Liu Tan knew about spinning wheels before, but he had never seen a real spinning wheel, or to be more precise, a complete spinning wheel.
Basically, only the ruins are left in the museum. As for the restored spinning wheels, they are all from relatively recent times. For example, the spinning wheels from the Han Dynasty seem to exist only in records.
However, he had just circled the spinning wheel twice out of curiosity when he turned around and found that Huo Guang, Wei Deng, Li Ling, Wei Buyi and Jiang Chong were staring at him with almost the same posture.
Liu Tan leaned on the spinning wheel and asked, "Why are you all gathered here today? Hurry up and talk about what you want to say. Why are you all staring at me?"
The five people looked at each other and no one spoke.
Liu Tan couldn't bear it any longer and directly called out, "A Guang, you go ahead."
Huo Guang was silent for a long moment before he said, "Your Highness...are you...going to learn weaving?"
Liu Tan: ????
He looked at his spinning wheel, then at Huo Guang, and felt as if he vaguely understood why these people suddenly ran over to watch him.
Does this mean he's not doing his job properly?
However, he probably underestimated his men's creativity. Wei Deng was a straightforward child. He whispered, "Your Highness has already retired and worked as a cook for the King of Wusun. Do you think you need to learn weaving now?"
Liu Tan raised his eyes and looked at Wei Deng. In an instant, Li Ling beside Wei Deng moved several steps to the side, putting some distance between him and the silly boy.
As Wei Deng's elder brother, Wei Buyi hesitated for a moment, then patted the silly boy on the shoulder, sighed, and stepped aside.
Everyone gave up their seats, and Liu Tan walked slowly towards Wei Deng with his hands behind his back. He lowered his eyes and said, "Who told you that I've retired to serve the King of Wusun?"
Wei Deng shrank his neck and turned to look at Huo Guang.
Liu Tan turned his head to look over, and Huo Guang quickly said, "That's not what I said at the beginning. I only said that Your Highness had prepared new military rations for the King of Wusun."
"Ha." Liu Tan said with a forced smile, "Have I personally witnessed the transformation of rumors as they spread?"
Wei Deng remained silent. Liu Tan patted the spinning wheel and said, "Alright, I'm just curious to see if the spinning wheel can be improved. If it can be improved, the Northern Kingdom will have another economic pillar in the future."
Huo Guang knew the inside story to some extent: "Wool?"
Liu Tan glanced at Miao Rui, and Miao Rui immediately asked the eunuch to take out the finished woolen sweater.
Liu Tan thought this wool sweater was really ugly. The color was the original color of wool, and the style was naturally not right.
But this thing was very rare in the eyes of Huo Guang and his friends. Huo Guang reached out and touched the texture of the woolen sweater, feeling its special texture, which was softer than cotton, warmer than silk, and furry, which reminded Huo Guang of the raccoon cat at home.
Huo Guang looked at Liu Tan and asked, "Your Highness, is this made of wool?"
Liu Tan nodded. Wei Buyi beside him was a little surprised: "Is this wool? How... did they make it?"
Liu Tan said, "Don't worry about how it was done. You won't understand even if I tell you. Just know that this thing requires a spinning wheel."
Huo Guang suddenly said, "No wonder Your Highness ordered people to buy a large amount of wool. I think it was in preparation for this. Your Highness wants to make more to send to the King of Wusun?"
Liu Tan said, "That's what I originally thought, but now it seems that it's not that easy. Okay, okay, have you admired enough? If you've admired enough, go do what you need to do. I think you guys are just too idle. Do you want me to find you something to do?"
Everyone looked at each other and immediately dispersed.
Liu Tan looked at the backs of this group of people with a mixture of laughter and tears. He really couldn't understand why even Huo Guang joined in the fun.
After everyone left, Liu Tan took a closer look at the spinning wheel. He asked Miao Rui to find a palace maid to start spinning cloth in front of him. The cloth they wove was ordinary linen. Anyway, he didn't want to see the results, he just wanted to see what needed to be improved on the spinning wheel.
When the palace maids nervously began to weave, and before they could produce any results, he suddenly clapped his hands and said, "I know."
The palace maid was so frightened by him that she almost knocked over the spinning wheel with her shaking hands.
Liu Tan waved to the palace servant and said, "Alright, you're no longer needed here. Go down."
After hearing this, the palace maid bit her lip and retreated with some disappointment.
Miao Rui originally chose the most outstanding palace maid to come, but he didn't expect that Liu Tan's eyes were on the spinning wheel from beginning to end. Even when he looked at the palace maid, he was more interested in how she operated it. At other times, he didn't even glance at her.
Miao Rui also sighed, and with some worry, he asked the palace servant to go down and collect the reward.
Liu Tan waved to Bi Gao and said, "Go get some paper and a charcoal pencil."
Bigo immediately ran over and got what he wanted. Liu Tan took a charcoal pencil and drew the appearance of the spinning wheel, and also drew some key parts - in fact, the spinning wheel did not require much technical content.
A hand-cranked spinning wheel is composed of four parts: a wooden frame, a spindle, a pulley and a handle. There is also a multi-spindle hand-cranked spinning wheel with spindles mounted on the pulley.
Compared to the things Liu Tan had come up with, the hand-cranked spinning wheel was too simple.
