Thirty-two-year-old Tang Dong was walking home, humming the tune of "The Romance of the West Chamber". Tang Dong is now a new employee in the glass workshop, earning thirty taels a month. He originally worked in a soap workshop, but it was ten days before last.
He was recruited into the soap workshop in February when it was expanding. Unexpectedly, after working for more than a year, the manager Li Yousheng said that he was honest and recommended him to work in the glass workshop.
In early March, nine thieves appeared in the glass workshop, stealing the technology of the city lord. The city lord killed the nine thieves, and hired nine people from the soap workshop and salt factory to the glass workshop, earning three to two months a month. Tang
Dong is one of these nine lucky people. What he does in the glass workshop is to add a powder to the glass liquid. This is very simple, just pour the powder in from outside the kiln while the glass liquid is still hot. Tang Donglian said
He didn't know what the powder was, and of course he didn't want to know.
Apart from the fact that the working environment is a bit hot, there are no disadvantages to this job. However, compared with the monthly salary of thirty taels, it is not a problem at all. The monthly salary of three taels is enough for Tang Dong and his family to live a good life. As soon as Tang Dong walked to the alley
As soon as he opened his mouth, three children who were playing in the alley rushed up and shouted: "Daddy is back!"
"Daddy!"
Tang Dong's family used to be poor and he got married late. Now his eldest daughter is only seven years old. At this time, the eldest daughter is holding Tang Dong's legs, and the two younger sons are spinning around Tang Dong, calling daddy constantly, which makes Tang Dong's face full of joy.
. These are days when girls can eat well and play happily, which makes people feel comfortable. Tang Dong took out a few pieces of No. 1 Candy from his arms and handed them to his eldest daughter, smiling: "Here are the candies for you!"
The eldest daughter clapped her hands happily before taking the number one candy. The two younger brothers saw that their sister had candy in her hand, and immediately stopped and looked at her eagerly. The sister thought for a while, one, two, three, four
She counted the number of candies and said happily: "Three pieces for each person!" She gave three pieces to her younger brother and three more to her second brother. Then she grabbed the candies happily and was not in a hurry to eat them.
He seems to be enjoying the happiness of having candy in his hands.
When Tang Dong saw his daughter's well-behaved appearance, he felt happy and picked her up. He walked into the house with his daughter in his arms and saw the boss of the Jie family who shared a house with him, learning calligraphy there.
A brush without ink copied repeatedly on the copybook given by the teacher at the private school. Tang Dong stood aside and looked at it, but he didn't understand what the character was. He smiled and said: "Boss Xie, what character did you write?"
The boss said: "What I wrote is the word 'righteousness'! Can't you understand it?"
Tang Dong touched his face and said, "Why are you learning this?" Boss Xie said, "Have you not noticed? Half of the supervisors promoted by the city lord are literate. Once they are literate, they will be very different in front of the city lord!" Tang Dong
He spat: "You still want to be a supervisor? Don't you want to look in the mirror?" Boss Jie laughed, ignored Tang Dong, lowered his head and continued to practice calligraphy.
Tang Dong put his daughter down and said to Boss Xie: "Boss Xie, I made up my mind when I was working today. I want a loan to buy a house. I'm afraid I won't be able to share a house with you in the future!" Boss Xie spat: "Look, look.
You are so proud that you have only been working in the glass workshop for a few days, but you no longer like the rented house and want to buy a house! Three or two months is not a big deal?" Boss Jie raised his head and said disdainfully: "Remember the year before last, you just said
When you came to this house, how shabby was your coat? I wouldn’t believe you if you said you weren’t a beggar!”
Boss Jie glanced at Tang Dong's eldest daughter again and said: "At that time, your three children were sallow, skinny, and skinny! It seemed like they would be broken at the slightest touch. In just over a year, they have grown into fat little ones one by one.
You're a girl!" "What did your women call you back then? They called you Tang Dayan! Now I know how to call you 'the boss'! This guy has changed so fast!"
