Chapter 1001 "Oh? Really?"

"Oh? Really?" When the news came that the Chunnan army had recaptured Danan Pass, consolidated all the defense lines south of Danan Pass, cleared out local resistance, and transformed from the attacking side to the defending side of the pass, Ye Tao casually asked, "Really?" and muttered a few words. Chunnan's victory was expected. No general had ever received such great support and almost unlimited military strength as Chen Xujing. And Chunnan had truly achieved one thing: they only cared about the result, not the casualties. Imagine, if Chen Xujing still couldn't capture Danan Pass under these circumstances, then the country of Chunnan would be too disappointing.

However, with such excellent conditions, Chen Xujing's achievements were much stronger than expected. From the beginning of Chunnan's entire campaign to the recapture of Danan Pass, Chunnan used a total of 442,000 troops, suffered a total of 97,000 casualties, and annihilated a total of 175,000 enemies. This number alone was fine, but combined with the fact that the Yunzhou offensive launched at the same time caused a similar number of casualties to Xiling, although a considerable amount of it included non-combat troops, the military strength loss of Xiling, under the double attack, was undoubtedly severe. Moreover, Xiling was still fiercely attacking Danan Pass, and it was estimated that Xiling would not give up without paying a price of tens of thousands of losses. The loss of military strength was only one aspect. A greater loss was that Xiling suffered a rare defeat at the hands of Chunnan. When Chunnan had the confidence to confront Xiling and the confidence to reap victory, even if the price was high, it meant that Chunnan was beginning to have the posture of a strong country. Of course, the formation of this posture of a strong country was largely due to the allied state of Dongping. As an ally, Dongping's attitude in dispatching troops to attack the Zhenbei Army Commandery, feigning an attack by the army at Xunshan Pass, and providing various kinds of military equipment, supplies, and consumables, was all seen by Chunnan. At this time, Dongping's high-level officials, such as Tan Xiaopei, had no objection to Ye Tao exposing the airship to Chunnan in advance. When Chunnan's confidence was inflated, it would be a headache if there was nothing to scare them.

Stimulated by the fall of Danan Pass, Xiling's attitude became even more obvious. They almost explicitly abandoned Zhenzhou. Although they did not withdraw troops from Taizhou and Zhongzhou, but instead supplemented a considerable amount of troops to the two prefectures, it was only a compensatory preparation to strengthen the northern defense after the loss of Zhenzhou. Regardless of the troop strength or combat effectiveness, there was still a great distance from launching a sufficient scale of offensive. The large-scale military pressure of the Xiling army to the south relieved Yunzhou. After further strengthening the defense against the northern tribes and the Xilu Army of Northern Liao, Yunzhou began to focus on administration, governance, economy, and other aspects. When the Northern Frontier Pacification Office and the Zhenzhou Governor's Office began to operate smoothly, Ye Tao became idle. He could wait hopefully for the birth of his child, delve into the research institute to find ways to create basic photographic equipment first, and guide the research on electricity in the research institute onto the right track.

In the research of photography technology, Ye Tao was mainly responsible for the research of mechanical structure, while the teams of the Ye's Workshop Research Institute were becoming more and more experienced in chemical composition and materials. All kinds of research were conducted in this way. At the beginning, everyone did not understand the method, did not know how to conduct experiments most efficiently and scientifically. When such a system was gradually established, when each team had a complete set of its own database and could refer to each other and discuss with each other, the research became more and more smooth. Although only glass plates could be used as the base, which was greatly limited, the resulting images were quite clear after a period of experimentation under correct exposure. Ye Tao's research and expansion on the mechanical structure of cameras progressed even faster. After a period of debugging, the camera produced by Ye's Workshop was quite modern in terms of mechanical structure alone. The camera used four-inch by five-inch glass negatives, manually loaded. The camera could change lenses and accurately switch between 1/100 second, 1/60 second, 1/10 second, 1/4 second, 1/2 second, 1 second, and manual release shutter speeds. It could even connect to a remote shutter release. So far, Ye's Workshop had only produced three fixed-focus lenses: a wide-angle, a standard, and a telephoto. In terms of optical properties alone, they were quite good. Now, this seemingly mature camera still needed to wait for the next generation of negatives before it could be put into practical use. That required a lot of experimentation, so it could not be rushed. At this time, Ye Tao simply began to fully deploy the electrical research of Ye's Workshop.

Now, the technical system of Ye's Workshop had reached a bottleneck. In terms of craftsmanship and mechanical technology, Ye's Workshop had almost reached its peak. Just looking at Ye Tao taking out complicated things like airships and cameras, the entire workshop could quickly complete the stage from blueprint to physical object with all its efforts, and could manufacture them without obstacles. Perhaps the specific performance was not satisfactory, but subsequent adjustments could quickly catch up. New materials, more efficient processes, and revisions to the imperfections of the initial design could all be put in place quickly, and when doing these things, the entire workshop did not even feel any pressure. When Ye Tao realized this, even if it was a bit reluctant, he would put the development of electricity on the agenda, not to mention that it now seemed to be a natural thing.

