On the third day, Qin Qiong entered the palace with gifts, met the emperor and the queen, and formally proposed marriage for Zixiaoguan.
After some symbolic exchanges, I got Princess Jinyang’s name and birthday.
Qin Qiong returned to the temple and handed the post recording the name and birth date of Princess Jinyang to Sun Simiao.
Then Sun Simiao asked someone to perform divination to determine whether the names and birth dates of Chen Jingke and Xiao Sizi were appropriate.
He himself is a Taoist master, but he has no research on divination. Besides, he is the man's parent, so it is not appropriate for him to do divination on his own.
So Li Chunfeng took over the job, and after some calculations, it was a natural fit.
Qin Qiong, the matchmaker, went out again and entered the palace with instructions and betrothal gifts to meet the emperor and empress. After a ceremony, the two parties exchanged marriage letters.
The engagement ceremony is completed.
As a royal daughter, Princess Jinyang's engagement ceremony included a special edict in addition to the marriage certificate, and records were also kept at Zongzheng Temple.
At this point, no one can regret the marriage unless the emperor orders it.
As for the wedding date, no one mentioned it. Xiao Sizi was still young and talking about the wedding date was too early, and there was no need to even make an agreement.
If there are no special circumstances, get married at the age of eleven or twelve. If there are special circumstances, it will be decided based on the actual situation.
In a word, it is easier to operate because there is no agreed wedding date. Li Shimin is in a good mood, and it will not be surprising to marry a girl tomorrow.
This marriage, which has been talked about since the Chinese New Year, is finally settled. There are mixed reactions from outside, but generally speaking, most people congratulate it.
The dignitaries and bureaucrats in Beijing sent congratulatory gifts one after another, and officials serving in other places would also send one if they had the conditions.
Not to mention each Taoist sect, they also sent their blessings. Even many powerful nobles sent a congratulatory gift to congratulate Sun Zhenren's disciples on their engagement.
Chen Jingke himself was even more prosperous. The progress bar of marrying Xiao Sizi was directly pulled up to 99%, and he was just missing the last tremor.
On the second day of the engagement, he went to the palace to play with her for a whole day. If it were not inconvenient, he would have taken her out of the palace to play.
Even so, little Sizi couldn't be happier. His brother is always the best.
However, starting from the third day, Chen Jingke became busy, and he still made a clear distinction between fun and business.
…
The first thing to do was to bake the glass. Li Shimin and Changsun Wujia were very tight-knit. It only took three days to build the workshop and prepare the required materials.
Chen Jingke moved to a palace deep in the palace, which served as a temporary glass workshop. He would live here for many days until he developed mature glass-making techniques.
He first learned about the craftsmen here, who were all slaves belonging to the Li family for generations. After Li Tang was established, they became the royal...slaves.
Although they are all domestic slaves, their status, status and treatment are different from ordinary domestic slaves - in short, they are all confidants of the Li family.
After getting a basic understanding of the people here, he checked all the utensils and materials one by one.
It's very complete and basically prepared according to the drawings he gave me.
In a dark and damp warehouse, he saw hundreds of full bladders.
Liu Dahe, the craftsman in charge of the glass workshop, said respectfully: "Master, this is the gas taken from the rumen of the cow according to the method you taught. In order to collect this gas, I heard that the cows in the Huangzhuang suffered a lot."
Chen Jingke subconsciously took a few steps back and said, "That's right, that's right. Remember, it must be dark and moist here, especially away from open flames."
Liu Dahe replied: "Don't worry, I've also heard that this thing can be lit on fire, so be careful."
After a round of inspection, some missing equipment was added, and the firing started.
He didn't make it too complicated at the beginning. He first used quartz sand to burn it directly, so that everyone could have an intuitive understanding of burning glass.
There are many problems with this firing method, such as the material cannot be completely dissolved if the temperature is not reached.
For example, if the proportion of added calcite is not well controlled, transparent glass cannot be neutralized, etc., but in the end, glass crystals are obtained.
When they saw that the sand turned into glass after being burned, the eyes of the craftsmen almost popped out of their heads.
The valuable colored glaze was originally made from this thing? This completely subverted their cognition.
After that, Chen Jingke began a magical operation to make soda ash.
What he used was not the Hou Debang method of making alkali. This method had too high requirements on basic industry and was not applicable in ancient times.
On the contrary, it is the older Solvay method. Although it is seriously polluting, it could be used in ancient times.
First, dissolve table salt into water to make saturated brine, and then pass ammonia gas into the brine to make ammonia brine.
There is an unsolvable problem here for the ancients, that is, how to obtain ammonia. Even time travelers would find it difficult to do it without having anything.
Fortunately, many chemical raw materials can be solved through local methods.
Ammonia can be obtained from the urine of mammals, but this method has an unpleasant smell, is too demanding on the production process, and is difficult to operate.
Chen Jingke adopted another simpler and more direct method to obtain ammonia gas from the rumen of cattle.
