Chapter 366: Agricultural Area

Fremont invited Liang Yao to go to the Nevada area to check the progress of railway construction.

Fremont was very concerned about the Pacific Railway, even more so than Liang Yao.

Liang Yao himself was also very concerned about the construction progress of the Pacific Railway, so he accepted Fremont's invitation.

However, before going to Nevada, Liang Yao still planned to visit the agricultural producing areas of the Central Valley.

Walter told him that the steam tractor jointly developed by Walter Laboratory and Pratt & Whitney Laboratory had been transported to the town of Stockton for experimentation.

To test whether this machinery is suitable for agricultural activities, and by the way to evaluate the cost of using this machinery, and whether this machinery has commercial prospects.

Currently, steam tractors are most widely used not in agriculture, but as road rollers. As for whether there are prospects for agricultural use, it is still unknown.

Since Liang Yao introduced talents from the eastern region on a large scale in 1851, various laboratories and design bureaus have emerged in California.

However, there are not many experiments that can receive dual subsidies from the Americas Group and the California state government.

There are only Nobel Laboratory, which specializes in chemical engineering, Pratt & Whitney Laboratory, which specializes in machine tools and machinery, and Walter Laboratory, which seems to be proficient in everything. In addition to receiving subsidies from the California state government, these three studios have also received Strong financial support from the Americas Group.

These three laboratories are Liang Yao’s treasures, and they are also the laboratories that have hatched the most practical inventions in California.

The town of Stockton that Liang Yao is going to visit today is 100 kilometers from the harbor area of ​​San Francisco to the west, 540 kilometers from Los Angeles to the south, and 65 kilometers from Saramento to the north.

This is also a village that emerged due to the gold rush. However, due to the town's special geographical location, after the San Francisco and Sacramento gold rushes gradually subsided, the town of Stockton did not decline and continued to develop. .

The San Joaquin River, which originates from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, nourishes the valleys on both sides. This is one of the places with the most abundant water resources in the Central Valley and has unique advantages in developing agriculture.

This was one of the richest agricultural areas in later America and is now the main agricultural producing area in California.

This agricultural area supplies about 60% of California's cereals, 80% of rice, and 100% of vegetables and fruits.

Since the Central Valley was designated as agricultural land when the state was founded, any development other than agriculture must be approved by the state government. Therefore, there are almost no factories and pollution here, and the environment is much better than that of the Golden Bay Area and Los Angeles.

On the train to Stockton, Liang Yao showed Walter, Platt, and Whitney his new idea: a four-stroke internal combustion engine.

California already has a chemical industry, but the gasoline and diesel used as fuel in later generations cannot be used and can only be treated as waste. Liang Yao feels it is a pity.

If we could tinker with an internal combustion engine, it would be a multi-purpose thing.

Three or four years ago, Liang Yao would never have dared to have such illusions.

But as the first five-year plan comes to an end, California already has a certain industrial foundation, and California's industrial level is relatively advanced when viewed around the world, especially machine tools and machining, as well as the chemical industry. The existence of a unique file.

California currently has the basic conditions for developing internal combustion engines.

In 1806, French engineer Lenoir built the first internal combustion engine, which was gas-fired and very large in size. Compared with the steam engines of the same period, it did not have much advantage. There is not much interest in this internal combustion engine.

In 1876, German inventor Otto successfully manufactured the first four-stroke internal combustion engine, which was the ancestor of later four-stroke internal combustion engines.

Although Otto created the first internal combustion engine, Otto's idea was to use the internal combustion engine as a more efficient steam engine. Therefore, although he invented and manufactured the first practical internal combustion engine, it was his partner Carl Friedrich Benz who developed the internal combustion engine.

That is, the founder of Daimler-Benz Cars and the inventor of the automobile.

Liang Yao was not an engineering student, and his drafting skills were extremely limited. The so-called sketches he provided for Walter and others were real sketches, very sloppy.

Whether they can understand the essence of the drawing depends entirely on the understanding of Walter and others.

"Mr. Liang's drawings are unpredictable. We can't understand Mr. Liang's whimsical ideas for the time being. Does Mr. Liang have a copy of this drawing? We can take the copy back to the laboratory and slowly understand it." Platt looked at Liang. Yao's internal combustion engine drawings are scratching your head.

"There is no copy yet. If you want to take it back and read it, just take it back and read it slowly and think about it slowly," Liang Yao said.

When they heard that there were no copies, Pratt and Whitney took out paper and pens from their carry-on bags and started copying on the spot.

But Walter saw some clues from Liang Yao's internal combustion engine drawings.

When designing the pedal sewing machine, Liang Yao gave substantial suggestions, so Walter did not treat Liang Yao as a layman. He took every drawing provided by Liang Yao very seriously.

Walter, Pratt, and Whitney are all the best inventors of this era, but Liang Yao can't expect them to immediately conjure an internal combustion engine for him. All he can do is provide an idea and a simple drawing.

As for whether the internal combustion engine can be tinkered with, time can only tell.

An hour later, the train began to slow down, which meant that the train was about to arrive at the train station in Stockton.

Stockton, an agricultural city, was a completely different scene from industrial cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Compared with the workers and businessmen who hurried on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the farmers who rode horses or drove carts here obviously had a slower pace of life.

Liang Yao looked at the approaching Stockton town, and looked up. He saw that the gaps between the buildings in Stockton town were very large, and the buildings over three stories high could be counted on one's fingers.

Rather than saying that this is a town, it is better to say that this is an enlarged version of the countryside.

Unlike big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, the population of Stockton is not concentrated in the town.

The population in the town only accounts for a small part of the total population of the region.

More people are distributed in the suburbs and even satellite villages farther away.

There were no cars in this era, and people's main means of commuting were trains and horses.

If you live in the city, it is not convenient to work if you are too far away from your own fields.

"Farmers in Stockton usually live near their own farms and ranches." Chen Baoliang, the Minister of Agriculture who accompanied Liang Yao to Stockton for inspection, pointed to the neatly arranged farms and ranches outside the car window and introduced them to Liang Yao.

"Farmers with a little money will choose to buy a house in the town, live in the town for a period of time during festivals or during the slack season, and return to the farm to work during the busy season."