuan became a prospecting process. The team is spread out and collects special local ores everywhere they go. Liu Hou taught them to bag the ore in each place separately, write down the information such as the place of collection, the time of collection, and the person who collected it, and planned to refine the ore after settling down in the future to see if they could get suitable mineral deposits.

Not to mention, although this greatly affected the itinerary and made the process of entering the river slower than ever, the gain was huge. Because doing so will really give them some deposits.

For example, in Jiangyou Laojun Mountain, they found limestone and saltpeter mines. Coal mines were discovered in Yandao (present-day Yibin City).

Later archaeologists found 25 ancient nitrate cave sites in Jiangyou, and the remains in the nitrate cave can fully reflect the ancient nitrate making process. Experts believe that this area is a cultural relics rich area of gunpowder, the largest nitrate cave site in ancient China discovered at present, and one of the most important gunpowder raw material bases in ancient times, with extremely high historical value and scientific value. In 2006, Jiangyou was successfully registered as the "Hometown of Gunpowder in China".

Yibin is even more impressive, with one of the 13 large-scale coal bases planned for development in the country's "Eleventh Five-Year Plan". Anthracite coal reserves reach 3.582 billion tons, which is an important part of the Yunnan-Guizhou base, one of the country's thirteen major coal bases, accounting for a quarter of Sichuan's coal reserves.

Liu Hou didn't know all these later information, and they were able to find that these mineral deposits were the result of Zuo Ci's hard work to expand the scope of exploration.

Since Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang and even Zhang Fei attached great importance to Zuo Ci's work, they specially told Zhao Yun to try his best to meet Zuo Ci's requirements. Therefore, Zhao Yun also sent a large number of soldiers to follow the craftsmen to prospect for mines. There are more than 1,000 people, craftsmen and soldiers sent by Zuo Ci to prospect, which can be called a huge and terrifying prospecting team.

There is no way to do it, they lack modern prospecting methods, so they can only find people with prospecting experience to train a little, impart a little prospecting experience, and set off. Basically, it relies on the spirit of finding a needle in a haystack and relying on luck to find mines. It is also in this era that the labor cost is extremely low, otherwise, no one can really spend manpower and material resources to find "stones" all over the mountain.

But fortunately, Sichuan is rich in mineral resources, and Huangtian finally found these three important minerals for Liu Hou.

Liu Hou asked Zuo Ci to go to Zhao Yun, leaving enough manpower to further explore the scope of the mineral deposits and organize the displaced people to open the mines. In this era, there are not many things, that is, there are many homeless people, as long as they are fed, there are a lot of people rushing to do the work that sells their strength. This also directly leads to the fact that the cost of opening a mine is very low. However, Liu Hou still made a special statement to treat these workers well, and he didn't want his workshop to become a sweatshop.

(Author's note: Students who understand geography and are serious should note that it is logical that entering Sichuan from Jingzhou will not pass through Jiangyou and Yibin at the same time, because the two places happen to be one in the north of Chengdu and the other in the south.) But for the sake of the plot, it was written like this. Of course, it can also be assumed that this team deliberately went to find minerals. ）