In order to arouse the workshop's interest in electricity, Ye Tao greatly copied the experiments that his teacher had used when he first came into contact with electricity. The experiments on static electricity were not sensational enough, but the effect of two people vigorously turning two turntables, resulting in electric sparks popping between two non-contacting metal rods, was quite amazing.

"Didn't you say that Master Ye was the reincarnation of the God of Fire? How come now, he's playing the tricks of the God of Thunder?" When the first internal public demonstration of Ye's Workshop ended, in the Ye's Workshop, which was always lively and unrestrained in its thinking, someone began to ask.

"Of course, he is the reincarnation of the God of Fire, otherwise, how could Master Ye know how to extract the fire essence from the ground to make kerosene bombs?"

"The kerosene bombs were made by the Gao family, right?"

"Don't talk nonsense if you don't understand. The kerosene bombs made by the Gao family and the current kerosene bombs are worlds apart. In terms of power, there is no comparison at all."

"Stop talking nonsense. What was the trick that Master Ye did today all about? That flickering, crackling sound, although it was a little small, was indeed lightning, right?"

"... Don't say, it really is. Isn't Master calling that electricity? It must be."

"What do you say, what is Master Ye going to do? This is all being taught publicly, saying that everyone can learn it. Isn't Master Ye taking the things of the gods too lightly? This leaking of heavenly secrets will bring disaster."

"Stop talking nonsense. Master Ye has said it so many times, whether it's airships, kerosene bombs, or electricity, it's all science. Science! Do you understand?"

Ye Tao never expected that the demonstration he conducted to attract everyone's interest in learning electricity would actually trigger a debate between mysticism and science within Ye's Workshop. And because Ye Tao had always made the principles clear when imparting technology and establishing technical systems, many people in Ye's Workshop had transformed from agnostics to staunch scientific believers.

To some people, the demonstration that Ye Tao conducted for the entire workshop was not surprising at all. These elites in the research institute had been following Ye Tao to make various experimental instruments, or rather, teaching aids. These people were also the first to hear Ye Tao explain the basic principles of electricity. After all, Ye Tao was not the kind of person who never touched electromagnetism after finishing the college entrance examination. In his original time and space, it was unimaginable for an industrial designer not to understand electromagnetism. Although it had been so many years, it was inevitably a little rusty at the beginning to recall those contents, but as the explanation progressed, Ye Tao became more and more proficient. After looking back at the records of those technicians and engineers who carefully took notes, filling in the gaps and revising them, a basic electromagnetism tutorial came out. This version of the electromagnetism tutorial was really too simple, basically from the entrance to the high school stage of difficulty. After all, with the current technical conditions, it was meaningless to talk about it in more depth.

After Ye Tao conducted a series of eight electrical lectures over the course of more than half a month, the entire workshop would make the first batch of electrical products according to Ye Tao's requirements, including things like electric lights. In fact, without considering the difficulty of mass production, Ye Tao had already successfully produced quite bright light bulbs in the research institute. The outside was a vacuumed glass cover, and the inside used tungsten wire. It was very simple and very classic. But even more classic was that the technicians of Ye's Workshop discovered that metal would emit light and heat when conducting electricity. After enthusiastically trying various materials, they quickly came up with an electric stove. Ye's Workshop set aside a total of four windmills for wind power generation experiments, and also conducted trial production and experiments on transmission and distribution systems and voltage step-up and step-down equipment.

The equipment for wired telegraph was simple and easy to understand. With the basic principles being very clear and the manufacturing processes in all aspects being able to keep up, it was immediately created and began to be tested online. Between Ye's Workshop and the mountain villa outside Ningyuan City where Ye Tao's family lived, telegraph lines began to be erected, and two telegraph stations also began to be established. However, the more troublesome thing was that the technology for sending telegrams to specific telegraph stations without affecting other telegraph stations had not yet been resolved. Ye Tao was not a god after all. It was no problem to develop some basic equipment according to the basic principles of electricity, but this kind of switch technology was a bit troublesome. However, telegraph equipment could indeed greatly improve information transmission efficiency. Officials from the Signal Corps quickly came up with a plan to establish six large regional general telegraph stations and thirty-two small telegraph stations throughout Yunzhou. The general bureau would be established in Gondor in the future. The small stations would only send reports to the zonal general stations, and multiple lines would be set up between the general stations to transmit telegrams in parallel. Then, they would be sent to the branch stations through the general stations. Although it was a bit complicated, it should be possible to achieve a relatively good level of communication through this kind of relay method when switch technology had not yet been developed.