Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 526 Steam Pump

After renting the house, Mao Qizon took his son to buy furniture.

Due to the construction of various royal palaces and university towns, a building materials and home furnishing market has long been established here.

Although Mao Qizon was not sure how long his son would live here, he still had to buy some necessary furniture and bedding.

Not to mention that many of these furniture are designed for new houses such as townhouses and are very suitable for use.

Mao Qizong first selected a desk and bookcase for his son, and then bought a few armchairs, round chairs, stools, and a bed for entertaining guests.

The narrow one is more like the sofa in later generations, and you can sit down by leaning against the backrest. It is also called a bench with a backrest or a Luohan bed with a backrest.

The wide one is still the traditional Luohan bed, where one can sit cross-legged and place a kang table on it.

Most of these furniture were designed by Zhu Youjian, who ordered the craftsmen in the inner court to make them using wood shipped from the Principality of Jiangling.

It was used to expand financial resources for northern vassal states such as the Principality of Jiangling and strengthen their power.

Solid wood floors, solid wood stairs, etc. that consume more wood are also being produced.

However, the most eye-catching thing in the home furnishing market is not these, but the newly built glass windows in the inner court.

Zhu Youjian has always focused on the development of large-scale transparent flat glass technology, which is used to increase lighting in rooms and make glass mirrors.

After more than a year, there is still no sign of large pieces of flat glass, but small pieces of transparent glass made based on technologies such as colored glaze and medicinal jade have been successfully fired by craftsmen.

Although Zhu Youjian felt that it was too fragmented, he still asked carpenters to use window lattices to piece together small pieces of glass to make glass windows to replace window paper, and to replace the doors and windows of the Qianqing Palace and other palaces.

The reason why townhouses are built so deep is also related to the emergence of glass windows. Only with sufficient lighting can spacious houses remain bright.

The room sizes of the courtyard house are designed based on the use of glass windows. And the windows are also designed with the use of glass windows in mind.

The window sashes can be easily replaced, and there is an outer window on the outside to protect the glass and keep it warm in winter. There are also curtains on the inside to block out the light.

Therefore, this type of glass window is naturally suitable for townhouses.

When Mao Pijiang saw this kind of glass window, he liked it immediately, thinking how pleasant it would be to have a beautiful woman by his side under such a window.

But Mao Qizong looked at the price and didn't buy it from him.

It’s not that they can’t afford it, but the rented house is unnecessary.

He consoled himself in his heart that Mao Qizong should be thankful that he invested most of his money in the metal exchange. Otherwise, he would feel bad for wasting money when he saw the glass windows become very cheap in a few years.

Nowadays, most of the people who buy this are princes and nobles, as well as wealthy people who do not take money seriously.

After gaining some knowledge in the home furnishing market, Mao Qizon and Mao Pijiang instructed their employees to ship the purchased furniture back home.

On the way, they saw a group of people working on a tall water tower, apparently testing something new.

The two looked carefully and found that there was a windlass on the top of the water tower that could be driven by human or animal power, which is the so-called well wheel.

This thing was built by Song Yingxing under the guidance of craftsmen after he saw that it was inconvenient to draw water from the water tower.

For this purpose, the style of the water tower was changed so that livestock could be driven onto it.

The wells are also surrounded by water towers, and water can be drawn directly from the well in the middle.

It can be said that after the application of this thing, the cost of tap water has dropped sharply, and only one or two people are needed to meet the water supply needs of multiple households.

Song Yingxing received a lot of praise for this, and everyone praised him for his ingenuity.

However, Song Yingxing did not think there was anything to be proud of. He had seen many well trucks in salt wells. In salt wells thousands of meters deep, cattle were used to pull the turntable to lift the brine. Deep wells dug in Shaanxi to fight drought and oil extraction in Yanchang and other places also used well trucks.

The purpose of building this water tower was to test the steel produced in Yongping Prefecture for use in water pipes and newly improved heating and cooling pipes.

After the heating pipe has the function of a cooling pipe and becomes a heating and cooling pipe that combines heating and cooling, new requirements are put forward for the material to facilitate the use of hot water and ice water.

Song Yingxing was busy for several months, traveling back and forth between the capital and Yongping Prefecture several times, before he completed the task.

Now he was staring at the boiler that heated the water in the water tower, and the steam emitted by the hot water:
"Your Majesty says that steam is a power that can be used to pump water and drive machinery."

"Judging from this boiler, the steam it spews out is indeed very powerful and may be able to drive the well truck."

"If we use steam from boilers instead of animal power, the cost of the water tower will be much lower."

"And the hot water can be used for heating and bathing for residents."

This is a question he has been thinking about recently, and it is also a long-term task assigned to him by the emperor.

When Zhu Youjian came to this era, how could he not let people study the famous steam engine?
Although he didn't know how to make a steam engine specifically, he understood the basic principles.

To this end, he also "invented" a pressure cooker to show Song Yingxing and others the danger and power of high-pressure steam.

We hope that these people can invent the steam engine and usher the Ming Dynasty into the industrial age.

What Song Yingxing is thinking about now is a kind of machinery that the Ming Dynasty urgently needs, which is the original form of the steam engine.

Steam pump for dewatering coal mines.

After the promotion of honeycomb coal, the coal consumption in the capital increased greatly, and the mining depth of coal mines became deeper and deeper, requiring drainage machinery.

Water towers also require pumps to draw water and supply water.

What’s more important is that droughts and floods will occur frequently in the next ten years or so in the Ming Dynasty, and steam pumps will be urgently needed both for drainage and drought resistance.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian organized people to focus on the research and development of this machine. Steam locomotives, steam ships and the like were put behind.

Song Yingxing is now leading a group of people to study the water pump used to draw water on the water tower.

His first idea was to use steam instead of animal power to drive the capstan.

Because steam was unstable and sometimes had such great force that the wooden capstans could be broken, he replaced them with steel gears and continued to use steam belts.

Since it takes some time for steam to accumulate high pressure and it cannot move without pressure, he thought of the piston mentioned by the emperor.

The piston and gear are connected by a crank connecting rod that looks like an elbow, which can drive the gear to rotate regardless of whether the piston is retracted or extended.

It can be said that he had understood the principle of the steam engine from the emperor.

There are also ready-made boilers, which can be used to heat water in water towers for heating.

All he needed to do was to keep experimenting and create a practical steam engine.

There were also some craftsmen in Shaofu Temple and the Inner Court who were doing the same work.

The emperor offered a reward of hereditary barony to those who had made the greatest contributions among them.

Now that Lu Xiang has been conferred the title of hereditary baron, they all believe in the emperor's promise and work hard to obtain the title.

Not to mention that this invention has a huge market and can allow them to receive a lot of patent fees.

(End of this chapter)