Into Unscientific Chapter 161

  Chapter 161 Military Artifact! (The new group has been established, the group number is in the writer's words)

   "Horseshoe?"

   Hearing the word that came out of Xu Yun's mouth.

  Wang Ting was taken aback for a moment:

   "Is that a nuclear weapon?"

  Xu Yun thought for a while, and took out a pair of paper and pen from his body.

   This is a pencil he made in a short time ago, which is simpler than later generations, made of wood strips + lead core.

  Although the writing effect is not as clear as the industrial pencils of later generations, it is still no problem in emergency.

   At least in terms of efficiency and convenience, it is much higher than ink pens.

  I saw that he first drew a schematic diagram of a horse on the paper, and then pulled an arrow out from the horse's hoof.

   means to enlarge this area.

   Then drew a simple icon of a horseshoe at the end of the arrow, and pushed the paper in front of Wang Tin:

   "Master Captain, this thing is a horseshoe, also known as a horseshoe."

   "It is a smooth iron disc bent into a ring at each end to fit just under the horse's foot."

   “It not only protects the hoof, but also enables the hoof to grip the ground more firmly and prevent slipping.”

  Wang Jin took the picture and glanced at it for a while, then said thoughtfully:

   "Horseshoe, this name has some meaning."

  Seeing this, Xu Yun tentatively asked:

   "Master Captain, have you never seen this thing in the army?"

  Wang Zhi shook his head, his tone was very sure:

   "Never seen."

  Hearing this, Xu Yun was a little confused:

No way?

  The Song Dynasty didn't have horseshoes?

   This is the 12th century AD

   If he remembers correctly, Rome made this thing as early as the first century BC.

  Actually, what Xu Yun didn't know was.

  Because the horseshoe itself is a kind of cuticle, which is somewhat similar to human nails, there is actually no obvious pain.

   On flat lands and grasslands with soft soil such as the Central Plains, the degree of horseshoe wear is not particularly serious, and the past dynasties have relatively paid less attention to it.

   So in history.

   Horseshoes will not be officially popularized in the local area until after the Yuan Dynasty.

Of course.

  A pair of horseshoes was unearthed in the ancient city of Anshan in later generations. According to the calculation of the age, it was probably around the 2nd century BC.

  This time point is almost around the time when Lelang and other counties were established in the Western Han Dynasty. It can be said that it can be traced back to the earliest age of horseshoe products.

   But it's like some other idiosyncratic invention in history.

  The fact that something appeared early does not mean that it will be accepted and applied by the people at that time.

   It does not represent the popularity of further socialization.

   Here is a very simple example:

  At the beginning of the Han Dynasty's Northern Expedition to the Huns, 70,000 to 80,000 horses were sent out, and three to four thousand times.

   When there is no war, the loss of horses is even greater than that of soldiers.

  For example, it is recorded in "Tong Dian":

   (Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty) had 400,000 stable horses. At that time, the Xiongnu invaded the border, and Wei Qing and Huo Qubing dispatched 100,000 horsemen and 140,000 horsemen for private use, chasing and destroying the Xiongnu. More than 100,000 Han horses died. Although the Xiongnu died of illness, the Han also had few horses, so there was no way to return.

   And in the attrition of these horses.

  Most of the Han horses lost their combat power due to the wear and tear of the horseshoes, and they could only be buried in the desert in the end.

  If horseshoes were really popularized in the Western Han Dynasty, the loss of this kind of horses would never be so great.

be honest.

  China has a vast land since ancient times, and it is normal, or almost inevitable, that some border areas have produced horseshoes.

  But it is an irrefutable fact that they cannot be popularized on a large scale due to their occlusion.

  Some things are invented and used by us, and we can't let them go one step at a time. They are the painstaking efforts of our ancestors.

   Such as Chinese medicine, such as traditional festivals.

  But there are some things that we are backward from the perspective of the times, and there is no need to hold them back forcibly.

   Always yelling that we invented everything, so aren't we the same as stealing the country?

  So in this day and age.

   There may be horseshoes, or protective gear similar to horseshoes, in the tribes of individual valleys.

   But in the camp of the Western Army in the Song Dynasty, horseshoes were indeed a rarity.

Of course.

   Haven't seen it, haven't seen it.

  But as a handsome talent who can lead the defense of Taiyuan in the future, Wang Ting realized that this is another good thing almost the moment Xu Yun finished introducing the horse iron hoof:

  The hooves of most military horses are damaged because the hooves first softened in the cold and humid environment, and then were worn out by hard rocks.

  End up with excessive wear or lameness.

   And if horseshoes can be made and popularized

   It may be exaggerated to say that it is expected to change the situation of the war, but it is no problem to reduce the loss of military horses by a few percent.

  But soon, Wang Tin's expression calmed down again:

   "Xiao Wang, although your idea is good, it has a fatal flaw."

  Xu Yun blinked:

   "What defect?"

   "Let me ask you, what is the single weight of the horseshoe you designed?"

  Xu Yun thought about it, and most of the horseshoes of later generations are made of aluminum, with a single weight of about 1.5 catties.

  Theoretically, the density of steel is three times that of aluminum, so a single horseshoe is about

   "About four catties."

  Wang Zhi nodded, the number was about the same as he expected:

   "A single piece costs four catties, a horse has four hooves, and a pair of four is 16 catties."

   "Now I have a total of more than 20,000 war horses on the west front, and it takes 320,000 catties of refined iron to cover them all."

   "It is not difficult for the imperial court to produce 320,000 jin of refined iron, but how long will these iron palms last?"

  Xu Yun could not help but have a question mark on his face:

"Clam?"

