Eleven, starting from bicycles

  ument.write(

  The Hudong Shipyard in Yangshupu was finally completed and put into production, but under the joint squeeze of the British merchant Ye Song Shipyard and Xiangsheng Shipyard, the days were not easy to pass, but Lin Xuan still decided to build a new 15,000-ton ship dock.

  Xu Jianyin really couldn't understand why a shipyard that cost over 300,000 silver dollars to build was so large. At most, the largest merchant ships on the Chinese shipping lines now wouldn't exceed 6,000 tons.

  Lin Xiao advised him to look far ahead, now on the European and American routes, giant ships of over 10,000 tons are very common, and there are more than a dozen merchant ships with a displacement of 20,000-30,000 tons. From an economic point of view, merchant ships will be built larger and larger. On the other hand, the main battleships of various major navies now have a displacement of nearly 15,000 tons. If there are battleships passing through the Far East, only the Hudong Shipyard can carry out maintenance. Currently, in the East Asian region, even the Japanese cannot do it, and the monopoly business is not easy to do?

  "What's the point of coming all this way for a battleship?" asked Xu Jianyin.

  Lin Xiao was taken aback, he couldn't tell him that the Russo-Japanese War would break out next year, or else people would think he's a monster. "Look, the Russians have several battleships in Lushun, who knows, maybe the British and Germans will send their big ships too, and even the Americans!" He could only come up with this reason.

  Lin Xiao now earns nearly two million silver dollars annually from agricultural and forestry products trade. Although the money house's annual profit is only a few hundred thousand, it can absorb nearly three million in deposits. In addition, there are also profits of seven or eight hundred thousand in tobacco, matches, grain and oil processing, which can basically maintain investment in Han Yang Iron Factory, Pingxiang Coal Mine and Shanghai East Shipyard. Currently, investments in textiles, silk reeling, tea production, tung oil, etc. can still find people to cooperate with, but as soon as steel mills or shipbuilding are mentioned, no one is seen. This aspect can only be maintained by oneself, and after several years, the iron factory and shipyard have not made money, and every year, one or two million yuan of investment is needed for continued renovation and expansion.

  Lin Xiao knew that heavy industries like steel and shipbuilding had to be large enough in scale to generate profits, so he gritted his teeth and continued to increase investment.

  The plan for the Hudong Shipyard has been changed again, with a new large dry dock to be added, as well as a 3,000-ton and a 6,000-ton slipway. Four workshops, three large warehouses, and two outfitting wharves will also be expanded to match. The expansion of the shipyard is not only for future considerations but also because Lin wanted to keep the over 1,000 construction workers with shipbuilding experience.

  The newly planned area of the Hudong Shipyard has expanded to over 1,300 mu, including a transportation dock with over 1,600 meters of shoreline. The shipyard will have more than 20 heavy-duty cranes and other equipment in two years, including 27 punching and forging machines, over 460 metal processing machine tools, 14 sanding and heat treatment devices, two 50-ton steel furnaces, and over 1,100 meters of transportation tracks. Additionally, a power plant is planned to be built for the shipyard's own use.

  In fact, for a country like the Qing Dynasty that lacks experience in building modern shipyards, the best way is to directly adopt Western designs and construction plans, which will reduce many unnecessary risks. Coincidentally, at this time, the German Vulcan Shipbuilding Factory in Stettin was going to build a new shipyard in Hamburg due to production capacity reasons, and Xu Jianyin had a good relationship with this German shipbuilding factory that had built two ironclad warships, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, and three Haiyong-class cruisers for the Qing Dynasty. Lin Xiang obtained the complete plan of the new branch in Hamburg from Vulcan Shipbuilding Factory on the condition that all large-scale shipbuilding equipment of Hudong Shipyard would be purchased from Vulcan Shipbuilding Factory.

  Volkswerft shipyard also promised to send first-class engineering and technical personnel to China to guide the installation and operation of equipment.

  In the renovation plan for Hanyang Iron Factory, a new rolling mill for medium and thick steel plates for ships was added. Two years after the production of this product is put into operation, it will form an annual production capacity of 20,000 tons of medium and thick plates, reversing the current situation that domestic steel plates cannot be produced.

  The freight railway from Pingxiang to Zhuzhou has started construction, but it is expected to take until autumn 1904 to open to traffic. Lin Xiang's only solution for now is to convert the coal transport ships between Hankou into mechanical power, but the entire set of steam-powered equipment is too large and heavy, with a total weight of over ten tons including the boiler and steam engine, which makes it difficult to navigate on the Xiangjiang waterway, and even a slight drop in water level would make it impassable.

  In fact, in the Qing dynasty's several decades of Westernization Movement, a number of modern enterprises were established, including steel, coal, shipbuilding, textiles, cement and military manufacturing, but they did not form a complete industrial system, resulting in high production costs and poor efficiency.

  From the perspective of later generations, the current industrial level of various countries in the world is still at a relatively low level, and the technical content is not high. Although electric motors and internal combustion engines have emerged, their application in industry is not widespread, and the vast majority of factories are still powered by steam engines.

  Although the steam turbine had just been invented, it was still in the experimental stage. All ships in the world, including merchant ships and warships, used steam engines as power without exception.

