Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 242 Electrification and the Internal Combustion Engine

After confirming that Tesla would work and study in shifts at the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Royal College of Science, Carlo no longer hesitated and arranged a job position and a major for Tesla.

Although Tesla was a versatile scientist, he is best known for his work with alternating current and radio.

It was for this reason that Carlo decided to let Tesla join Gramm's electrical laboratory to conduct research related to electricity and engines.

Currently, Gram's electricity laboratory is studying the long-distance transmission and storage of electricity. I believe that Tesla's joining will allow Gram to discover more inspiration and perhaps promote the use of electricity in Spain earlier.

In addition to working in Gramm's electrical laboratory, Tesla also continued to study for a master's degree in physics, mathematics, and mechanics at the Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain.

Carlo also personally promised Tesla that as long as he could successfully complete his master's degree in three majors and get excellent grades within three years, Carlo would allow Tesla to set up his own laboratory to conduct his own research.

When Tesla heard that there was a hope to set up his own laboratory, he immediately agreed. Although Tesla was only a college student who had just graduated, setting up his own laboratory was an irresistible temptation for any scientist who loved scientific research.

In order to prevent Tesla from being at a loss after entering Gramm's electrical laboratory, Carlo specifically instructed Gramm to personally take Tesla to conduct some electrical experiments so that Tesla could understand the electrical laboratory.

Because of Carlo's instructions, Gramm also paid great attention to Tesla who joined the Electric Power Laboratory midway.

Although the other party was a college graduate who had just turned 22, Gramm saw Tesla's potential in the brief contact.

Gramm had complained to Carlo a long time ago about the lack of high-end talent in the electrical laboratory. Although Tesla was young, he was indeed a trustworthy talent in electricity.

Because of this, Gram was not at all dissatisfied with the fact that he had to take time out of his busy schedule to help Tesla master the data and information of the Power Laboratory. Instead, he hoped that Tesla could quickly adapt to the rhythm of the Power Laboratory under his leadership, and then contribute more inspiration and ideas to the experiments in the Power Laboratory.

In addition to relying on the ability and talent of scientists, scientific research also tests their imagination. Sometimes the success and failure of an experiment is just a matter of thought. A seemingly insignificant idea may determine the success or failure of an experiment.

As a famous mad scientist in later generations, Tesla's talent in scientific research is naturally beyond words. Although he had just joined the power laboratory, he often raised some questions that others could hardly think of in the experiment, which effectively accelerated the progress of the power laboratory's experiments.

More than ten days later, Gram personally reported to Carlo on Tesla's performance over the past ten days, and praised Tesla as a rare genius in the power industry in a century.

After learning that Tesla was pursuing a postgraduate degree in physics, mathematics and mechanics at the Royal College of Science, Gramm personally asked Carlo to serve as Tesla's postgraduate tutor in physics and mechanics.

It was certainly a good thing that a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences was willing to serve as Tesla's graduate supervisor.

What's more, the person who was willing to serve as a mentor was Gramm, a pioneer in the electric power industry and a well-known scientist of his time.

If it were not for the contributions made by electricity pioneers such as Gramm to the electricity industry, there would be no current dispute between Edison and Tesla.

Without the current competition, there would be no commercial use of electricity. Although this may be a bit exaggerated, the contributions of electricity pioneers such as Gramm to the electricity industry are not small at all, and they are also worthy of praise and praise.

At present, Gramm's electrical laboratory has achieved many research results, the most important of which are electric motors, generators and light bulbs.

One of Madrid's busiest streets has been fully equipped with street lights, with free lighting hours from 6:30 to 10:30 every evening.

As for the late night after 10:30, street lamps are naturally not needed for lighting. After all, this era is different from the later generations. In this era, those who go out in the middle of the night are either government and official staff or some dangerous elements.

Judging from the reactions of Madrid citizens, people still like street lights that can provide lighting at night.

Of course, in order to provide four hours of lighting for Madrid's busiest street, Gram's electrical laboratory built two large thermal power plants on the outskirts of Madrid, which barely met the lighting needs of one street.

Some large government meeting rooms and Carlo's Royal Palace are also illuminated by light bulbs, and the electricity consumed by these bulbs is provided by other thermal power plants.

Although most of the electricity is currently used for lighting, lighting alone can fully demonstrate the role of electricity.

Before the invention of light bulbs, people basically relied on fire for lighting. Whether it was a kerosene lamp or a torch, the flame was dim and flickered.

On the other hand, light bulbs provide more stable lighting and are much brighter than kerosene lamps and torches. If the transportation of electricity were not a problem, some factories outside Madrid would have considered purchasing light bulbs to provide lighting.

If the factory can be equipped with a large number of light bulbs, it also means that the factory may be able to implement a two-shift system of day shift and night shift.

