After the war, the job of the Ming army was to repair ships and equipment.

More than 1,000 Spanish officers and soldiers were captured in this battle, and after interrogation, Deng Ming found that the devil's kite he designed had worked very well, far beyond the initial imagination. Deng Ming immediately decided to carry forward this tactic - when it was time to attack Manila, Deng Ming felt that he should attack at night, redesign the grimace again, draw a good picture, or simply draw a few more - if most of the Spanish defenders were busy making holy water or praying after seeing the devil, it would definitely be very beneficial to the Ming army's attack.

Now that students in Sichuan are studying chemistry and physics, Deng Ming has organized a group of people to specialize in translating and compiling textbooks, and all kinds of strange and novel ideas have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. Five years ago, out of the idea of protecting inventors, Deng Ming persuaded the Academy to set up a fund to support inventions and provide necessary practical funds, and also set up a special department to review funding applications. However, it did not take long for a large number of private funds to be established, and many commercial houses felt that investing in promising inventions could bring huge returns, and that if one of the many investment projects was successful, investors could recoup all of their investment in the invention and make a profit.

After these firms shared most of the actual funds needed, the academy and Deng Ming's invention funds could be invested in inventions that were likely to have a longer period of effect and were unlikely to yield profits in the short term. However, even if he deliberately guided, Deng Ming might not be able to get the results he wanted. For example, the development of the steam engine, after the end of the Northern Sichuan Campaign in the fourth year of Kangxi, Deng Ming described such a concept, and then took out a sum of money to reward research. Then Deng Ming hurriedly led the army out of Sichuan again. When Deng Ming returned to Sichuan after almost a year, he found that there was almost no progress in this research direction.

Because Deng Ming could not draw a sketch of a steam engine, he could only explore the steam engine from scratch, just like when he first studied the generator. After studying Deng Ming's idea, the participants felt that this thing had no future - even if Deng Ming's idea was correct and could create a machine with great power, how to use this power was still a big problem. The researchers believe that this mechanical force also needs to be subdivided so that small machinery can be used; And the factory had to be built around this huge steam engine, otherwise there would be countless problems to solve in transmitting power over long distances.

All in all, the more you think about it, the more troublesome it becomes for the researcher. However, Deng Ming's vision reminded them that by the time Deng Ming returned to Sichuan, they had already made a real model of a generator powered by natural gas. The transmission and utilization of electric energy are ready-made, and many businesses have seen the potential value of this thing and have invested. By the sixth year of Kangxi's reign, Xuzhou, which was rich in natural gas, had built a power station that used natural gas to drive a generator to generate electricity. The concept of a coal-fueled reciprocating steam engine proposed by Deng Ming two years ago still does not even have a conceptual drawing.

As for the powerful firms, their ideas are often even bolder.

Now the arms dealer of Anlesi is already the leading large business house in Sichuan, and the rifles and light artillery that are constantly being introduced are an inexhaustible source of revenue for the arms dealers - the trade-in of rifles has continued to this day, and the An's arms company has been recycling old rifles from Tongxiucai and the army for many years, and after exchanging the new rifles for these old models that are about to be scrapped, the An's arms dealers will paint them with new paint, and then sell them to the militia groups in other provinces at a high price. Suppress the Yamen of Premier Deng or other Manchu governors who need arms.

Last year, Deng Ming once again convened arms dealers, and all the arms dealers who undertook artillery orders, including Amles, attended the meeting. Deng Ming proposed that the imperial army needed artillery with a faster rate of fire, including land artillery and naval artillery. At the meeting, Deng Ming also put forward the idea of "artillery shell rearloading," and in order to point out the direction for the arms dealers, Deng Ming even went one step further and put forward a series of concepts such as "rifling," "conical warhead," and "artillery shell rotation." Before this expedition to Nanyang, Deng Ming was startled by the cannon concept brought by An Lesi, and the other party claimed that the power of gunpowder now could not meet Deng Ming's envisioned requirements - alchemy was not advanced enough, and Anle Si and they were also clever and difficult to cook without rice; However, Amleth's subordinates thought that they could consider building an electromagnetically driven cannon, hoping to rely on coil acceleration or magnetic energy conversion to obtain a higher muzzle velocity and rate of fire than the black powder breech gun, and even realize the concepts of "rear loading", "cone", and "high-speed rotation of shells" proposed by Deng Ming.