Tang Dong laughed and said: "It's all thanks to the good job given by the city lord!" Mr. Jie laughed and said: "You said that your woman knows that you want to buy a house. Is she happy to have her own house or is she worried that there is not enough money to spend?" The two were talking.
Tang Dong's wife, who was spinning upstairs, heard it. She ran out and shouted in surprise: "Master, are you going to buy a house? Are we going to have our own small villa?" Tang Dong glanced at the boss and smiled.
.
After making reading glasses, Yang Peng started to make telescopes again. Telescopes are essential items for marching and fighting. They can see the subtle details and seize opportunities from miles away. Of course, they are products that need to be manufactured first. Yang Peng has learned about Cape
Le telescope, this kind of telescope has a very simple structure. It is just a combination of two convex lenses and two total reflection prisms, which can magnify distant objects dozens of times.
This simple telescope is enough for Yang Peng's current needs. On April 3, the first year of Xianping, Yang Peng hired jade grinders and asked them to grind an 80 mm diameter convex lens objective lens according to Yang Peng's drawings.
For the convex lens eyepiece with a diameter of 30 mm, two more total reflection prisms were ground. After the lens was ground, Yang Peng measured the focal lengths of the two lenses, and asked a coppersmith to make one with a large front and a small back, and folded it in the middle.
The objective lens, prism and eyepiece were all installed in the copper tube according to Yang Peng's drawings.
After it was completed, Yang Peng raised the telescope to the city wall and took a look. He found that the telescope was completed and he could see the small scenery in the distance. Yang Peng estimated that although the Kepler telescope has a simple structure, it has a magnification of at least 20.
Five times. Telescopes had just been invented in this era and were expensive. Even the Song Dynasty didn’t know what a telescope was. There was no unified Chinese name for a telescope. Yang Peng simply called it a telescope.
With the telescope, the scout's job will be easier. In the future, the scout will stand at a high place and use the telescope to scan, and can monitor the movement within more than ten miles. The need to rush to the enemy's vicinity and fight with the enemy's scouts will be relatively reduced. In fact, the need to rush to the enemy's vicinity and fight with the enemy's scouts is relatively reduced.
Yang Peng's soldiers are not very capable in combat, and their close combat ability is much worse than that of the Khitan scouts. Even the bandits' scouts are better in combat than Yang Peng's scouts. Once a fight breaks out, Yang Peng's scouts are often unable to
Get close to enemy troops.
Having a telescope can alleviate this problem to a great extent. Not only that, the crossbowmen can also benefit from this telescope. With the telescope, the crossbowmen's shooting correction work will be much more accurate. In the future, the correction soldiers can stand at a high place and can measure several miles.
You can clearly see the impact point of the crossbow arrows outside. Of course, with this telescope, the general can also better observe the battlefield situation, which is of great benefit.
The market for reading glasses has not yet opened, and sales are very few. Yang Peng asked the jade craftsmen who grind the lenses to stop making reading glasses and make telescopes together, and make more for the scouts and artillerymen. This telescope is of high military value, Yang Peng
Peng decided not to sell them to outsiders, but only to equip his own troops. If friendly forces need them, he could send a few as gifts if circumstances permit.
Zhang Xiang heard that his brother had made a telescope that could see far away, so he immediately rushed over from the military camp and snatched one away. After getting the telescope, Zhang Xiang climbed to the top floor of the Beicheng Tower and looked around at the outer city of Tianjing City.
Very excited. Yang Peng gave the first batch of twelve telescopes to Cheng Shijie and other senior officers, while the others were given to the scouts and crossbowmen of the Selection Group.
On April 7, the first year of Xianping, the first batch-cast Shibamen crossbow was installed on the arrow platform in the north of the city. Yang Peng handed a telescope to the crossbow commander who was responsible for calibrating the artillery landing point.
