Into Unscientific

"horseshoe?"

Hearing the word that came out of Xu Yun's mouth.

Wang Ting was taken aback for a moment:

"Is that a nuclear weapon?"

Xu Yun thought for a while, and took out a pair of paper and pen from his body.

This is a pencil he made not long ago, which is simpler than later generations, made of wood strips + lead core.

Although the handwriting effect is not as clear as the industrial pencils of later generations, there is no problem in emergency.

At least in terms of efficiency and convenience, it is much higher than ink pens.

I saw that he first drew a schematic diagram of a horse on the paper, and then pulled an arrow out from the horse's hoof.

It means to enlarge the area.

Then he drew a simple icon of a horseshoe at the end of the arrow, and pushed the paper to Wang Tin's face:

"Master Captain, this thing is a horseshoe, also known as a horseshoe."

"It is a smooth iron disc, bent into a ring at each end, to fit just under the horse's foot."

"Not only does it protect the hoof, but it also gives the hoof a firmer grip on the ground and prevents slipping."

Wang Ting took the picture and looked at it for a few moments, then thoughtfully said:

"Horseshoe, the name has some meaning."

Seeing this, Xu Yun tentatively asked:

"Master Captain, have you never seen this thing in the army?"

Wang Ting shook his head, his tone was very sure:

"Never seen."

Hearing this, Xu Yun was rather confused:

No way?

Didn't the Song Dynasty have horseshoes?

This is the 12th century AD

If he remembers correctly, Rome had made this thing as early as the first century BC.

In fact, what Xu Yun didn't know was.

Since the horseshoe itself is a kind of cuticle, which is somewhat similar to human nails, there is actually no obvious pain.

On flat lands and grasslands with soft soil such as the Central Plains, the degree of horseshoe wear is not particularly serious, and the past dynasties have relatively paid less attention to it.

So in history.

Horseshoes will not be officially popularized in the local area until after the Yuan Dynasty.

Of course.

A pair of horseshoes was unearthed in the ancient city of Anshan in later generations. According to the age calculation, it was probably around the 2nd century BC.

This time point is almost around the time when Lelang and other counties were established in the Western Han Dynasty, and it can be said that it can be traced back to the earliest age of horseshoe products.

But it's like some other idiosyncratic invention in history.

The early appearance of something does not mean that it will be accepted and applied by the people at that time.

It does not represent the popularity of further socialization.

Here is a very simple example:

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty's Northern Expedition to the Xiongnu, there were 70,000 to 80,000 horses, and three to four thousand horses.

In every battle, the loss of horses is even greater than that of soldiers.

For example, it is recorded in the "Tongdian":

(Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty) There are 400,000 stable horses. At that time, the Xiongnu invaded the border, and Wei Qing and Huo Qubing dispatched 100,000 horsemen and 140,000 horsemen for private use, chasing and destroying the Xiongnu. More than 100,000 Han horses died. Although the Xiongnu died of illness, the Han also had few horses and could not return.

And in these attrition of horses.

The vast majority of Han horses lost their combat power due to the wear and tear of their hooves, and they could only be buried in the desert in the end.

If horseshoes were really popularized in the Western Han Dynasty, the loss of this kind of horses would never be so great.

be honest.

China has been a vast land since ancient times, and it is normal, or almost inevitable, that some border areas have produced horseshoes.

However, it is an irrefutable fact that they cannot be popularized on a large scale due to their occlusion.

Some things are invented and used by us, and we can't let them go one step at a time. They are the painstaking efforts of our ancestors.

Such as traditional Chinese medicine, such as traditional festivals.

But there are some things that we are backward from the perspective of the times, and there is no need to hold them back forcibly.

If we keep yelling that we invented everything, aren't we the same as stealing the country?

So in this day and age.

There may be horseshoes, or protective gear similar to horseshoes, in the tribes of individual valleys.

But in the camp of the Western Army in the Song Dynasty, horseshoes were indeed a rarity.

Of course.

Haven't seen it. Haven't seen it.

But as a handsome talent who can lead Taiyuan's defense in the future, Wang Ting realized that this is another good thing almost the moment Xu Yun finished introducing the horse iron hoof:

The hooves of most military horses are damaged because the hooves first softened in the cold and humid environment, and then were worn out by hard rocks.

You end up with excessive wear or lameness.

And if horseshoes can be made and popularized

It may be exaggerated to say that it is expected to change the situation of the war, but it is no problem to reduce the loss of military horses by a few percent.

But soon, Wang Ting's expression calmed down again:

"Xiao Wang, although your idea is good, it has a fatal flaw."

Xu Yun blinked:

"What defect?"

"Let me ask you, what is the single weight of the horseshoe you designed?"

Xu Yun thought about it, and most of the horseshoes of later generations are made of aluminum, with a single weight of about 1.5 catties.

In theory, the density of steel is three times that of aluminum, so a single horseshoe is about

"About four catties."

Wang Ting nodded, the number was about the same as he expected:

"A single piece costs four catties, a horse has four hooves, and a pair of four equals sixteen catties."

"Now I have a total of more than 20,000 war horses on the west front, and it takes 320,000 catties of refined iron to cover them all."

"It's not difficult for the imperial court to take out 320,000 jin of refined iron, but how long will these iron palms last?"

A question mark appeared on Xu Yun's face:

"Clam?"

