Chapter 973 Panama Canal

James failed with Zhao Benquan, but he didn't fail all the time.

Not everyone cares about national pride as much as Zhao Benquan. There are many people in this world who are only interested in profit.

When James paid three or four times his wages, some workers were still tempted.

However, it is not easy for them to leave unless they can pay the ransom.

Most of the skilled workers in Dahua were trained by capitalists who provided board, lodging, tuition, and even wage subsidies. They signed a contract before training, and they had to work for them for many years before they could freely change jobs.

Otherwise, you have to pay liquidated damages.

And the liquidated damages are very high, a full five thousand yuan.

The money was naturally given by James quietly.

James dug out two ordinary workers, so he didn't continue, after all, the activity funds were limited.

The loss of two skilled workers has little impact on Dahua.

Moreover, this kind of thing is hard to prevent, and there is no way to stop it.

This is really unnecessary. Strengthening the control of those core talents is the limit.

It is actually a trivial matter to be poached away of skilled workers, and they are afraid that those researchers who have mastered the core technology will be poached away.

And such examples, though rare, do exist.

Of course, in order to poach these people, other countries have also paid an unimaginable price.

For example, when a viscount in France was looking for a researcher who studied steam engines in Dahua, the researcher immediately took a fancy to the wife of the viscount.

Liu Shiping, who has a special hobby, wants nothing but the wife of the Viscount.

And this Lord Viscount is also a ruthless person, for the sake of his purpose, he will use any means to sacrifice his wife.

Then, Liu Shiping went to France with the Viscount, and now he is manufacturing and improving steam engines for France during the day, and sleeping with the Viscount's wife at night.

He chose not to let the woman divorce Lord Viscount, so he wanted to wear a cuckold for Lord Viscount all day long.

The French, who knew the inside story, didn't know whether to admire, sympathize with, or laugh at Lord Viscount.

With Liu Shiping's guidance, French steam engine research has reached a new level and caught up with Great Britain.

In the follow-up research, it is even ahead of Great Britain.

This made the high-level officials of other countries stare wide-eyed, wondering whether to use similar methods to recruit some talents from Dahua.

Fortunately, there are only a few eccentrics like Liu Shiping after all, and most researchers are normal people. Even if it's a little weird, it's not like Liu Shiping.

In order to dig Dahua's talents, other countries have racked their brains and exhausted their means.

A high-ranking official with a generous salary is the most gentle and the lowest kind. High cost, average effect.

The beauty offensive is similar, the cost is small, and the effect is average.

There is also the problem of catching those talents, such as corruption and bribery, such as personal morality, etc., relying on these criminal evidences, threatening those talents to provide them with technology or other information.

This method is cheap and ineffective.

People from other countries are poaching talents from Dahua, but Dahua is also poaching talents from other countries, everyone is the same.

In contrast, it is much easier for Dahua to dig talents from other countries, and it can even fool a lot of people with ideals without pulling anything away.

In the words of those underground workers, Nanjing has the best scientific research atmosphere, the best research conditions, and the most advanced technology.

These few alone are enough to attract many talents to Nanjing.

Moreover, Dahua can openly poach talents from other countries. When other countries know about it, they will protest at most.

But other countries have to be careful when poaching talents from Dahua.

Once exposed, they will be arrested by Dahua's intelligence bureau and thrown into prison. No matter how their country's embassy protests, they will not let them go.

However, other countries made a symbolic disturbance, scolded, and gave the country an explanation, and then it was over.

It is completely impossible to start a war with Dahua for this matter.

At the same time, the Panama Canal was officially completed and opened to navigation.

The length of the Panama Canal is much shorter than the Suez Canal, but the shortened voyage is more than the Suez Canal.

After North America develops, the importance and economic value of this canal will be even higher than that of the Suez Canal.

However, the current center of the world is Dahua and Western Europe, so the importance of the Panama Canal is far less than that of the Suez Canal.

Just because the scale of the project is relatively small, Dahua started construction two years ago, and it took two years to finally complete it.

With the locks lowered, the first trial ships entered the canal.

Unlike the sea-level waterway of the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal has locks, and the water surface of the canal is much higher than the sea surface.

This is because the water levels in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are different.

The average person's first impression may be that the water level on the sea surface should be the same height, but in fact it is not the case.

The level of sea water is affected by many factors, including gravity, centrifugal force, and solid tides.

In the waters near Sri Lanka, because the underwater crust is very thick and the gravity is strong, the sea water here can be about 100 meters higher than the water surface in other sea areas, forming a raised water area.

while in Iceland

Because of the low gravity, the water surface here is sixty to seventy meters lower than other places, forming a sunken 'basin'.

Ordinary people's sensory impressions are often wrong. For example, most people who have not learned about Panama in detail will think that the Panama Canal is in the east-west direction through the location of Panama, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean in their brains.

But in reality, the Panama Canal runs north-south.

The water level of the Atlantic Ocean is higher than that of the Pacific Ocean. If the Panama Canal does not have locks, the water in the Atlantic Ocean will flow to the Pacific Ocean.

In this way, the water in the canal will have a flow velocity, which will make it very dangerous for large ships to pass through the canal, and it is easy to lose control and crash into the two sides of the canal.

Because the canal is small, it can only barely pass large ships. If the 10,000-ton giant ship is affected by the current, its terrible inertia, coupled with no brakes, makes it very dangerous for ships to pass through the canal.

At present, the Panama Canal is designed to pass 70,000-ton ships, but if there are 50,000-60,000-ton ships that enter the canal, they must be pulled through, not by the ship's own power.

In the afternoon, the first trial ship passed through the canal and entered the Caribbean Sea.