Let him try using a telescope to correct the crossbow angle.
The crossbow commander held the telescope and looked at it for a long time, with a look of excitement on his face, as if he had discovered a new world. After the crossbow commander got familiar with the telescope, the test firing began. The crossbow archers operated the crossbows, using musket gauges, musket rulers and
The angle of elevation is measured in degrees, and the arrow is fired towards a large circle drawn with lime one mile away. The effective range of a standard crossbow is one and a half miles, which means that it can achieve effective shooting effect on a specific target within 750 meters. The arrow path is basically a straight line.
Using a standard crossbow to hit a target one mile away is a projectile shot, and the shooting effect and accuracy will be reduced. But if the target is large enough, you can still hit it by adjusting the angle.
One mile away, the impact point of the arrow could not be clearly seen with the naked eye, and it was not even clear whether the crossbow arrow landed in the circle. But Yang Peng looked with a telescope and saw clearly that the crossbow arrow landed two feet to the left of the large lime circle.
Ten meters away, he crashed into a patch of reed grass. Yang Peng took off his binoculars and heard the crossbow commander shout loudly: "Eighteen steps to the left!"
The crossbowmen went up to drag the crossbow frame and relocated the crossbow arrows in the middle of the crossbow's arrow trough. According to the crossbow commander's observation, the crossbowmen readjusted the angle of the crossbow using the torque and fired again.
The crossbow fired again. With a whooshing sound, the crossbow arrow drew an arc in the air and flew towards the white circle one mile away. Finally, the crossbow arrow smashed into the large lime circle with a diameter of 30 meters.
A piece of dirt came out, and it bounced forward again.
The crossbow commander shouted excitedly: "Hit the target!" The crossbowmen jumped up and clapped their hands to celebrate. Being able to hit the target a mile away still made the crossbowmen very proud.
The demand for reading glasses is still slowly fermenting. People who bought glasses used the glasses in front of others, gradually attracting more buyers. Xie Jindao stood in front of Gaojia Optical Store, hesitant. Xie Jindao is a student,
That is, Xiucai. He took the examination for many years and passed the examination when he was 28 years old. At that time, his parents were still alive and the family raised him as a scholar. But Xiucai is not valuable these days, so he passed the examination in vain. He was busy
He has spent his whole life. Now he has sent away his deceased parents and makes a living by teaching at the Wang Family School. After a year of busy work, the students can only give him more than twenty taels.
Although more than twenty taels should have been enough for him, Xie Jindao was fond of drinking and was addicted to alcohol. Every time he had a few dollars on hand, he would buy alcohol to live on, so he could not save much money throughout the year. That is,
A greedy drinker, Xie Jindao is still single at the age of forty-eight without a wife. In the past few years, Xie Jindao feels that his health is getting worse and worse. First of all, his legs and feet are not flexible. He used to walk on the twenty-mile mountain road for a long time.
It's okay. Now I can't walk the ten miles of flat road from Wangjiazhuang to Cangzhou City. I have to rest twice on the way. Secondly, my hands start to shake. I don't know why they are shaking so much that they won't stop shaking unless I put them on something.
Could it be that he drank too much? But these are all trivial matters. The most troublesome thing is that his glasses have started to get old. As a scholar, the presbyopia of his glasses is really a big problem. He can’t see clearly when reading, can’t write well, and finally
The worst thing is that he can't teach well. Xie Jindao can't see clearly the article written by the student. He holds it up from a distance and squints to read. At least three of the ten words have to be guessed. Only by combining the context can he guess what the student wrote.
Thing. How can this be done? Xie Jindao will be fired by the head of the Wang family if this continues.
Without the work of this clan scholar, Xie Jindao would starve to death. He was a scholar, but he did not want to starve to death in Cangzhou City in his forties.
Xie Jindao met the accountant of the Wang family a few days ago. He saw the accountant wearing two pieces of glass on his nose and doing accounts there. Xie Jindao asked him, "Don't you have presbyopic glasses?" The accountant pointed at his nose proudly.