It may not be a big deal in the summer, but in the winter when it gets dark early, the effect of light bulbs is still very obvious.

With the lighting of bright enough light bulbs, workers can also ensure their safety when they are working at night. After all, only by seeing the surrounding environment clearly can workers stay away from more dangerous places.

Gram naturally also knows the main reasons that hinder the commercial use of electricity. Currently, the power laboratory is vigorously researching the transmission and storage methods of electricity.

Of course, there is also the issue of generator power. Currently, the maximum power of the generator in the power laboratory is only 6.5KW, which can only drive a small motor or hundreds of light bulbs.

Adding in the resistance and power consumption generated during power transmission, only three-quarters of the electricity generated by a power plant is used at most, while one-quarter is consumed in the process of power transmission.

In order to meet the electricity needs of the royal palace and government buildings, three sets of thermal generators were installed in the thermal power plant near the royal palace. The maximum power generation capacity has reached 3KW, which is definitely the largest power plant in the world.

However, due to the loss of electricity during transmission, this largest thermal power plant in the world can only meet the electricity needs of the royal palace and government buildings, but there is no way to meet the electricity needs of the parliament building which is further away.

If we want to promote the commercial use of electricity now, we must build a thermal power plant in every factory and place where electricity is needed.

But this is absolutely impossible, and it is precisely this major limitation that has made it difficult to promote and commercialize electricity.

Taking advantage of the opportunity of Tesla joining the Electric Power Laboratory, Carlo once again approved the Electric Power Laboratory's application for more research and development funds, and asked the Royal Security Intelligence Agency to collect more electric power talents for the Electric Power Laboratory throughout Europe, so as to strive to solve the problem of power transmission in a shorter time.

As long as the two major problems of power transmission and power generation are solved, current electricity can enter the era of commercial use.

After all, to put it bluntly, the commercialization of any technology evolves slowly, and it is impossible to wait until the power system is comparable to that of future generations before entering the commercial stage.

When electricity enters the stage of commercial use and full promotion in the future, Gram's electricity laboratory will be reorganized into the Spanish National Electricity Company, which will be responsible for promoting the use and commercial use of electricity throughout Spain.

In the future, the industrial bases in Madrid, Seville and Barcelona will vigorously promote the use of electricity.

The era of electrification has made Germany and the United States successively become the shining pearls of the world, and Carlo naturally wants Spain to have a piece of the pie.

As the biggest beneficiary of the First Industrial Revolution, the British Empire has now enjoyed enough glory and glorious history.

Now is the time for Spain to enjoy this feeling. Spain must be one of the promoters of electrification and also one of the biggest beneficiaries of electrification.

This is still very likely to be achieved. Although Britain established a fairly large industrial system with the help of the First Industrial Revolution, it also gave birth to a large number of factory owners and capitalists who became rich because of industrial development.

It is easier to promote electrification in countries like Germany and the United States and Spain than in the United Kingdom because electrification is a completely new technology compared to the technology born of the first industrial revolution.

If Britain wants to fully promote electrification, it must completely replace the equipment and factories of the First Industrial Revolution.

A comprehensive replacement of industrial equipment would mean huge expenditures and would also affect the production of those factories and the interests of factory owners.

Would the capitalists, who only care about money, agree to do this? Of course they would not.

Britain could have achieved steady growth in industry simply by using the technologies of the First Industrial Revolution, so why risk electrification?

Although new technologies have more potential, they also often mean more problems and potential risks.

It was precisely because of this reason that Britain failed to keep up with the Second Industrial Revolution and its industrial scale was surpassed by the United States and Germany successively.

The British government may have seen this problem, but they cannot change it. Fully promoting electrification means standing against existing factory owners and capitalists, which is absolutely impossible for Britain to do at present.

Because this would hurt the foundation of Britain, making the British Empire's huge industrial system extremely fragile in an instant, and might even trigger greater civil unrest and crisis.

In addition to paying Gramm's electrical laboratory an additional research budget, Carlo also paid Benz's automotive laboratory a research and development fund.

Nearly four years have passed since Benz made a simple prototype of a car, and the automobile laboratory has achieved more results in these four years.

However, due to insufficient industrial capacity, automobiles cannot be mass-produced at present, and the annual output is only a few hundred vehicles.

So far, the Spanish government has purchased more than 400 cars, nearly half of which have become exclusive vehicles for cabinet ministers and heads of some important departments.

Although these simple cars still have many problems, they are much faster than horse-drawn carriages.

Take the car that Carlo rides in as an example. The car that Carlo rides in is equipped with the latest engine developed by the engine research laboratory, and it only needs to be inspected once every 350 kilometers on average.