Although he will be skeptical about this idea, but anyway, the arms dealer will pay for it at its own expense, and Deng Ming certainly does not object to the electromagnetic cannon real yàn. As long as the effect is stronger than the black powder cannon and the price is bearable, Deng Ming is actually looking forward to the sail battleship equipped with electromagnetic cannons. He was extremely excited when he thought of the scene of the formation of sail warships using electromagnetic cannons to fight the victory.

Even more avant-garde than Anderson was a shipyard owner named Xie Fa, who had been the largest shipbuilder in Xuzhou and was one of the first to land on Chongming Island and start building a shipyard there. A few years ago, although Xie Fa designed and tried to build a European-style sail warship at Deng Ming's request, Deng Ming knew that this person's ambition was immeasurable. An alternative seagoing ship designer funded by the shipowner named Wang Xiaopeng, who once described the "concept" of the turret to Deng Ming - Deng Ming was very sure that he was talking about the turret, or electric.

In addition to the turret, Wang Xiaopeng also wanted to install a power system on the ship. This is also the idea of Deng Ming, who brought out the concept of the internal combustion engine after the concept of the steam engine was denied. Although it is only a concept, Deng Ming said that if it is successful, it can provide power to the boat, and in the future, navigation will not need to rely entirely on wind power. Deng Ming also put forward two ideas: paddle wheel and propeller. However, designer Wang Xiaopeng asserted that Deng Ming's idea was not feasible, and he believed that if it was a paddle wheel design, it would be easy to be hit on the battlefield and lose combat effectiveness. But if it is the propeller that Deng Ming said, Wang Xiaopeng thinks that sealing and power transmission are huge troubles. Therefore, the alternative solution proposed by Wang Xiaopeng is to design a Yuan Qi (energy) core for the ship, that is, a generator, and then rely on wires to transport the Yuan Qi to the propeller or turret.

After learning about the design of the electromagnetic cannon of Anlesi, Wang Xiaopeng came to Deng Ming again to further refine his design concept of a new generation of warships: driven by the central energy core, the battleship can be equipped with several electric engines, and there are one or several rotatable electric turrets equipped with electromagnetic guns on the deck, and a central electric energy core can solve all the needs of the navigation system and weapon system of the future warship.

Deng Ming didn't know the principle of the electromagnetic cannon, although he didn't have much hope for An Lesi, but he still had a little hope in his heart - in his previous life, chemical energy weapons had a great first-mover advantage, and as soon as electromagnetic weapons appeared, they needed to compete with very mature chemical energy weapons. And the rival of Ann Lesi's primitive electromagnetic weapons is the primitive chemical weapons, because Deng Ming is very eager to see the appearance of sail battleships equipped with electromagnetic cannons, so he always comforts himself in this way. However, listening to Wang Xiaopeng excitedly expound his idea, and then looking at the boss Xie Fa Xie who kept smiling next to him, Deng Ming felt that the three of them had little chance to see this kind of epoch-making battleship equipped with fuel generators, electric engines, electric turrets and electromagnetic cannons come out.

What is particularly interesting to Deng Ming is that Wang Xiaopeng's warship design is still made of wood, which makes it possible for the propeller concept to be accepted because of the impact of the soft sail, and the hard sail is snubbed by the people; The application of electricity, coupled with the fact that Wang Xiaopeng has never seen an internal combustion engine, can naturally abandon the ethereal internal combustion engine and adopt an electric engine design; As for the weapon system, the European-style side open gun window design has not been in contact for a long time, and Wang Xiaopeng also feels that the electromagnetic cannon and the black powder breech gun are both feasible options, since the electromagnetic cannon and his overall thinking are more harmonious, then he naturally chose the former; But the idea that ships must be made of wood is still ingrained. When Deng Ming casually asked if he could use metal to make the hull, Wang Xiaopeng first subconsciously objected, thinking that it was impossible, and then after pondering for a while, he asked Deng Ming: "Even if you can use iron to make a ship, but the iron ship is so heavy, it must be sinking, right?" If something happens to the ship, the sailor can float on the sea with a plank to help, but if something happens to the iron ship, what should the sailor hold? ”

Anyway, like the situation on An Lesi's side, Wang Xiaopeng's design studio is not maintained by Deng Ming's funds, so Deng Ming does not interfere with whether the other party insists on using wood to build his electric warship.

