After the meeting, Roland kept Barov behind.
"As you've seen, the chemistry lab needs people, Graycastle Industrial Company needs people, and I also plan to mass-produce soap and perfume, which also require a large number of people." The prince said directly, "It will be at least next year before most of the townspeople pass the elementary education assessment, and even then, it will only be six or seven hundred people, which is not enough. I need more population."
"If we recruit from the fortress..."
"No," Roland interrupted, "After the city is built next year, the fortress will be integrated with the town. This is like taking money from the left pocket and putting it into the right pocket. I need more population from outside the Western Territory."
"This..." Barov said with some difficulty, "I'm afraid it won't be so easy to solve. If we go to other cities to poach people, the local lords won't just sit idly by."
"We're not going to cities," Roland dipped his finger into the glass, dipped some ice water, and gestured on the table, "I don't know if you've noticed, Graycastle has been in a state of war since the end of the Months of the Evil Demons. Including Tiffeco's several attacks on the Southern Territory, which led to the burning of Eagle City and serious damage to the surrounding villages and towns. Then there was the conquest of the Northern Territory, which stripped Duke Ace of his title and territory for treason. Finally, there was this naval attack in the east," he tapped the table hard twice, leaving a puddle of water, "Sea Breeze County, Gold穗City, and Ravenholm have all been significantly affected, not to mention the surrounding small towns. The number of people fleeing to the royal capital alone shows how terrible the losses are."
"You mean..." Barov showed a thoughtful expression.
"Promote the Western Territory," the prince smoothed out the water, "In the past six months, only the Western Territory has been at peace, with no forced conscription and no war. Especially the first point—Tiffeco's massive use of civilians in combat will definitely lead to conscription or even abduction of civilians everywhere. No one can guarantee that it won't happen to them next time, so a stable place isolated from war is the key point of our promotion."
"I understand roughly," he pondered, "You plan to attract civilians from other towns and villages by promising no forced conscription, no servitude, and providing housing, food, and stable jobs?"
"Almost," Roland smiled and nodded. Quick thinking and strong acceptance have always been the advantages of the Minister's Assistant. "And we should also focus on publicizing the preferential treatment enjoyed by literate people. I think there will definitely be some knights and nobles in these places who are desperate and willing to come to the Western Territory to try their luck."
Whether it is a village or a town, it is almost always the territory of a small noble. If it is a time of peace, even if the land is barren and the management is poor, guarding a few acres of land can always fill their stomachs. But during a time of turmoil, if the population loss is serious, life will be difficult to sustain. At this time, if there is a stable place to go, most people should be tempted. Anyway, even if the territory is unattended, it will not be occupied by others. When they survive this period, they can go back with money and mercenaries to take over the territory.
As for how to promote it, he believed that Barov had his own way.
"But Your Highness, in this case, settling these people will be another expense, and the purchase of food cannot be interrupted," Barov hesitated, "If something unexpected happens to the merchant group, the City Hall's treasury will soon be dry."
"Hmm... You have a point," Roland rubbed his chin. The most important task of a new political force is to establish prestige and confidence in the hearts of the people. If it suddenly falls into a situation where it cannot pay salaries, the good situation will take a turn for the worse. "How about this, you go back and prepare a plan first. Wait until the merchant group completes the next month's transaction with the town and the treasury is full before implementing it."
"As you command, Your Highness," Barov said, stroking his chest.
After finishing the task, Roland returned to his office and began to think about how to complete Margaret's balloon order.
The price of a thousand gold royals is higher than that of a steam engine, but its cost is much lower. The airbag is mainly drawn by Soraya, and the hemp rope and bamboo basket are cheap goods. In fact, Roland had already trial-produced a simple sample in the armory yard: a hydrogen balloon that could carry both Lightning and Maisie into the sky at the same time.
After repeated consideration, he finally abandoned the hot air balloon plan—gas requires obtaining through dry distillation of coal, the equipment occupies a large area, and the manufacturing is very troublesome. In addition, coal must be imported from other towns, and small-scale production is extremely uneconomical, far inferior to hydrogen, which is so convenient and easy to obtain.
The prototype was made with a single-sided water coating. After drawing, the paper on the back was also burned off. In this way, the entire airbag was so light that it had almost no weight, and its flexibility was excellent. In the experiment, the inflated balloon was not afraid of rain, impact, or fire. Maisie turned into various birds and pecked at it without leaving any traces. Only an iron needle could barely pierce this one-millimeter-thick coating. Because it was extremely light, a hydrogen balloon with a diameter of about two meters could carry an adult into the air.
The only difficulty was how to solve the problem of filling high-pressure hydrogen cylinders.
The DC motor used for electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen must not be sold. One motor connected to a steam engine can inflate all hydrogen balloons, which is obviously too uneconomical. If you want to continuously earn gold royals from rich merchants, you must have a high-pressure cylinder that can be repeatedly inflated.
The cylinder itself is not difficult. If the material is not good, just increase the wall thickness. Pig iron and wrought iron will do. Anyway, with Anna around, precision machining is not a problem. The key lies in the inflation—the pressure of the storage cylinders in later generations is above 20pa. It is undoubtedly a pipe dream to try to pump it in with an air pump. Even ten Qilin arms would be useless, at least a high-pressure air pump would be needed. If the pressure inside the bottle is not enough, it is impossible to fill the hydrogen balloon.
High-pressure air pumps are divided into piston compressors and turbine compressors. The former belongs to the internal combustion engine technology tree, and the latter belongs to the turbine category. Regardless of which one is developed, it is a time-consuming and laborious project. Until the evening, Roland finally came up with the simplest solution: self-inflation inside the bottle.
The inspiration for this came from a news report he had seen before he crossed over: a vendor selling hydrogen balloons on the street used a modified liquefied gas tank to store hydrogen, resulting in an explosion and a tragedy. The reason was that the vendor directly used dilute sulfuric acid and aluminum to produce hydrogen in the bottle without calculating the amount of reaction, which resulted in excessive pressure inside the tank, directly bursting the tank.
The self-inflation method is to pour dilute sulfuric acid and active metal into the bottle to displace the hydrogen. Zinc is commonly used in laboratories, and aluminum produces the most hydrogen per weight, but neither of them is available in this era, so Roland still plans to use iron to react—Lucia can separate extremely pure iron element. The problem of slow reaction rate at room temperature can be improved by heating and increasing the contact area (such as iron sheets and iron powder). A coating can be applied inside to resist the corrosion of the acid liquid on the bottle body.
Thinking of this, he immediately drew a simple sketch on paper—in order to reduce air leakage, the high-pressure cylinder should be as integrated as possible, so the cylinder body is integrated, leaving only a raised threaded opening at the top, into which a valve nozzle can be screwed.
After injecting the reactants from the opening and tightening the nozzle, these constantly generated gases have nowhere to go, and the pressure inside the bottle can reach a very considerable value. When using, just unscrew the valve, and hydrogen will pour out and rush into the airbag. Recharging is also very convenient. Remove the nozzle, dry the moisture, clean out the ferrous sulfate crystals inside, and you can pour in the reactants again.
Considering that dilute sulfuric acid is also an alchemical product, the inflation price obviously cannot be set too low.
Let's set it at fifty gold royals per inflation, and give one free for every ten inflations, Roland thought. (。)