funbook-pk Chapter 673 Problems with Thinking
Chapter 673 Problems with Thinking
He also had plans for recruiting manpower, including sharing the benefits of maritime trade and Taiwan's land resources, gathering as many Ming Dynasty gentry as possible, and then recruiting manpower through them.
But all of this takes time.
According to reports, the Dutch have begun building fortifications in Penghu. With Chen Er's current strength, he will definitely suffer a great loss against the European forces that combine firearms and cold weapons.
Chen Er really didn't want to form an army now. The navy was mostly controlled by people from Fujian, and he didn't want the army to be in the same situation.
It's not that I'm worried they'll sideline me, but teams mostly composed of people from one place tend to have a natural aversion to newcomers from other places.
In this way, they will instinctively block the upward mobility of those who join later. Those who arrive first already possess a first-mover advantage.
Since large-scale development was not possible for the time being, Chen Er shifted his focus to training personnel and improving production efficiency.
Chen Er was somewhat lost in thought as he looked at the musket that Yu Yuan and Wu Ang had brought. This musket was the one that Yu Yuan and Wu Ang had taken out after many experiments and were preparing to finalize.
The entire musket is 1.36 meters long, weighs 12.6 jin, has a bullet weight of 9 qian, and uses 6.3 qian of powder. It can penetrate triple armor at a distance of 150 meters.
As per Chen Er's request, this musket was clearly a heavy matchlock gun, requiring a tripod for firing.
Hearing the weight unit "two qian" made Chen Er's head spin. He had been here for two years, and when he heard this weight unit, his first thought was how many kilograms or how many grams it was.
Let's change it. This can't go on like this; the current units of weight are too vague. Anyone with a modern junior high school education or above knows that units of weight and volume are based on water.
One cubic decimeter of water weighs one kilogram and has a volume of one liter. The production of distilled water is very simple, and units of length are now available, but Chen Er seems to recall that the kilogram of distilled water was used as a standard under low-temperature conditions.
What was the temperature again? I vaguely remember it being between 0°C and 5°C. I didn't have a thermometer. Fujian was already quite cold at the end of October, and it must have been below 0°C in the north.
That's about right, that's what Chen Er thought. He decided to do it right away. He made a cube with an inner diameter of 10 centimeters in length, width, and height, using high-purity gold.
Two gold containers of equal weight were made in just two days.
Two containers are placed on opposite ends of a balance scale. One container is filled with distilled water, and the other is empty. After balancing with gold, the amount added is one kilogram of gold.
The kilogram first appeared in the second year of the Tianqi reign of the Ming Dynasty. There must have been some error, but Chen Er estimated it to be within 10 grams. Let's leave it at that.
Chen Er felt he was going crazy from the Ming Dynasty's strict system of measuring grains, jin, liang, and qian. When he first weighed 1 kilogram of rice using a scale made by a carpenter, Chen Er felt as if he had returned to the modern era.
This feeling is exactly the same as when I returned to China after traveling in England. Being tortured by the pound for half a month was truly an agonizing experience.
The musket weighs 7.4 kg, with a bullet weighing 32.5 g and a powder weighing 18.6 g.
One shi (石) of rice weighs 94.5 kilograms, one liang (两) of silver is about 37.3 grams, and one jin (斤) in the Ming dynasty system is about 596.8 grams.
Ah, that feels great. I'm finally back in a familiar world.
Immediately, right now, make Taiwan adopt the new system of weights and measures.
Chen Er was about to send an order to Taiwan to change the system of weights and measures, but then he realized a big problem—currency.
Forget about length units, the value of the Ming Dynasty's currency was directly linked to weight units, so changing the weight unit meant issuing a new currency.
This is too complicated; it's beyond what Chen Er can handle in his current state.
Wait a minute, we could set up a bank! Banks can regulate currency differences; that's what the British pound did, wasn't it?
It is now known that one tael of silver weighs approximately 37.3 grams. The currency of the Ming Dynasty was actually copper coins, but due to issues with the issuance volume and quality standards, silver directly became the currency.
The lowest denomination currency in the Ming Dynasty was the copper coin, with 1000 copper coins being equivalent to 37.3 grams of silver, or one tael.
So, can the currency you issue be linked to this ratio, or can it still use the yuan, jiao, and fen standard? If one yuan is marked as one tael of silver, then one copper coin cannot be linked.
So 10 yuan is exactly equivalent to one tael of silver, and one coin is equal to one cent.
Banks are a great thing. I remember reading an article that said one of the important reasons for the economic collapse at the end of the Ming Dynasty was the direct circulation of silver in the market.
We need to discuss this with Hsu Hsin-su, Li Dan, and Yen Szu-chi as soon as possible. The common people in Taiwan don't have any money right now, so this is a good time to issue currency.
For Chen Er, there was never a way to smoothly advance any matter or problem in this time and space.
Because the Ming Dynasty was so different from the world he was familiar with, whenever he encountered a problem, it would always lead to a series of other problems.
Two days ago, we were still deciding on the design of the musket, but suddenly we were turned to discussing the issue of weight and volume units.
Once the issue of weights and measures was resolved, the currency issue came to the fore. The design of the firearm was thus delayed for four days.
When Yu Yuan came to inquire about the finalization of the musket design again, Chen Er had a new idea.
This is a matchlock smoothbore musket. Chen Er was well aware of the history of firearms development. Before the maturity of percussion cap firing technology, muzzle-loading muskets went through several stages: matchlock muskets, flintlock muskets, and flintlock rifled muskets.
However, with the technology of the Ming Dynasty, it was possible to produce any type of muzzle-loading gun; the only issues were production volume and quality.
The flintlock musket only changed the ignition method; the power source for the firing hammer evolved from copper to steel.
In the history of the previous timeline, these applications evolved through gradual experimentation, but Chen Er did not need this process at all.
At this time, the Ming Dynasty's steel production was unparalleled in the world, and the crucible steelmaking process could already produce high, medium, and low carbon steels. The only remaining task was designing firing mechanisms and testing which type of steel to use for the shrapnel.
The same principle applies to rifled guns; the production of rifled guns was gradually increased due to the invention of certain tools.
These were not technical problems in the Ming Dynasty; they were simply problems of approach.
Early rifled guns had low usage rates due to manufacturing and loading issues, but this was not a problem for Chen Er. Nobody knew about Minié bullets in this era, but he did.
When I was a kid, my family always had two air rifles.
Then Chen Er thought of the bayonet. The bayonet's locking mechanism is very simple. There is no need to do anything extra on the barrel. A ring-type locking device can solve this problem.
Add a locking device to the bayonet handle, extend the handguard, and make a loop that can fit over the muzzle.
Thinking of this, Chen Er simply asked Yu Yuan to call all the master chefs over for a meeting.
Let's take advantage of today to set the weapon standards, because the same applies to artillery. If muskets can be made with flintlock mechanisms, why can't artillery?