Now, most of the projects supported by Deng Ming's fund are meaningless to others, and one of the most typical projects is the electric abacus project - the reason is that the tax bureau has an account office named Guanghuapeng, and he feels that the number that the government needs to calculate is getting bigger and more complex, and the traditional abacus is a little insufficient. Especially in some huge multiplication operations, every step has to rely on manual pulling of the abacus, and once there is a small mistake, the previous efforts will be lost. Therefore, the tax collector wanted to create a better calculation tool that did not require manual input of each step, and it was best to be able to type the numbers into the abacus, and the abacus could give the results directly.

At the beginning, Guanghuapeng's idea was to use electricity to drive the abacus to calculate by himself, and people only needed to be responsible for entering and reading the results. But this idea is simple to remember, but it is extremely difficult to realize, most people can understand and control the pentadecimal system of the abacus, but it is difficult to let the machine operate on its own; Later, Guanghuapeng and several of his companions subtracted again and again, and found that only the use of binary could have a little possibility of execution. Translating decimal into binary is much more troublesome than pentacimal, and at this point Guanghuapeng's companions have understood that designing this kind of machinery may be much more laborious than calculating and checking it ten times with an abacus, so everyone else has given up except Guanghuapeng.

After learning about this, Deng Ming quickly included the electric abacus in his invention fund support project, which not only made Guanghuapeng worry about food and clothing for two years, but also provided him with the funds he needed. Last year, Guanghuapeng himself retreated, because after calculation, he found that even if the human brain is relied on to translate the binary that the machine can recognize, it still needs at least a few thousand parts to make the machine be able to calculate it. This design originated from the abacus, so it also carries a lot of genetic characteristics of the abacus, Hua Guangpeng naturally chose the same physical information carrier as the abacus for it, and even planned to use wooden parts similar to abacus beads at first, until a long time later he made up his mind to change to iron. Later, in order to further improve the strength, he had to apply to Deng Ming for all-steel parts; The huge machine needs precise control, and the slightest negligence will lead to failure, and even if it is successful, this electric abacus may not be used a few times, and the parts inside will be worn out and scrapped, and the biggest possibility is that it will not be able to move once.

All in all, this kind of electric abacus seems to have no prospects and benefits at all, and even if it is successful, the investment and harvest are not proportional at all. However, Deng Ming still encouraged Guanghuapeng to continue his research and continued to provide practical funds. Once at dinner with Qin Xiucai, Deng Ming also mentioned that even if this abacus takes five or six years to manufacture, even if it can only be run once, even if it can only correctly calculate addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within a hundred, he thinks it is of great significance.

When the Imperial Navy was resting in the Babuyan Strait, Deng Ming couldn't help but think of the electric abacus he had so much to support. Now Guang Huapeng has moved to the Fifty-One Pavilion to concentrate on his machinery. At first, Guanghuapeng wanted to use the unevenness of wood to represent one and zero, but soon found that the wooden originals were completely incompetent, and now they have been changed to all-steel - extremely expensive. Deng Ming felt that even with the most expensive steel components, Guanghuapeng's design would not succeed, because this set of machinery was too complicated. Deng Ming once went to see it, and felt that his head was cloudy, and he saw that no matter how much lubricating oil Guanghuapeng and his hired assistant put on the parts, they could not guarantee the normal operation of the machinery - not to mention that the current Sichuan can't do it, that is, in the era of titanium alloy and high precision in the previous life, it should not be easy to make such a complex abacus run at high speed.