He took the drawing and asked someone to move the spinning wheel away. After returning to his study, he thought about it seriously.
In his impression, the next evolution of the hand-cranked spinning wheel should be the foot-operated spinning wheel.
Liu Tan wrote the pedal spinning wheel on the paper but did not rush to think about how to make it pedal.
Because even if you change to a foot-operated spinning wheel, it is for one person to use. It may speed up a little, but that little speed increase is basically negligible in the face of the huge market.
So Liu Tan decided to skip the foot-operated spinning wheel for the time being and move on to the next one, which is the water-powered spinning wheel!
As the name suggests, the water-powered spinning wheel uses water as a transmission force. The working principle is actually the same as that of human power, but the efficiency of water-powered driving is much higher than that of human power. In addition, there is the Yellow River in the north, and even in places where the Yellow River does not flow through, canals are being dug to divert water.
Then this water will have more uses besides irrigation.
Liu Tan directly asked someone to call Gongshu Can over.
Gongshu Can arrived very quickly. Liu Tan smiled and asked when he saw him, "How are you? Have you been resting well recently?"
Gongshu Can smiled wryly and said, "Your Highness, please don't make fun of me. I've always been a hard-working person. I used to think it was too tiring to think about mechanical engineering even in my dreams, but now that I've had some free time, I feel a little bored. These days, I'm eager to create something new."
Liu Tan smiled. He could see that Gongshu Can was sincere in what he said, and in fact he felt the same way.
He felt tired when he was busy, for example, from the beginning of preparing to welcome the emperor to accompanying Liu Che to play around, but after Liu Che left, he felt that life was too boring after he relaxed.
There was nothing special that required his attention in the normal political affairs of the Northern Kingdom, so he began to think about military rations and spinning wheels.
He simply said, "In that case, you've had enough rest. I just happen to have something for you to do. Come and take a look."
Gongshu Can immediately ran to Liu Tan's side. Liu Tan pointed at the blueprint on the desk and asked, "Do you recognize it?"
Gongshu Can looked at it carefully and asked uncertainly, "Is this... a spinning wheel?"
Liu Tan nodded and said, "Yes, this is an existing spinning wheel. What I'm going to do next will require a spinning wheel, but the output of this spinning wheel is too low, so I want to modify it."
Gongshu Can immediately asked, "How would you like to change it, Your Highness?"
He didn't have a big imagination like Huo Guang and the others. He just saw that there was something to do, and he immediately felt motivated.
Liu Tan said, "Can we change it to a hydraulic drive?"
Gongshu Can was stunned for a moment. He originally thought it was just a minor change, but he didn't expect that even the driving force had been changed.
He thought for a moment and said, "With my experience in making water wheels, I should be able to modify it, but it will probably be much larger than this spinning wheel after the modification."
Liu Tan laughed and said, "I want it to be big. The original purpose of using water power is to be able to weave more cloth. You can do whatever you want. As long as you can do it, I will give you credit."
Gongshu Can rubbed his hands and said, "I will go right away."
To be honest, when Huo Guang and others saw the spinning wheel, their first thought was that it was something used by women, but in Gongshu Can's eyes, it was something that ordinary people needed.
Once these things are popularized, the people who make them will be famous forever!
Gongshu Can became more motivated when he thought of this, and he also felt a lot more relaxed when Liu Tan handed the matter over to him.
After all, he doesn't have to do the research himself, which saves him a lot of worry.
Of course, although he said so, in order to prevent Gongshu Can from taking a detour and causing the research and development period of the water-powered spinning wheel to be too long, he still wrote a few hints. He only knew that the water-powered spinning wheel consisted of four parts: the rotor, the twister, the water wheel and the transmission device, so he wrote these four parts to Gongshu Can.
As for how Gongshu Can came up with it, that was his own business.
During this process, Liu Tan continued to deal with wool.
He ordered people to divide wool into fine wool and coarse wool more finely. Fine wool was the best quality wool, fine and soft enough to be used as tribute.
The coarse wool was divided into three grades: the best coarse wool was supplied to officials, the medium coarse wool was supplied to wealthy families, and the lowest grade was supplied to well-off families.
As for the common people below, it was not that Liu Tan was cruel, but he really could not lower the price. Those poor people simply could not afford to buy wool.
He now only hopes that the emergence of wool will bring down the price of cotton cloth.
This is not impossible. The price of cotton depends on the number of buyers. Wool appears as a warmer clothing. At least the demand for cotton among royal nobles in winter will be further reduced. They wear wool inside and fur coats or silk outside. With fewer people buying, the price of cotton will naturally go down.
Moreover, Liu Tan plans to sell inferior wool products at a fair price, just like glass, basically charging just the cost. As for where to make money, it will be from high-quality and medium-quality wool, especially high-quality wool, which will be priced much higher.
As for the fine hair...it will only be used as tribute and supplied to the royal family. Well, the current scope of this royal family is probably the emperor, empress, crown prince and Princess Dangli. If the emperor is happy, he may reward it to his concubines. As for the others, it depends on what the emperor thinks.
While Liu Tan was grading wool, Gongshu Can spent half a month turning a water-powered spinning wheel into a preliminary finished product.
Liu Tan once thought that the water-powered spinning wheel must be a large piece of equipment, but he never imagined it would be so big!
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