Chapter 516 More Powerful Tools

On the edge of the industrial area in the east of Cecil City, in a research room of the Machinery Manufacturing Institute, Gawain was gathering with Rebecca and Nicholas Egg.

The round iron ball star floated in the center of the room. Beside him, a complex and delicate metal model was floating with him. The metal model was obviously the chassis of the vehicle. Under the high-precision processing ability of Nicholas Egg, its Every gear and link has been restored to the most precise, and various operation demonstrations are carried out with the magnetic field traction.

"This is the universal traction chassis after it has been finalized—of course, it's just a model. How to realize it requires the efforts of technicians," a voice with a metallic vibrato came from the body of Iron Ball. He said while spinning. Looking at the model, Gao Wen can see the details of its interior clearly, "Based on the last design drawing, we re-adjusted the connection method between the magic net unit and the power ridge, and added a layer of shock absorption, which can make the chassis adapt to more Complex and harsh roads, and this shock absorption structure can be removed. After removal, it can be replaced with an additional magic net unit, which makes the chassis more powerful, so that it can be used as a tractor for construction machinery in relatively flat areas. ."

Gawain looked at the model presented by Nicholas Egg, listened to the other party's explanation, and nodded lightly: "...Not bad."

The magic car was born, and the first problem it has to face is the harsh road conditions and maintenance difficulties in this era.

There were no smooth and sturdy highways in this era, and there were no service areas and car repair shops in the vast wilderness between cities, although Cecil's road construction project has never stopped since Rebecca tossed out the cement. However, even with the convenient means of magic, the current road facilities in the southern border are seriously imperfect - at this stage, Cecil has only three roads that have been "modernized", among which is from Cecil City to Kant. There is a wide cement road, and there is a similar road between Cecil and Tanzania. The road to the Gelan area was just completed a few days ago, and other places are basically only the original southern border. The chaotic roads built by the nobles are gone.

Of these messed up roads, the best is the "temporary road" from Tanzania to Hosman City, but that only allows the mages and engineers with magic terminals to use "fossils to mud" and "chemical The "mud for stone" technique was only used for emergency leveling and reinforcement. It was alright to transport people and supplies temporarily, but in the long run, its durability and scale were not up to Gawain's standards.

As a remnant of the former divisions, "roads" were a major problem blocking Gawain's face. The nobles practiced their own laws in their own territories, and built various roads, not only in quality and scale, but also in planning. Sometimes in order to prevent the looting of the neighboring nobles, they even specially destroyed the area where the road between the two territories meets, and used magic to create a large number of man-made potholes, sand and quagmire. Now that the southern border has been unified, The former lords withdrew from the stage, but these irritating things were left to Cecil's builders.

Fortunately, this world has incredible magic technology,

The magic terminal specially used by ordinary engineers has also become popular. With the help of various spells such as "fossil into mud", "mud into stone", and "weight reduction", the road construction project in the southern border is progressing fairly well. It went well, but even so, considering the actual situation in most remote areas and beyond the South, the early Magic Vehicle chassis still had to take into account how to deal with harsh road conditions.

"The universal chassis is about maximum usability, so we re-sized it to the current average width of most roads in the South -- basically a little narrower," Rebecca said, taking Nicholas Egg's words. While gesturing, "The widest point is no more than 1.8 meters..."

Gao Wenxin said that it was indeed the case - 1.8 meters, this is the width of the world's largest double carriage. Strictly speaking, it is the limit width of two horses plus a set of harnesses. The roads built by the nobles, although varied, are roughly similar in width, and the narrowest "official" roads, except for trails and country roads, are no lower than this number - narrower than this, large double carriages will be impassable.

Cecil's road construction was carried out on the basis of the old road, and the personnel and materials needed for the road construction were also transported by horse-drawn carriages. Therefore, each lane of the newly built cement road was also affected by this number, which was basically one. The width of a large double carriage is plus a "safety margin" of about one meter, and on this basis, the size of the magic car must also meet the requirements of being able to drive safely in such a lane.

As far as Gawain knows, a similar thing happened on Earth - the original carriage width affected the road standard, the road standard affected the size of the early cars and trains, and the size of the cars and trains affected everything built on the early roads, Dimensions of means of transport, cargo boxes, etc. on the basis of railway traffic...

Two completely different worlds have finally reached the same destination on this point.

He suddenly remembered the hometown that he had been away from for countless years, but Gawain could only sigh silently, and in the sigh, his thoughts gradually diverged.

With the magic car, this is an epoch-making means of transportation. Of course, they are countless times stronger than the current horse-drawn carriage. With these powerful and tireless vehicles, the development of the South will definitely take a big step forward, but if They are still far from enough.

