In this report, Lu Ban described to Zhao Wuxi an incomparably splendid future, a future constructed by hydraulic equipment.

It was Zhao Wuxi who first proposed the concept of hydraulic machinery, but at that time, he only focused on agricultural grains.

For the farming people, the most tedious but inevitable work is the removal of the grain husks. The original method is to beat with wooden sticks and stone pestles. Therefore, in the Spring and Autumn Period, there was a punishment called "Chengdan pounding", which made prisoners pound rice all day long. It can be seen that people in the world are impatient with the work of pounding rice, but there is nothing they can do.

After Zhao Wushi asked the craftsmen to make the stone mill, the time for milling and husking the rice was greatly shortened, and even livestock could be used instead of humans to do the work. However, Zhao Wuxi, who had seen rural water mills in later generations, still felt that it was insufficient, so in the first two years, he asked Luban to try to make water-driven mills.

To convert hydraulic power into mechanical energy, it must be converted through a mechanical device. The simplest device should be a circular wheel, which is the "water wheel". The horizontal water wheel rotates under the impact of water flow, so it converts the potential energy of water into mechanical energy to do work. Its birth is the key link for hydraulic power to enter the application field, and then installing appropriate gears can drive the stone mill to rotate.

The principle seems simple, and the craftsmen who "mix wood into a wheel" understand it as soon as they say it. But it's not easy to do. Lu Ban took the craftsmen to study in addition to making the sling, and it took several months to make the first water mill in the Linzhang Academy last year. extended to the public.

After the water mill was made, the next thing that appeared was the big drum cart that was placed by the Zhangshui ditch not long ago. Different from the water mill driven by a horizontal water wheel, the drum car is driven by a vertical water wheel, or in other words, it is a huge vertical water wheel itself...

The two different water wheels are equivalent to the front-end technology of hydraulic machinery. Next, it only needs a flash of lightning and flint in Luban's mind to copy it into more new light.

This time, Lu Ban only spent more than a month to present to Zhao Wuxi two blueprints named "Shui Pai" and "Shui Wu".

Zhao Wuxi really knew these things, but he didn't know why. It was only a few years after he taught Lu Ban the common sense in his stomach. His apprentice's concept of mechanics was far from his master's.

Lu Ban is a very serious engineering school, the drawings are meticulous and the descriptions are detailed, so in Zhao Wuxi's view, it is a pile of black and dense small characters, and Zhao Wuxi's head is big.

He studied it carefully for a long time before he understood that this water row is a kind of blower device for iron smelting. sports…

In a word, using water power, the exhaust fan can be opened and closed without human and animal power, and the smelting furnace can be blasted. , to improve the temperature strength of smelting.

This also means that the Zhao family can have better and more iron!

Zhao Wuxi was a little moved. Looking down, the structure on the blueprint for the thing called "Water Drain" looked much simpler than a water drain.

In the drawings, the water shovel is driven by a vertical water wheel driven by water flow, and the short crossbar on the wheel shaft moves the shovel tip, causing the shovel head to fall together for pounding. Luban said that in addition to the traditional processing of grains, if it can increase the rotation of the gears, it can also be used for beating pulp and crushing ore.

And Lu Ban boldly proposed that a similar device can be used to forge iron blocks...

In his report, he described a picture to Zhao Wuxi: Because of the hydraulic impact, the sledgehammer, which was raised high driven by gears and belts, slammed into the iron block on the anvil! This has been repeated thousands of times. On weekdays, an iron block that requires a blacksmith to temper for a few days may be formed in half an hour!

At that time, Hundred Forged Steel will no longer be a magical weapon hidden in the hands of nobles, but will become the standard weapon of the army...

"Isn't the description of Gongshuban a hydraulic forging hammer!?" Zhao Wuxi was stunned.

…

As far as Zhao Wuxi knew, in the original history, before the advent of steam engines, the greatest kinetic energy that humans could use was water power.

In China, the earliest use of hydraulic power should have been in the Han Dynasty around the AD era. A series of automatic machines such as water traps, water drains, and a series of automatic machines have sprung up, which has promoted the progress of agriculture. In Europe, the earliest record of the use of water-driven millstones to process grains was in the ancient Greek period in the first century BC, and it reached its prosperity in the Roman Empire.

As for the use of hydraulic power, it is the hydraulic forging hammer in the late Middle Ages.

With the hydraulic forging hammer, a large number of iron products can be quickly mass-produced, such as high-quality and cheap iron armor, iron weapons, iron anchors, and large iron plows.

However, in order to achieve this leap, Zhao Wuxi felt that Lu Ban must have been prepared in his heart, otherwise, with his practical character, he would not have just put forward such an idea at the end of the memorial, but had to set the final production deadline. This probably means that even the scaled-down model test failed Luban.

For a simple comparison, the water bowl is a wooden hammer that smashes rice slowly, a dozen times per minute.

Hydraulic hammer forging is an iron hammer smashing the iron up and down at a rate of 2oo times per minute...

Not to mention the requirements for materials and the size of the machine, anyone who has studied physics a little will know how big the power gap is. But the water flow is so big, so you have to work **** the machinery driven by the water wheel to make them more complex, use less force, and get more power!

In this regard, Zhao Wuxi, a half-hearted layman, was helpless, and could only let Lu Ban do it.

So Zhao Wuxi approved a red hook in the report, allowing the Shaofu to allocate a sum of money to let Lu Ban start to develop water drains and water buckets.

In his review comments, he suggested that Lu Ban divide the craftsmen under his command into several batches, a batch of industrial and agricultural machinery, and a batch of war instruments, each with a specialization. It is divided into many groups, specializing in overcoming different technical difficulties, allowing them to compete with each other and promoting efficiency. In terms of water kilns, they do not seek to be in place in one step. First, they make a zero-generation machine for pounding rice, then make a machine for pounding bamboo for pulp, crushing ore, and finally for wrought iron.

How many years will it work?

Zhao Wuxi thought, even if he breaks through the first floor in ten years, he will be satisfied when it reaches the level of the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe after 30 years...

What's more, in addition to water drains and water buckets, there are many hydraulic machines that can be developed, such as wood sawing, stone cutting, and water spinning wheels, all of which are good things for the country and the people. It takes less effort and sees more merit, so why not do it? During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, wars were frequent, the population was sparse, and the labor force was seriously insufficient. Zhao Wuxi urgently needed other ways to improve production efficiency.

All of these things had to be handled by Lu Ban, and Zhao Wuxi couldn't be too anxious, for fear of exhausting this genius to death.

"It's my luck to get Lu Ban..." Because of this, Zhao Wuxi tolerated Lu Ban's slightly irritable and aggressive temperament, because for the Zhao family, it can be said: Gongshuban is the primary productive force...

"It seems that the training of high-level craftsmen needs to be put on the agenda urgently." Zhao Wuqi heard the sound of a watch outside, the clock had just passed, and when the case was over, there was only one note left. He sighed, He pinched between his brows, forced his exhaustion, and opened it for a closer look.

At any rate, the elegant and handsome writing of the character Ren Zhang should be regarded as an appreciation of calligraphy.

However, without looking at the two lines, a trace of anger flashed in Zhao Wuxi's eyes, and he sneered: "Taoist disciples, how naive!"

(.)8