The grass that cattle eat contains a large amount of ammonia, which ferments into ammonia gas in the rumen.
Of course, the gas composition in the cow's rumen is more complex and contains more than just ammonia. But he does not need pure ammonia, as long as the content is high enough.
The ammonia content in the cow's rumen can fully meet his production needs.
The bladder he saw earlier in the dark and damp warehouse was filled with cow rumen gas and was prepared for this purpose.
The gas collected in the cow's rumen was passed into saturated salt water, and as expected, ammonia salt water was obtained.
The limestone is then calcined and the carbon dioxide produced is passed into ammonia salt water to generate sodium bicarbonate.
Then it is filtered and calcined to obtain soda ash.
The filtered mother liquor contains ammonia chloride, and ammonia gas can be recovered by adding lime milk for distillation.
By recycling in this way, you can always get soda ash.
This method of making soda ash can be used even in ancient times.
Although a lot of gas was wasted due to poor airtightness of the equipment, Chen Jingke still obtained enough soda ash after some operations regardless of cost.
As a member of the three-acid-two-alkali family, the importance of soda ash cannot be overemphasized. Anyway, it is an essential raw material for many of Chen Jingke’s plans.
It is also the wing of the glass industry, with which glass production can take off.
Sure enough, after adding a certain amount of soda ash, materials such as quartz sand melted completely. Adding a certain proportion of calcite resulted in glass with better quality and higher transparency.
Looking at the glass with only light mottled colors in front of them, the craftsmen screamed and jumped excitedly.
Liu Dahe repeated over and over again: "The real person has been created, created..."
Chen Jingke's heart was filled with a sense of accomplishment. Although he had only re-traveled the path that his predecessors had taken, he had also found out with difficulty when he had nothing to do.
At least in this world, he is ahead of everyone.
The glass in front of you can be sold as a gemstone, and no one will care about this variegation.
Even the mixed colors in Chen Jingke's eyes are the color that gems should have in the eyes of others.
Next, Chen Jingke continued his efforts, tried different adding ratios, and finally created a single-color light green glass.
This kind of glass could already meet most needs, so he sent someone to notify the empress.
After receiving the news, Li Shimin and Changsun Wugou quickly came to the workshop.
Seeing the pure light green transparent glass, Li Shimin said excitedly, regardless of the emperor's image and majesty:
"Okay, okay, it's really great. Jing Ke, your betrothal gift is great, I'm very satisfied with it."
Changsun Wugou reached out and touched it carefully, and said: "It's colored glaze. It's better than the best colored glaze. With this thing..."
At this point, she suddenly stopped. After all, it was the queen who restrained her excitement in time and said to the craftsmen around her:
"You have done well. The saint will not forget your contribution. You will be rewarded heavily."
"Thank you, saint, and thank you, empress." Now it was the craftsmen's turn to be excited.
Li Shimin quickly returned to normal, looked at the lump of glass, and asked: "Didn't you say that glass can be made into various utensils? Why is it like this?"
Chen Jingke explained: "Glass shaping is relatively simple, but the difficulty is how to bake high-quality glass. It is still in the experimental stage, so there is no shaping."
Li Shimin said in surprise: "Isn't this enough?"
Chen Jingke shook his head and said: "It's not enough. The glass can be colorless and transparent, just like real crystal. Only then can it be called top grade."
"This..." Li Shimin didn't know what to say.
Changsun Wugao answered: "It is right to strive for excellence, but sometimes demanding too much of oneself is not worth the gain."
"We don't necessarily have to make colorless glass. For people all over the world, glass of this quality is beautiful enough."
Hearing this, Chen Jingke slapped his forehead and said: "Oh, you see, I'm confused. We made this thing first to sell it. As long as it can be sold, there is no need to pursue theoretical perfection."
Only scientists pursue perfection, while businessmen only need mature products that can be mass-produced. He was too focused on studying glass, and unknowingly fell into the mindset of a scientist.
Changsun Wugou smiled and said: "As long as you understand. But we still need to study the colorless transparent glass you mentioned. When it is produced, it can be sold more expensively."
Chen Jingke nodded repeatedly and said: "It is true. Colorless and transparent glass is of great use and must be made. But as you said, don't be in a hurry and explore slowly."
Li Shimin interjected from the side: "Let's put aside the research on glass for a while, show me how glass is fired, and then shape it for me to see."
Chen Jingke immediately directed the craftsmen to start the firing. The empress was right in front of him, and the craftsmen were very excited and used their skills to the fullest.
When they saw a pile of sand turn into a fiery red glass solution, the emperor and the empress were both excited and magical.
Then a craftsman took a copper pipe and blew the glass liquid into a bold bottle. However, the later shaping and trimming process was not in place, and the bottle did not look very straight.
But even so, it was enough for Li Shimin and Changsun Wugou.
This process let them know that there is no problem turning glass into objects. The next thing to consider is how to sell it.