The southern border is not big, but it is definitely not small. The narrow and long shape of the territory makes it especially difficult for east-west traffic. At present, in order to build the four new industrial cities on the "cross axis", Gawain needs to deploy a large amount of materials and personnel from all over the southern border, including ore from the Tanzania-Cecil area, wood from the Gelan area, and stone from the Peibo area. Magic materials and the huge immigration brought by the population migration project are basically carried by several river channels centered on the Baishui River. However, river transportation has natural restrictions after all. The scale of the company is getting bigger and bigger, especially as the "cross axis" begins to extend in the east and west directions. Sooner or later, some raw material origins far away from the river channel will be on the right track. Gawain must find a way to find a more efficient means of transportation.

The advantage of magic vehicles lies in their flexibility and convenience. They are quite suitable for the transportation of short-distance and small-scale goods, but their strength will definitely be stretched when dealing with the development pressure of the entire southern border.

Of course, people in this era of the world probably don't think so, because the magic car is already the most advanced and powerful means of transportation they have ever seen, but Gawain has seen something even better than the magic car—— Those who run on the rails and can transport thousands of tons of goods at a time are the king of land transportation as strong and powerful as the blood vessels of industrial society.

train.

Compared with that thing, the magic vehicle in front of him will naturally be dwarfed in terms of transportation capacity.

In the final analysis, the magic car is not born to solve the transportation problem in the south - it is only a supplement in this regard. Build farm machinery, build construction machinery, and even prepare for military combat vehicles.

Gawain knew that the birth of trains on earth was much earlier than practical cars powered by internal combustion engines (not counting the early experimental locomotives powered by steam engines), this was because the trains on earth used The technical starting point of the "silly big black rough" steam engine is far lower than that of the precise, compact and efficient internal combustion engine. At the same time, various front-end technologies (tires, batteries, spark plugs, etc.) used in automobiles have also experienced a relatively long period of time. During the development period, all this is determined by objective historical facts, but in this world, the development laws of many things are destined to be different from those of the earth, and the sequence of many things is naturally different.

The steam engine could not be realized, but the rotor-type magic energy engine was born. In this world, a high-efficiency power source similar to the "internal combustion engine" or "electric motor" appeared in a leap. At the same time, due to the technological accumulation and Gawain's conscious guidance made the "Magic Car", a sophisticated vehicle, appear in this world earlier than trains, but this did not mean that the world did not need trains.

In fact, the South Territory needs it right now, and it also has the technical foundation to develop it.

Having lived here for so long, Gao Wen has already learned to abandon some old viewpoints, and realized the real situation hidden under the dark and ignorant appearance of this special era - the technological reserves of this world are far richer than he imagined, The starting point of technology is also much higher than what he sees, but these technologies are concentrated in the hands of a few people, or scattered in the hands of scattered intellectuals in a fragmented state (this "over-concentration of technology" and "technology fragmentation" The phenomenon is the result of the collapse of the ancient Gondor Empire), which has caused the society here to appear to be far behind its true technological height.

After thinking about this, it is not difficult to understand the speed of Cecil's technology development: many times, those technologies are not developed from scratch at all, but are only mass-produced with existing "upper" technologies Or reconstructing and transforming broken technologies, or even to tell the truth - if you copy Gawain's "scientific thinking" and throw it into a country with a solid foundation and abundant talents like Typhon, their development speed will be greatly reduced. Only faster than Cecil.

But even so, Gawain recognizes and respects the talents and efforts of those researchers, and maintains the highest degree of trust in his research department, knowing that science is incremental—with broken technology The shards are constantly being reconstructed. As the theories in the field of magic technology become more and more perfect, sooner or later, this land will get rid of the shadow of the ancient Gondor Empire and step into a place that even the great magisters of the Spark Age have never set foot in. field.

"Master Ancestor? Master Ancestor?"

Rebecca's voice suddenly came from the side, awakening Gawain from his thoughts.

"What are you thinking about?"

Rebecca leaned in front of Gawain with a concerned and curious look on her face.

Gawain realized that he thought too much and went too far just now, and he was a little distracted, so he hurriedly coughed twice to adjust his expression, and then said while thinking: "Rebecca, you know, in fact, the magic car is not the best A powerful land vehicle..."

Rebecca blinked: "You mean... a larger magic car?! Drag a larger car body with a multi-row linkage engine?"

"...It's not the same, it is indeed a bigger car, but its operating mechanism is completely different from the magic car," Gawain organized an easy-to-understand vocabulary to describe the car that has never appeared in this world. "You can imagine such a car: it has a 'magic engine' that is ten times, dozens, or even hundreds of times stronger than the magic car. This magic engine pulls more than a dozen times. The carriage is running on the ground..."

Rebecca's eyes widened: "How is that possible! The ground will collapse! And what about turning? What about bumps?"

"So it needs to run on rails - the so-called rails are the grooves or rails made of steel laid on the ground, which can disperse the pressure caused by the heavy car, reduce the wear of the metal wheels, and improve the stability of the train... …”