Chapter 262: Tram

Regarding novel ideas like installing light bulbs on automobiles and carriage compartments, Gao Da was very encouraging.

Only by constantly exploring and assuming could scientific progress be promoted; if one were to stick to one's own way in a certain industry and field, technology could only stand still.

In order to support the development of the electric power industry, and also to let electric power show more roles and values, Gao Da invested a large amount of research and development funds into the Royal Academy of Sciences, the purpose of which was precisely to explore more uses of electric power, letting the application of electric power become rich and colorful.

Imagination is very important for scientific research. Precisely because they were quite imaginative, the scientists of this era discovered one after another novel technologies and techniques, which promoted the progress of technology in this era and indirectly created the prosperous technological society of later generations.

If there were no paving by the scientists of this era, the science of later generations could not have developed so rapidly. What Gao Da could do was to give these scientists more support, letting them exert enough imagination to create achievements far exceeding the same level in history.

Under Gao Da's large amount of capital investment, the Royal Academy of Sciences and the electric power laboratory established many scientific research projects related to electric power, and each research project had relevant experts in the electric power industry assisting.

Gao Da also paid attention to some research projects established by the Royal Academy of Sciences and the electric power laboratory; overall, the brain holes of these scientists were still very large.

Although electric power currently only showed the role of lighting, in the laboratories of the electric power laboratory and the Royal Academy of Sciences, projects had already been established including but not limited to electric power locomotive heads, small-volume high-power electric motors and generators, and batteries that store energy more effectively.

Electric power trains were temporarily impossible to realize. After all, current electric power could not support the transportation of large objects. But smaller-volume, larger-power generators and electric motors were theoretically achievable in a short time.

Including more efficient batteries, with the development of the electric power industry, it was very necessary to develop a battery that stored more energy and was less likely to waste energy.

Currently, there was no ability to store electric power on a large scale, which also meant that if the power plant's electricity production was excessive, a lot of electricity would be wasted.

With more and more power plants in Spain, and the power of various types of generators becoming larger and larger, the problem of electricity waste would also become more and more serious.

If there was a way to effectively store electric power, it could ensure that even when the power plant could not operate, it could also provide electricity to factories and residential houses.

The impact of power outages might not be great in this era, but in the era of later generations when electric power had already penetrated into thousands of households, the impact was still quite large.

Fortunately, electric power had only popularized the two cities of Ma Deli and Barcelona, and electric power was also warmly sought after in these two cities, so there was no need to worry about the problem of electricity waste for the time being.

Gao Da also put forward a hypothesis to Gram and Tesla, which was to store electric energy as other energy, and release it when needed.

This was actually a very simple system. Using electric power to hoard water from low places to high places, this changed the storage of electric power.

When more electric power was needed, one only needed to release the water from the high place to the low place, and through the flow of water to generate power to push the operation of the generator, new electric power could be generated.

This kind of energy storage method was one of the relatively common electric power energy storage methods in later generations, and the benefits were also obvious.

First of all, such electric power storage had no pollution, and large reservoirs could also ensure that the water usage in the surrounding areas was guaranteed during drought periods.

The disadvantage was that one must build large-scale water pumping and power generation equipment, and the site selection of the reservoir was also very important, to avoid disasters that might be caused during the water release process.

Fortunately, these problems were all solvable for Spain. Gao Da also handed this task to Tesla, letting him design a relatively perfect hydroelectric system to help Spain complete the process of electricity storage and power generation.

What Gao Da did not expect was that the electric power laboratory soon brought the latest progress of these research projects.

Gao Da originally thought that the simpler small-volume high-power generators and electric motors would not be realized, but instead, the variant of the electric power locomotive head, the tram technology, was studied to a general extent.

The so-called tram was actually a train using electricity as power running in city tracks.

In fact, it was not a train, just a passenger carriage similar to a train carriage, plus a traction object providing power.

Such urban rail transportation tools were born as early as 1807, and the birthplace was naturally the British Empire.

However, the traction used to pull the train carriage at that time was actually one or more horses. In other words, such urban rail transportation tools were just carriages that had changed their appearance.