Seeing that he was a little unclear, Wang Ting further explained:

"Take the eight colors of knives that are standard for the imperial army as an example. The so-called eight colors of knives refer to the eight types of hand knives, drop knives, curved knives, moon-covering knives, halberd knives, eyebrow knives, Fengzui knives and pen knives. The army is mainly equipped with hand knives."

Wang Ting went out today pretending to be casual, without a knife on his body, so he made a rough gesture of more than fifty centimeters:

"The hand knife is two feet and one foot long, and it is forged from 100-year-old steel."

"Generally speaking, assuming you survive many battles, then a knife can go through three thousand-man battles with you, and then there will be a fracture."

"Hand swords are like this, let alone horseshoes. When the Western Front really uses horses, the journey to and from a battle will not be less than five hundred miles."

"With such a scale of consumption, how long can a pair of horseshoes be used?"

Xu Yun suddenly laughed when he heard this - he knew where the problem was.

Yes.

I forgot something:

Before the invention of the Bayesian steelmaking method in 1856, neither the East nor the West could deal with the problem of impurities in steel.

Such as sulfur, such as phosphorus.

In iron and steel smelting, the lower the content of sulfur and phosphorus, the better, and the higher the content, the steel will become brittle.

Moreover, an increase of one ten-thousandth will have a significant impact on the mechanical properties.

Modern steel contains extremely low sulfur and phosphorus. For example, ordinary steel requires less than 5 parts per ten thousand of sulfur and less than 4.5 parts per ten thousand of phosphorus.

High-quality steel requirements are a little stricter.

The sulfur content is less than 4/10,000, and the phosphorus content is less than 4/10,000.

High-grade steel is even higher:

Sulfur is required to be lower than 3/10,000, and phosphorus to be lower than 3.5/10,000.

Although in the same period, the local skill in refining iron was almost always ahead of the west.

But this is just a horizontal comparison.

From the point of view of future generations.

The mass production technology of steel in this period is indeed very mature, but the quality is indeed not good.

Because there was no concept of trace elements in ancient times, desulfurization and dephosphorization operations naturally did not exist.

They only know that iron in the north is more brittle than that in the south, but they don't know why.

In this period.

Craftsmen mainly rely on the difference in mechanical properties during folding and forging to "knock off" the impurity slag, which is the so-called hundred steelmaking.

You imagine it this way:

In front of you and the other person, there is a large barley malt sugar cube mixed with a lot of sand.

Your technology is advanced, you can dissolve the sugar cube, filter the sand through a cloth, and evaporate the water to recondense the sugar cube.

The other person can only pull the sugar into long strips and pick up the sand with tweezers.

After one round of picking, fold the sugar in half and stir for a while, exposing the inner sand and picking again.

Over and over again, even if he picks a hundred times, he is still far from your level.

If you pick it a thousand times, you can probably make it slightly gray, but the visible grains of sand are no longer visible to the naked eye.

If you ask him to pick again, he won't be able to do it.

And these grains of sand are the breakpoints of steel. Although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, they will break when touched during use.

Therefore, Wang Ting's concerns are also very reasonable:

Three hundred and twenty thousand catties of steel is one hundred and sixty tons. This is not a small number that can be taken casually.

There is a rumor in later generations that the annual steel output during Song Shenzong's period was as high as 150,000 tons, comparable to the sum of Europe in the 17th century.

but it's actually

This is a wrong number.

The source of this number comes from Robert Wright's "Non-Zero-Sum Game: The Logic of Human Destiny":

[Like a general market economy, mass production began to show its advantages in medieval China. There were already silk factories with as many as 500 looms and iron factories with thousands of workers. At the end of the 11th century, China was able to produce 150,000 tons of iron per year, while the whole of Europe could only reach such an output in 1700. 】

According to the more detailed "Iron Coins and Iron Production in the Song Dynasty", the usual iron production in the Song Dynasty was about 50,000 tons.

The steel that is further refined is about three to four thousand tons, and will not exceed five thousand tons.

A considerable part of the remaining iron was used to produce iron pans.

Based on this output.

If the horseshoe can be guaranteed to be replaced every few years or even every year.

Then the court gritted its teeth, and perhaps it would really spend such a sum of resources.

But if the shoe will crack without running a few times, it is impossible for the court to be taken advantage of.

Actually.

The reason why the Yuan Dynasty was able to popularize horseshoes is also related to the further improvement of iron and steel smelting skills during the Yuan Dynasty.

Even in Europe before the Yuan Dynasty, horseshoes were not popular among all armies.

Looking at Wang Ting who looked worried, Xu Yun couldn't help but sighed slightly.

Damn it.

It would be great if I was a rare person.

Then he took a deep breath, looked at Wang Zhi, and said:

"Lieutenant Wang, to tell you the truth, there was a blacksmith named Kobe in the Fenglingyue Shadow Sect.

"He wakes up at Yinshi every morning, spent decades of in-depth research, and finally developed a technique that can further refine steel."

"This technique is not difficult, and the cost is not high, but it can make the wear resistance of Baishen steel more than ten times."

Clang——

Xu Yun's voice just fell.

Wang Ting, who was at the side, couldn't hold back, and the wine glass in his hand fell to the ground and shattered into several pieces.

But he didn't care about the debris under his feet at all, but stared straight at Xu Yun:

"Little Wang, is what you said true?"