The glass piece on the top said: "Just these two pieces of glass, ten taels of silver!" Xie Jindao didn't understand at the time and asked: "What is so expensive!" The accountant said: "These are called glasses, they are designed to treat presbyopia.
, I bought it for ten taels of silver, and when I put it on, I can read the words clearly."
Only then did Xie Jindao know that there is such a thing in the world that can cure presbyopia. He tried the accountant's glasses, but it had no effect. The accountant said that everyone's glasses are different and he has to go to the store to get them. Xie Jindao
I don’t doubt the effectiveness of these glasses. After all, they cost ten taels of silver. How can you earn so much silver if they are not effective? He and the accountant asked about the location of the Gao family’s store and walked here.
But when he got here, he was a little reluctant to part with it. Ten taels of silver was enough to buy five jars of Bianjing wine - he had been reluctant to drink Bianjing wine in the past few years. In recent years, the gifts given by his students to Xiu Xiu were all meager, and he
I just bought some Tiancangzhou native wine to live my life.
But if this presbyopia is not cured, let alone drinking, he will not be able to eat. Xie Jindao sighed and walked into the Gaojia Optical Shop with ten taels of silver. There were several people in the shop, and besides himself there were two
A customer was auditioning. As soon as Xie Jindao entered the store, a boy came up to him and said with a smile: "Sir, what's your surname? Are you here to treat presbyopia?"
Xie Jindao straightened his clothes and said, "My surname is Xie, and I am a student." The boy suddenly realized, and immediately said with great respect, "It turns out to be Mr. Xie. How many years has Mr. Xie been presbyopic?" Xie Jindao was still there.
Feeling pain in his heart, he said angrily: "It's been two years, I'm so old that I can't read the student's articles clearly."
The boy said wait a moment, then went to the back and took out a box of glasses, took out a pair and put it on Xie Jindao, and said, "Ms. Xie, what do you think of these two Baidu glasses?"
As soon as he put on the glasses, Xie Jindao squinted at the "Spring and Autumn" on the table, flipped through it, and found that he could clearly read the words on it. Xie Jindao helplessly narrowed his eyes, secretly thinking that these ten taels of silver were definitely
It’s time to spend it!
The five jars of Bianjing wine were all gone. Xie Jindao said in a rough voice: "See clearly!" The boy did not let go of Xie Jindao, and handed over a pair of glasses to remove the stain on Xie Jindao's nose.
The deputy was replaced and said: "Xie Xianggong, try this two hundred and twenty-five degrees again!"
The boy got another 250-degree pair for Xie Jindao. He put it on and tried the effect, but found that it was not as good as the 225-degree one. The boy then said: "That's the pair of 250-degree ones."
It's a hundred and twenty-five degrees!" Xie Jindao was not surprised by the effect of these glasses. The thing sold for ten taels of silver must have such an effect, otherwise he could make so much money? He actually felt sorry for the ten taels of silver again.
Xie Jindao looked at the shopkeeper of the optical shop who was sitting inside and saw that he was looking at him expectantly. He couldn't help snorting - these profit-seeking businessmen are really eating people without spitting out their bones. Two pieces of glass cost ten dollars.
Two silver coins!
Xie Jindao slapped the ten taels of silver on the table and said coldly: "The silver is here, you should put it away!" The boy walked in with the silver, weighed it with a scale, and then smiled
He then said, "Ms. Xie, we have a box for you, please wait." The boy walked in and took out a rectangular box, handed it to Xie Jindao, and said, "This is a box specially designed to store glasses, thank you
Sir, you’ve got it ready!”
Xie Jindao breathed a sigh of relief when he thought that now that he had cured his presbyopia and that Mr. Xu's job could be saved. However, when he thought about spending a full ten taels of silver, five jars of Bianjing wine, Xie Jindao couldn't help but think of it.