Carriages could run wantonly on the road, while such rail transportation tools could only move in fixed city tracks.

Compared to carriages, rail carriages had some benefits. For example, in the case of fixed tracks, horses could run wantonly, and there was no need to worry about colliding with passersby.

The disadvantage was that such rail carriages had a slower speed; after all, the weight of the carriage itself was already very heavy, and it also needed to pull people and goods.

The tram invented by the electric power laboratory actually used electricity to replace horses as power, using several huge electric motors as power output.

Electric train heads had many benefits compared to ordinary train heads, the most important of which was low pollution and low noise.

After all, it was urban rail transportation, and pollution and noise still had to be avoided as much as possible. This was also the reason why the rail transportation of various countries would rather adopt horses as power than use train heads.

As early as last year, Germany's Siemens company had corresponding tram track technology. But the tram power shown by Siemens company at that time was too poor, with an average speed of only 13 kilometers per hour, and could only sit a few people, which was clearly unable to be commercialized.

Among the technologies exchanged between Germany and Spain, Spain obtained such immature rail transportation technology. After improvement by Tesla and the electric power laboratory, the current tram power achieved no small improvement, and the average speed was also increased to about 20 to 25 kilometers.

Trams were still very important for the development of cities, and their role was no less than buses and subways in later generations.

Of course, the transportation capacity of trams was definitely not comparable to subways, and the passenger capacity was about the same as a bus.

On March 27, 1880, Gao Da saw Spain's first tram in the electric power laboratory, and personally felt this tram that had undergone improvement.

Besides the speed achieving a significant improvement, the volume of the tram head was also much smaller. Currently, looking from the appearance, the tram was still very similar to a train.

A speed of 20 to 25 kilometers per hour was already completely enough for a tram; after all, it was a vehicle running on tracks on the city road surface, and the speed was not suitable to be too fast.

The tracks of the tram were on the road, and before the tram arrived, the public on the road needed to give way to the tracks for the tram to drive. And after the tram passed, the tram's tracks were the same as the road and could be walked by people.

The first feeling the tram gave Gao Da was that the speed was fast, which could effectively improve the flow efficiency of Spain's urban population.

Determining that such a tram could be put into the market, Gao Da did not hesitate at all, immediately deciding to build trams in cities with a population of over 100,000 in Spain, letting the Spanish public enjoy such a convenient transportation method.

Of course, if it were all built by the Spanish government, this would definitely be a large expenditure.

Trams were not a very important transportation tool, so Gao Da naturally allowed domestic and foreign capital to participate in it, and everyone ate meat and drank soup together.

As long as the tram was welcomed, the public riding the tram would generate income. These incomes would be fed back to the investing capitalists, the capitalists could earn money, the public could enjoy a convenient transportation method, and the Spanish government could accelerate the population flow and economic growth of various cities, which was simply a win-win-win deal.

For Spain, which had already attracted the attention of Europe with the Ma Deli City of Night, how to introduce foreign capital to invest in trams became simple.

On March 29, 1880, the Spanish government announced that it would hold a tram exhibition in Ma Deli on April 16, announcing to domestic and foreign media another major breakthrough of Spain in the electric power field.

The reason for being so grand was that besides wanting to introduce foreign capital to promote

Although the tram technology of the Ximenzi Company is indeed not mature at present, historically, the first commercially viable electric tram was only built in 1881.

This also means that if Spain does not hurry, the electric trams of other countries will quickly catch up, and there will be no profit to be made at all.

However, through this electric tram exhibition, it is possible to attract more countries to pay attention to Spain's electrical technology. As long as they are interested in electric tram technology, Spain has all sorts of ways to exchange it for other technologies or obtain capital from their hands.

Obtaining technology and capital from other countries to develop Spain's science and technology—no matter how one thinks about it, this is beneficial, and Gao Da would naturally not let this opportunity slip by.

Sure enough, because of the precedent of the Ma Deli Nightless City, European media were still quite attentive to the exhibition that Spain wanted to hold.