  Lin Xiao turned his attention to internal combustion engines and electric motors. In this new field, everyone was basically on the same starting line, and he knew very well that he didn't have the ability to create something beyond the times. Electronic computers were good things, but even if you gathered all the elites in the world together and invested a huge amount of manpower and resources, it would still be impossible to produce a practical crystal diode.

  In the era when electric lights and automobiles had just entered people's lives, not many wealthy individuals could foresee the huge market and wealth contained in these two industries. In the electrical field, although Old Morgan merged Edison Electric, Thomson-Houston and others into General Electric, he only saw the huge profits in the transmission field and did not have a deep understanding of the electrical manufacturing industry.

  At the same time, Karl Benz's automobile factory with fewer than three hundred people was just registered as Benz & Cie., while Daimler got an order for 36 "Mercedes" cars named after Austrian businessman's daughter and thus saved the troubled factory.

  In the United States, Ford Motor Company had total assets of less than $30 million, while Chrysler was just transitioning from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, although it had patented a steel body, the main structure of the automobile still used wood.

  In a workshop of the Houdong Shipyard, there were seven "cars" collected by Lin Xiang from all over the world. Without exception, they had black wooden bodies, open carriages and spoke wheels, with two of them even using wooden wheels.

  These "cars" all look like they are made by connecting two bicycles with a frame.

  If I invest one million to set up an automobile factory, it will absolutely be the largest in the industry. The Shanghai East Machine Factory is definitely capable of manufacturing China's first internal combustion engine. At least for now, the steam engine cylinders produced by the machine factory are not inferior to those imported from abroad.

  The chief engineer of the factory, Lu Yijin, told Lin Xiang that it's not a big problem to imitate these cars, but to make an engine, it will take at least several years.

  "Can we now mass-produce other mechanical products?" Lin Xiao asked, "The shipyard will take nearly two years to start production, and the factory workers also need training, it can't be that everyone has nothing to do."

  "There is a kind of bicycle on the market now, each one can be sold for over 80 yuan. I calculated the cost, it's probably less than 18 yuan, with quite considerable profit." Lu Yijin said after thinking for a moment.

  "Bicycle?" Lin Xiao's eyes lit up, "I think it's worth a try. If we can produce it, the sales route should be openable. What difficulties are there in between?"

  "The technology isn't a big problem, it's readily available in foreign firms, buying it back and reverse-engineering it won't be an issue. The problem is that rubber tire, I don't know how to deal with it." said Lu Yijin.

  "Oh, that's no problem. At first, we can import from the Western countries. There are many rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, but we need to send people to the West to learn about processing methods." Lin Chong said, after a few years his own rubber plantation in Southeast Asia would be able to supply raw materials, he only remembered that raw rubber needed to be vulcanized before use, but didn't know the specifics.

  The first bicycle with modern significance was designed by British engineer Starley, who in 1886 redesigned the early bicycle styles from a mechanical and mechanical perspective. Its main features include the use of a diamond-shaped frame, which gives the body higher stiffness and strength, the rear wheel is driven by a chain, and the direction is controlled through the front fork, and rubber tires are used for the first time. This opened up broad prospects for mass production and application of bicycles. Therefore, Starley was later called the "father of bicycles".

  It so happens that Staller's invention of the bicycle and Karl Benz's manufacture of the first automobile were in the same year, does this not portend that humans have since been able to run faster and walk further?

  At that time, riding a bicycle was not only a fashionable thing in the eyes of Chinese people, but also a symbol of Westernization, civilization and progress. Someone once marveled at the speed of bicycles and wrote poems to praise them: "The single-wheeled foot-powered vehicle runs like flying on flat land. Every morning it gallops in the slanting sun, with a rustling sound that comes quietly."

  For those rich young masters, riding a bicycle through the streets, looking left and right, is just like driving a Mercedes-Benz in later generations, it's a very cool thing. Bicycles are not the mass transportation tools of later generations, every bike sold for 70 or 80 yuan at that time was not something ordinary people could afford, still belonging to the toys of the rich.

  For a large machinery factory like Hanghai Dongji Machinery Factory, which has hundreds of machine tools, manufacturing bicycles is not very difficult. In fact, most Western products also come from workshops. After more than a month of disassembly and imitation, the first domestic bicycle was quickly assembled.

  It took more than a month, mainly to make special modifications to some lathes, and the other was the welding of the frame steel pipes. At that time, electric welding had just been formed, and the formula of the electrode skin was very problematic. Initially, only gas welding process could be used. Another is that the strength of the flywheel did not meet the requirements at all. After using high-carbon steel for manufacturing, it could barely be used, but it was easy to damage.

  It's hopeless, the quality of steel in this era can only reach this level, and it seems that no one can produce high-strength alloy steel yet. The foreign bicycles imported by the trading company also guarantee that they can be used for two years as proof of good quality, which means that after two years, these things will become a pile of scrap iron.

  It's okay, the Hudong Machinery Factory can sell more than 300 bicycles every month. In addition to manufacturing steam engines and imitation textile machines, flour mills, and spinning machines, etc., it has a profit of nearly 10,000 yuan per month. More importantly, this factory has trained more than 2,000 skilled mechanical workers.

  This already made Lin Xiu feel very satisfied.