Even though Carlo's carriage was modified, with steel plates embedded inside and the area of ​​the carriage increased, this car specially provided to Carlo could reach a speed of about 25 kilometers per hour.

It is not an exaggeration for a faster military horse to reach a speed of 25 kilometers per hour, but if it is a horse-drawn carriage, such a speed is a bit exaggerated.

Because of the large number of simple cars, communication between Spanish government departments has become more convenient. Before, if you took a horse-drawn carriage, a visit between two departments might take about half an hour.

After the means of transportation became simple cars, the travel between the two departments only took a dozen minutes, greatly saving the time required for officials to travel back and forth between departments.

Carlo's specially modified car can still reach a speed of 25 kilometers per hour. Those cars that are not modified too much, or have basically not been modified, can basically reach a speed of about 30 kilometers per hour.

At present, officials within the government are quite satisfied with such cars, and some officials have even proposed purchasing a car for private use.

Considering that such cars need to be inspected every 300 kilometers to prevent problems from occurring during driving, Carlo ultimately rejected the officials' proposal.

However, Carlo also gave an order to Benz and others, which was to improve the stability of the engine as soon as possible and increase the car's stable driving distance from 350 kilometers to more than 500 kilometers.

In terms of speed and power, such a car already has quite important functions. However, due to the poor stability of the engine, it will break down from time to time.

This has also made it difficult for cars to enter the commercialization stage. Carlo asked the Spanish government to purchase more than 400 cars for public use. On the one hand, he also wanted to provide more relevant data to the automobile laboratory through a large number of experiments.

Gramm's electrical laboratory was Spain's hope for promoting the electrification of the industry, while Benz's automobile laboratory was Spain's hope for leading the world in internal combustion engines.

The importance of electrification is self-evident, and the importance of the internal combustion engine is no less than that of electrification.

The heavy weapons aircraft and tanks of the future will all use internal combustion engines as their power, and cars and other machinery will also use internal combustion engines in large quantities.

If Spain can take a two-pronged approach in electrification and internal combustion engines, it will be truly confident enough to compete with superpowers such as Britain and Germany.

If Spain can be at the forefront of the world in the research and development of both tanks and aircraft, it can ensure that Spain will gain huge benefits in the next two world wars and truly become a superpower.

In addition to improving the stability of the four-stroke engine, the task of Benz and others was to explore the assembly line production method proposed by Carlo as much as possible to increase automobile production.

Carlo gave a deadline, which was to promote the commercialization of automobiles before 1885 and make Spanish cars global.

Before that, Benz and others had to at least ensure that the finished car would not have any problems during a single 500-kilometer trip or 15 hours of continuous driving.

In order to facilitate car owners to repair their cars in time after problems arise, the automobile company, after the reorganization of the automobile laboratory, will also need to build auto repair shops in various regions of Spain and even in European countries to help car owners detect whether there are any problems with their cars and repair them more quickly.

Only after all these are done can the car be officially commercialized, because only when the problems that arise during the use of the car are solved will people be willing to buy the car.

Otherwise, no matter how great the potential of cars is or how useful they are, if the problem is not solved, no one will buy them.

In addition to building auto repair shops, Spain also needs to build relevant energy supply stations everywhere. No matter which kind of energy is used as the power of the internal combustion engine, it needs a constant supply of energy to provide power.

The four-stroke gas engine currently used in Benz's automotive laboratory can be said to be one of the best engines in the world, but the thermal efficiency of such an engine is only about 11% to 13%.

Compared with the thermal efficiency of later engines that easily exceeds 40%, this thermal efficiency is obviously quite backward.

The so-called thermal efficiency is actually the utilization rate of the energy and heat consumed by the engine. Such data also means that even the most advanced engines in later generations have a thermal efficiency of less than half, and more than half of the fuel is wasted.

In this era, because the thermal efficiency is only a pitiful 11% to 13%, this also means that at least 87% of the energy is wasted.

Although it is a pity, there is no way to improve it. The thermal efficiency of the engine can only be improved with the continuous advancement of technology and the repeated scientific research and efforts of relevant experimenters.

Until technology is advanced, there won't be much change in this regard, even if Carlo is willing to spend money.

Fortunately, oil, an important energy source in the future, is still in an undeveloped state. There are large oil fields in the Middle East that have not yet been discovered. Spain hopes to obtain some land in the Middle East through various means and control certain oil reserves.

Most of the land in the Middle East is currently uninhabited desert, so it is relatively easy to acquire a piece of land.

Britain was the only great power to colonize the Middle East, and this was also the sphere of influence of the Ottoman Empire. For Spain, as long as it obtained the permission of the British, it would not be a problem to take a piece of land in the Middle East, and it could even be said to be easy.

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(End of this chapter)