Chapter 1017: Comprehensive Development

"Are these all being sent to the Jinghai Shipyard?"

As a donkey cart fully loaded with gas cylinders passed by, Zhao Xu asked.

Since the technology of oxyhydrogen welding appeared, every workshop has had a great demand for it.

Riveting in the past was troublesome, the process was time-consuming, and the airtightness was poor, but oxyhydrogen welding solved these drawbacks.

At present, apart from the various machinery workshops, it is naturally the shipyard that has the greatest demand for oxyhydrogen welding.

By letting oxyhydrogen welding replace the riveting of warship iron plating, the construction speed of ironclad warships will be greatly advanced.

"Replying to Your Highness, that is correct." The head of the Steel Workshop smiled, "Besides that, it is the Steam Engine Workshop, agricultural machinery workshops, and others that need it; they have also trained some gas welding craftsmen."

Zhao Xu nodded slightly.

While the Great Song is leaping toward the electric power industry, he did not directly scrap the steam industry because of this.

Instead, he let the steam industry and the electric power industry coexist, with each having elements of the other.

It will not be too late to gradually abandon the backward steam industry once the electric power industry is fully rolled out across the Great Song.

The industrial scale of the Great Song is not large to begin with; cutting off the steam industry established over these past few years would be equivalent to cutting off one's own arm.

After leaving the Electrolysis Workshop, Zhao Xu, accompanied by the others, went to other workshops and personally inspected the preparation of steel plates, steel bars, steel wires, and special steel materials.

Generally speaking, the level of the Great Song's steel industry has basically reached that of the mid-to-late 19th century of the contemporary era.

"As the first steel workshop in Yancheng, although the progress you have made is obvious to all, you must not be complacent and must continue to overcome more complex steel manufacturing technologies." After making a round of inspections.

Zhao Xu left the Steel Workshop, and at the entrance, he turned and said to the head of the Steel Workshop.

Regarding steel smelting, the Steel Workshop now has its own research team and no longer relies solely on the Research Institute.

After all, the arrival of the electric power industry era means a technological explosion.

The Research Institute can only solve key, critical technologies.

It cannot be like a meddling housekeeper who has to stick their nose into everything.

Therefore, drawing on contemporary experience, he required the workshops to establish their own internal research labs.

The researchers in the labs consist of one skilled craftsman from the workshop and one from Yanzhou University.

The Research Institute provides them with technical parameters and blueprints, and they are responsible for the research.

To promote internal research within the workshops, he also required the workshops to establish internal night schools to teach craftsmen reading, writing, and basic knowledge such as mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

"Yes, Your Highness, we will certainly not lose the reputation of the Yancheng Steel Workshop." The head of the Steel Workshop said.

The steel workshops in Shanggu Commandery and Liaojun have been put into production, forming internal competition with them.

The Industrial Department often summons these heads to evaluate their political performance.

In this regard, the heads are also straining every nerve, competing to see whose development is better.

After giving a few more instructions to the head of the Steel Workshop, Zhao Xu and the officials from the Industrial Department went to the Copper Industry Workshop opposite.

This new workshop district located in the west of Yancheng is all heavy industry.

Besides steel, there are workshops for copper, tin, lead, and aluminum.

At the Copper Industry Workshop, Zhao Xu inspected the production of parts such as copper wire, copper sheets, and copper sleeves, then went to the aluminum, tin, and lead workshops to observe, and before noon, he went to the rare metal smelting workshop to visit the extraction of tungsten, manganese, lithium, and others.

The rapid development of metal-related industries made Zhao Xu feel a sense of comfort in his heart.

For military technology, the metal industry is clearly one of the most important technologies.

After staying in the west of the city for the whole morning, Zhao Xu went to the chemical workshop district in the north of the city in the afternoon.

After the birth of electricity, chemical technology can be said to have ushered in a period of great explosion.

Qu Sheng and the students under his command synthesized many compounds that could not be manufactured before in a short period of time.

Now, he is coordinating with the Industrial Department, preparing to realize the industrial production of these compounds.

For example, ammonia.

The large-scale industrial method for ammonia is to synthesize it using hydrogen and nitrogen under high temperature and high pressure.

Since it was impossible to manufacture pure hydrogen before, this was naturally impossible to achieve.

But with electricity, industrial production of ammonia became possible.

And the application of this thing, ammonia, is very extensive.

It can also catalyze more chemical industries.

For example, when manufacturing nitric acid in the past, it was necessary to use saltpeter; now it can be prepared directly through ammonia, the cost has come down, and the scale has gone up.

After being able to industrially prepare ammonia, this Hou's Process, invented by the Chinese in the early 20th century, can also be realized.

Ammonia and salt plus carbon dioxide can produce soda ash, and there is no longer a need to use alkali mines to obtain soda ash.

At the same time, the byproduct of soda ash, ammonium chloride, is a material for chemical fertilizer.

This is equivalent to incidentally establishing the chemical fertilizer industry.

It can be said that as long as one point of the chemical industry is broken through, a series of related chemicals can be broken through.

After inspecting these workshops under construction in the chemical workshop district, Zhao Xu focused his inspection on various rubber products in the Rubber Workshop.

Busy until evening, he then returned to the Prince's Mansion.

The next day, he went to the light industry workshop district in the east of the city.

Light industry is naturally textiles and food.

After connecting to electricity and replacing the steam engines in the workshops with electric motors, Zhao Xu's most intuitive feeling was that the output of the textile industry had been greatly improved.

As for the steam engine equipment of the textile workshops in the past, it was sold to private merchants—backward production capacity is still production capacity.

The Great Song is too large, and development cannot be fully rolled out all at once; one can only choose areas with convenient transportation to focus on development first.

Therefore, these eliminated steam engines can be transferred to the more western inland areas.

In the light industry workshop district, after Zhao Xu inspected the traditional Weaving Mill and Spinning Mill, he went to the emerging clothing and trade factories, such as the hat workshop, shoe-making workshop, and clothing workshop.

With the cooperation of the Research Institute and the machinery workshops, the treadle sewing machine was researched and developed last year.

This type of machine, born in the mid-nineteenth century, did not have a complex structure and could be fully manufactured with the industrial level of Yancheng.

Afterwards, he came to the two key Workshops for this inspection.

One was the canned food Workshop, and the other was the battery Workshop.

Canned food concerned military supplies; while Roasted Flour was certainly convenient to carry, it lacked nutrition and was a method adopted only when there were no other conditions.

If conditions allowed, naturally one could not let the soldiers just eat Roasted Flour.

Fighting a war was a time-consuming and laborious task, so soldiers should be fed better.

"Your Highness, we are currently adjusting the equipment, and we can officially begin production in half a month." Upon arriving at the canned food Workshop, the person in charge of the canned food Workshop came up to greet him.

The canned food Workshop was composed of two workshop areas, with one half used to manufacture the tin cans.

That is, using thin steel plates provided by the Steel Workshop to be tinned, and then using stamping equipment to directly shape the steel plates.

Because the steel plates had high flexibility, one only needed to place the steel plate on the mold, and when the cylindrical cutter of the stamping machine pressed down, the tin can was born.

As for the food, it only needed to be cooked and then heat-sterilized, and by sealing the can while it was hot, a canned food product would appear.

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