From the announcement of the exhibition news to the holding of the exhibition, there was more than half a month of time, and this half a month was enough for the media of surrounding countries to rush to Spain to visit the so-called exhibition.

Perhaps the only ones who could not make it in time were the Russian media located in Eastern Europe, but Russia's economy itself was the worst among the five major European powers, and the attention of Russian capital was not very important to Spain.

Previously, the Ma Deli Nightless City had not attracted much attention from the Russian media, let alone the current electric tram exhibition.

Spain only needed to attract the attention of capital from the four major powers—Britain, France, Germany, and Austria—to be able to introduce enough capital to build its own rail transit.

Time flew by, and soon it was April 16, the day the exhibition was held.

Those attracted were not just domestic and foreign media, but also many members of the public who were interested in this, most of whom were local residents of Ma Deli, and there were also many Spaniards who had rushed over from surrounding areas.

Of course, there were also quite a few Portuguese who were interested in this. After the railway connection between the two countries, the flow of people had also become slightly more frequent.

Although a considerable portion of them were Portuguese who were curious about Spain, there were also many who genuinely wanted to immigrate to Spain.

It was just that Portugal did not attach that much importance to population size, and coupled with Spain's own powerful strength, the Portuguese government dared not have the slightest complaint about this.

The exhibition displayed not only the latest electric trams but also Spain's high-power generators, high-power electric motors, and samples of light bulbs of various wattages.

In order to ensure the exhibition proceeded smoothly, a circular track about one kilometer long was built on-site, the purpose of which was precisely to test the speed and stability of the electric trams.

Under the gaze of many members of the public and the media, the electric tram maintained a stable operation at a speed of about 22 kilometers per hour, without a single problem occurring midway, which made the foreign media marvel and the domestic Spanish public excited.

In addition to the electric tram attracting many eyes, the high-power generators and electric motors, which had not been publicly announced before, also attracted the attention of many media outlets.

They took photos and recorded these emerging electrical devices and products one after another, and some newspaper offices were already conceiving their latest editions, all to seize the initiative and get the headline.

Spain possessed the patented technology for carbon-filament light bulbs, and even beyond carbon-filament light bulbs, Spain had also applied for relevant patents for some metal-filament light bulbs with longer illumination times.

Although patent technology in this era did not have much protection, it was enough to be able to prove that Spain was the inventor of the relevant light bulb technology.

Most countries would not abide by such patents; for example, the United States, because it was separated from Europe by the Atlantic Ocean, had many American companies plagiarizing the patents of European companies, and they were not afraid of foreign companies thousands of miles away.

Even if a European company discovered that its patent had been infringed, they had no way to deal with it. If they filed a cross-border patent infringement lawsuit, it would not only require a large amount of time, but they might also end up losing the case.

One should not underestimate the power of American capital. Especially those capitalists with significant influence—it was very difficult to file a lawsuit against them, and even if one could win, it would be dragged out for a long time, causing damage to the company's interests.

Since the Ma Deli Nightless City, Spain had once again become a country of great concern, and Ma Deli had even more frequently appeared on the front pages and headlines of newspapers in various countries.

Spain's own newspapers excitedly hailed Spain as the strongest in the field of electricity, and some small newspapers, for the sake of a gimmick, even brazenly stated that Spain would lead the electrical age and create a glorious history far surpassing that of the British Empire.

Gao Da did not stop the flattery of these newspapers. It was still very necessary to appropriately increase national pride, so that Spaniards could be more enthusiastic about serving the country.

Of course, excessive flattery was unnecessary. When Spaniards discovered that such flattery was ultimately just empty talk, they would not only be disappointed in Spain's future but also disappointed in the government and the royal family.

In order to avoid such a situation, Gao Da specifically instructed the propaganda department to closely monitor the news reporting situation of domestic newspapers and avoid the phenomenon of excessive boasting.

It was fine to boast about one's own country, but there was no need for bottomless boasting. Gao Da believed that Spain could maintain a leading position in the world in terms of electricity, but to say that it would comprehensively lead other countries and create a greater history was a bit of an exaggeration.

(End of this chapter)