However, Deng Ming does not mind that Guanghuapeng continues to hit a wall, and will continue to provide him with funds as always. In order to reduce the difficulty, Guanghuapeng has reduced the initial goal of millions by millions to the current hundreds by hundreds, and strives to make the machinery run successfully at least once, giving Deng Ming's investment an explanation. Deng Ming comforted him, saying that their research has great significance for Sichuan's machinery manufacturing, in fact, this is true, but in this reality, Deng Ming is not most concerned about this, and Guang Huapeng also feels extremely uneasy, racking his brains every day to figure out a good way to make the machinery work.

Before Deng Ming left Sichuan, Guanghua Peng told Deng Ming that he and his assistant planned to adopt a new scheme, that is, to electrify and not energize the steel parts representing one and zero separately, so that they could move separately instead of being driven in a unified way - although Deng Ming praised it greatly, he felt that with the current level of machinery and electric engines in Sichuan, this plan would never have the slightest chance of success, and it would not be possible to see the dawn of success in a few years, even if Guanghuapeng lowered the target to 100 times 100...... If they do, Deng will continue to invest in making them find a computer that can do much more computing.

But this is still a good start, now Guanghuapeng has begun to connect the state of zero and one with the power on or not, maybe a few more years, the electric abacus research team will have an idea, realize that there is no need to use the steel parts of the concave and convex as a carrier of information - maybe this inspiration can appear tomorrow, maybe Guanghuapeng has not found a way out for another ten years, but sooner or later, the infeasible electric abacus will evolve in the direction of the electronic abacus, Abandon complex mechanical structures to achieve higher computing speed and feasibility.

When he thinks about computers and information warfare in the era of flintlock pistols, or thinks that one day, people in this world will use computers to develop more efficient black powder weapons and breech guns instead of jet fighters, Deng Ming has an inexplicable sense of excitement, and this scene can make Deng Ming more excited and fascinated than the sail wooden battleship bombarded with electromagnetic cannons.

"After the battle, the cavalrymen inserted their blood-stained sabers and breech guns back into their scabbards and holsters, and then took out their smartphones with LCD screens, called home to report the safety of their wives and children, or simply video-......" Deng Ming imagined a sub-scene in his mind: "Maybe one day they will use the networked camera system to help the mounted police chase down the bandits who rob wooden cash trucks; Detect whether the enemy is secretly developing more than a hundred pounds of breech fortress guns with satellites...... It's going to be a fantastic new world. "The tech tree of this world is already crooked, so let's make it crooked even more violently.

……

On 10 June, the Ming army completed the simple repair of most of the warships, and the Imperial fleet set sail again, crossing the Babuyan Strait into the western waters of the Philippines, heading for Manila.

Before this time the troops were dispatched, for reasons of secrecy, Deng Ming did not make it clear about the Chinese colonization group in the Philippines, but now there is no reason to continue to conceal it. After the end of the naval battle, the Ming army sent a large number of ships to contact the reclamation regiments in various places, asking them to be ready to assist the emperor's ** team in the battle.

In addition to these reclamation groups, there are also a large number of ethnic Chinese in the Philippines, some of whom have lived in Nanyang for twenty generations, about hundreds of years, and their ancestors immigrated to Luzon as early as the Yuan Dynasty or even the late Song Dynasty; Most of the other Chinese have come to Nanyang in the last 100 years or so, and their ancestors are mostly fishermen and farmers from Fujian and Guangdong, who went to sea because they were poor, landless, or unbearable to pay heavy taxes, and now many of them are successful merchants or owners of small estates.

After the Reclamation Group appeared in the Philippines, most of these old expatriates did not go to defect, because in order to avoid the fierce reaction of the Spaniards, the Reclamation Groups generally chose relatively remote places to settle down, and most of the old expatriates still operated under the rule of the Spaniards.

While asking the colonies to send troops to help the imperial army take over the city, Deng Ming also ordered to write letters to the chambers of commerce of the expatriates in various cities, asking them to prepare to send representatives to meet with the imperial prime minister, who was coming to an end of Spanish rule and the imperial government was designing a new future for the Philippines. As the expatriates with the most affection for the Empire and the most trusted by the Imperial government, they need to know these options and help the Reclamation Corps better control large swaths of the sea and land.

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