He snorted heavily.
Profit-seeking merchants! They don’t understand the teachings of saints! He took the glasses case with a wave of his hand, and Xie Jindao walked away wearing his glasses.
The rifle workshop can now produce 500 rifles per month. By the beginning of April, Yang Peng had 8,200 flintlock rifles equipped with his troops.
The two thousand veterans of the Selection Regiment have their own special rifles. They train with their own rifles every day and maintain their own rifles. The soldiers of the Polu Regiment have not yet produced all their rifles, so they can only take turns using the rifles for training. On weekdays, the Polu Regiment
Soldiers carried wooden sticks to simulate a rifle training queue. During target practice, more than a thousand rifles were placed on the shooting range for the use of soldiers from the Polu Regiment who took turns to practice target shooting. Soldiers from the Polu Regiment practiced target twice a week, each time
Twelve rounds were fired, and in three months each person had hit the target 300 times.
Compared with traditional soldiers, musketeers have the advantage of forming an army quickly. The soldiers of the Polu regiment fired 300 rounds of ammunition, and they can basically hit the human-shaped target 200 meters away during target practice. After a few months of training, they can form an army.
Flintlock rifles have the trouble of lead hanging: after the lead bullets rub against the rifling of the rifle for a long time, the lead on the edge of the bullet will be adsorbed on the rifling, causing the rifling to fail. Therefore, every rifle must be taken to a rifle workshop after firing two hundred rounds.
Go clean the hanging lead and let the gunsmiths use a broaching machine to pull out the lead attached to the rifling.
Fortunately, lead is relatively soft and can be quickly cleaned with a steel broach. Gunsmiths can clean twenty rifles a day.
Flintlock rifles use softer lead bullets, and the life of the barrel is about 5,000 rounds. The soldiers of the Selective Regiment did less target shooting after they became an army. Most of the rifles have not reached the end of their service life. They can only destroy mountains.
The first batch of 125 rifles dispatched during the free time had more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and were scrapped. There were few scrapped rifles, and the number of usable rifles is still increasing at a rate of 200 per month. Not one can be used.
In this month, all soldiers of the Polu Regiment can have their own rifles.
However, for Yang Peng, this production speed was still too slow. To prepare for a rainy day, Yang Peng sent people to various prefectures and counties to recruit craftsmen and ordinary blacksmiths.
The people sent out by Yang Peng were headed by Zhan Jinguo. This time, Yang Peng gave each of the gunsmith apprentices recruited by Zhanjin Kingdom twenty taels of money and ten taels of moving expenses, and asked them to rent a gunsmith in Tianjing New City.
Live in a villa built by Yang Peng. After working as an apprentice for a period of time, he will be rewarded seven coins of silver for every rifle he produces. The high salary offered by Yang Peng attracts many craftsmen. Everywhere the recruiters go, they basically bring people around Cangzhou.
All the craftsmen in the city were attracted to the job fair, and the scene was very lively. The recruiters visited six prefectures and counties and completed Yang Peng's recruitment target. If Yang Peng hadn't emphasized the need for interviews and asked the officials to only recruit honest people.
Craftsmen, I am afraid that more than a thousand craftsmen from six prefectures and counties will flock to Tianjing New City.
In the end, Yang Peng ushered in more than 80 gunsmiths who could make flintlocks and more than 210 blacksmiths, a total of 300 people, and asked these blacksmiths to move to Tianjing New City to become gunsmith apprentices.
Of course, in order to keep it secret, Yang Peng did not tell the new gunsmith apprentices the secret of the rifling. The gunsmith apprentices only learned to make smoothbore flintlock guns with thicker tube walls. After completing various inspections in accordance with the rules, they would make
Good muskets are handed over to experienced gunsmiths for rifling. If the work of rifling is concentrated on the experienced gunsmiths, Yang Peng's confidentiality work will be much easier.