   Seeing that he was a little unclear, Wang Ting further explained:

"Take the eight colors of knives that are standard for the imperial army as an example. The so-called eight colors of knives refer to the eight types of hand knives, drop knives, curved knives, moon-covering knives, halberd knives, eyebrow knives, Fengzui knives and pen knives. The army is mainly equipped with hand knives."

  Wang Ti went out in casual clothes today, without any knives on his body, so he roughly drew a virtual figure of more than 50 centimeters:

   "The hand knife is two feet and one foot long, and is forged from 100-refined steel."

   "Generally speaking, assuming you survive many battles, then a knife can go through three thousand-man battles with you, and then there will be a break."

   "Swords like this, let alone horseshoes. When horses are really used on the Western Front, the journey to and from a battle will not be less than five hundred miles."

   "How long can a pair of horseshoes be used for such a scale of consumption?"

  Xu Yun suddenly laughed when he heard the words—he knew where the problem was.

Yes.

  I forgot something:

  Before the invention of the Bayesian steelmaking method in 1856, neither the East nor the West could deal with the problem of impurities in steel.

   Such as sulfur, such as phosphorus.

  In iron and steel smelting, the lower the content of sulfur and phosphorus, the better. If the content is too high, the steel will become brittle.

  And an increase of one ten-thousandth will have a significant impact on mechanical properties.

  Modern steel contains extremely low sulfur and phosphorus. For example, ordinary steel requires less than 5 parts per ten thousand of sulfur and less than 4.5 parts per ten thousand of phosphorus.

   High-quality steel requires stricter requirements.

  Contain less than 4/10,000 sulfur and less than 4/10,000 phosphorus.

  High-grade steel is even higher:

  Sulfur is required to be less than 3/10,000, and phosphorus is less than 3.5/10,000.

  Although during the same period, the local skill in refining iron was almost always ahead of the West.

   But this is just a horizontal comparison.

  From the perspective of future generations.

   During this period, the mass production technology of steel was indeed very mature, but the quality was indeed not good.

  Because there was no concept of trace elements in ancient times, desulfurization and dephosphorization operations naturally did not exist.

  They only know that the iron in the north is more brittle than the iron in the south, but they don't know why.

  In this period.

  The craftsmen mainly rely on the difference in mechanical properties during folding and forging to "knock off" the impurity slag, which is the so-called hundred steelmaking.

  You imagine this:

   In front of you and another person, there is a large barley maltose cube mixed with a lot of sand.

  You have advanced technology, you can dissolve the sugar cubes, filter the sand out with a cloth, and then evaporate the water to recondense the sugar cubes.

  The other person can only pull the sugar into long strips and pick up the sand with tweezers.

   After picking a round, fold the sugar in half and stir for a while, exposing the inner sand and picking it again.

  Over and over again, even if he picks a hundred times, it is still far from your level.

  Pick it a thousand times, and it can probably be slightly gray, but the visible grains of sand are no longer visible to the naked eye.

  If you ask him to pick again, he can't do it.

  These grains of sand are the breakpoints of the steel. Although they are invisible to the naked eye, they will shatter when touched during use.

  So Wang Ting's concerns are also very reasonable:

  320,000 jin of steel is 160 tons, which is not a small number that can be taken casually.

   There is a rumor in later generations that the annual steel output during Song Shenzong's period was as high as 150,000 tons, comparable to the sum of Europe in the 17th century.

   But actually

   This is a wrong number.

  The source of this number comes from Robert Wright's "Non-Zero-Sum Game: The Logic of Human Destiny":

  【Like a general market economy, mass production began to show advantages in medieval China. There were already silk factories with as many as 500 looms and iron factories with thousands of workers. At the end of the 11th century, China was able to produce 150,000 tons of iron per year, while the whole of Europe could only reach such an output in 1700. 】

  According to the more detailed "Iron Coins and Iron Production in the Song Dynasty", the usual iron production in the Song Dynasty was about 50,000 tons.

  The steel produced by further refining is about three to four thousand tons, and will not exceed five thousand tons.

  A considerable part of the remaining iron was used to produce iron pots.

  Based on this output.

  If the horseshoe can be guaranteed to be replaced every few years or even every year.

  Then the court gritted its teeth, and perhaps it would really spend such a sum of resources.

  But if the shoe will crack without running a few times, it is impossible for the court to be taken advantage of.

   Actually.

  The reason why the Yuan Dynasty was able to popularize horseshoes is also related to the further improvement of iron and steel smelting skills during the Yuan Dynasty.

   Before the Yuan Dynasty, even in Europe, horseshoes were not popular among all armies.

  Looking at Wang Ting who looked worried, Xu Yun couldn't help but sigh slightly.

  Damn it.

  It would be great if I were a rare person.

   Then he took a deep breath, looked at Wang Zhi, and said:

   "Lieutenant Wang, to tell you the truth, there was a blacksmith named Kobe in the Fenglingyue Shadow Sect.

   "He wakes up at Yinshi every morning, spent decades of in-depth research, and finally developed a technique that can further refine steel."

   "This technique is not difficult, and the cost is not high, but it can make Baisteel more than ten times more wear-resistant."

   Bang Bang —

  Xu Yun just finished speaking.

  Wang Zhi on the side couldn't hold back, and the wine glass in his hand fell to the ground and shattered into several pieces.

  But he didn't care about the debris under his feet at all, but stared straight at Xu Yun:

   "Xiao Wang, is what you said true?"

   To declare, I am also a fan of Kobe Bryant's boss, purely joking, no malice.

   I had a bad stomach from eating today, and I had crazy diarrhea. Norfloxacin was useless. I had an IV in the hospital, and the number of words to update was less.

   On the 20th, it is planned to update four chapters, about 25,000 words, and now I have saved a chapter, and the next one will explode.

  (end of this chapter)

Chapter end