Accuracy cannot be guaranteed in the manual era. There are always some differences in the caliber of guns handmade by different gunsmiths, but this does not affect the rifling operation of the broaching machine. The broaching machine designed by Yang Peng is very flexible. If the gun bore is one millimeter wider, it only needs
Just put an extra layer of thick paper under the broach of the broaching machine to raise the broach, and vice versa.
Yang Peng gave the old gunsmiths an average monthly salary of four taels, and the confidentiality requirements for them were also very strict. Yang Peng personally told these gunsmiths that if anyone leaked the secret of rifling to the outside, the leaker would be shot directly. The Lord of the City
The ruthless gunsmiths all know that the nine glass workshop thieves have been killed by the city lord. No one is willing to abandon the good life of Tianjing New City and risk their lives to betray the secret of rifling.
The new apprentices are not involved in the drawing of rifling, and are not involved in the secret work of flintlock rifles, so their income is naturally not as good as that of old gunsmiths. After the new two hundred gunsmiths are recruited, they will be paid two taels per month during the apprenticeship, but will they be able to do anything after graduation?
For each rifled rifle, the bonus is one tael. Of course, three taels of silver bonus are given to the master craftsman, and only seven taels are given to the apprentice. But in any case, the monthly income of 2 taels and seven taels is also very high.
Quite impressive.
You must know that Li Zhi also provided three meals a day for the gunsmiths and apprentices. Among these new apprentices, the craftsmen began to learn to make smoothbore flintlock rifles when they arrived in Tianjing New City, and a month later began to independently produce unrifled rifles.
The blacksmiths who did not know how to make did not immediately start learning to make flintlock rifles after arriving in Tianjing New City. Instead, they were organized to make bayonets for existing flintlock rifles.
Yang Peng wanted to equip the musketeers with bayonets. The infantry in Yang Peng's army only had musketeers. There were no pikemen or sword and shield soldiers to protect the musketeers. Once in close combat, they relied on the musketeers for hand-to-hand combat. Previously, Yang Peng gave each musketeer
They are all equipped with a long knife, but obviously the long knife has no lethality against the cavalry, which is not conducive to the musketeers maintaining morale when facing the cavalry. Yang Peng decided to follow the practice of the long gun and add a detachable bayonet to the flintlock rifle as a firearm.
A gunner's cold weapon.
The bayonet blade designed by Yang Peng is fifty centimeters long, with the blade at the bottom and serrations engraved on the back. The bayonet can stab or cut. Once it penetrates the enemy's body, the serrations will tear the skin and make the wound extremely difficult to heal. There is a handle behind the bayonet blade.
, twenty centimeters long, allowing the bayonet to be detached from the rifle and used as a one-handed short knife.
The bayonet is installed on the wooden stock under the barrel. An iron rod with concave and convex teeth is installed on the rifle wooden stock. A hole is made at the end of the handle of the bayonet, and an embedded hole is designed inside to match the iron rod. Install the bayonet.
When the time comes, insert the hole at the bottom of the bayonet into the iron rod on the wooden support. After inserting it to the bottom, rotate it 90 degrees. Then press it down and rotate 90 degrees again. The bayonet will be fixed on the rifle. In the future, infantry or cavalry holding long weapons
When rushing towards the musketeers, the musketeers fixed their bayonets after shooting. With the bayonet, the musketeers had a long weapon that could fight against the enemy's infantry. They could even challenge the cavalry with it, which was of great significance to improving the morale of the musketeers.
.
In order to make bayonets, Yang Peng bought several thousand kilograms of iron from iron merchants in Tiancangzhou City and provided it to the blacksmiths. Instead of learning to make guns, more than two hundred apprentice gunsmiths built furnaces in the newly opened blacksmith workshop area in the south of the city.
Making tools, banging them day and night, making bayonets for the soldiers of the Selection Regiment and Polu Regiment.
If you want to know what happens next, let’s look at the breakdown in the next chapter.