I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 33 Spinning Jenny

In fact, Zhu Houxuan has been recruiting various craftsmen recently, and the craftsmen are also happy to take shelter under the palace because this way they can be exempted from government service.

The Ming Dynasty inherited the artisan household system of the Yuan Dynasty. Artisans were heavily exploited and the entire family, young and old, were often required to participate in production. This continued for generations, with low status and relatively low income.

Craftsmen were under the Ministry of Works and were divided into two categories: shift craftsmen and resident craftsmen.

In the early Ming Dynasty, it was stipulated that shift workers had to serve in the official workshops in shifts of one or five years, with each shift lasting an average of three months. Resident workers had to serve in the official workshops for ten days each month. If they did not go to work, they had to pay one cent of silver per month to the government to hire someone else.

And if you can take shelter under the royal palace, you don't have to serve in the army.

Moreover, the Jingwang Mansion paid the craftsmen generous wages every month. As a result, the craftsmen were happy to come to the Jingwang Mansion to work.

There was no room for so many craftsmen, but fortunately, the Prince of Jing's Mansion had many industries in Qizhou, so it was easy to accommodate so many craftsmen.

The reason for recruiting so many craftsmen was that Zhu Houxuan began to prepare for the establishment of the first factory in the Jingwang Palace.

Over the past month, Zhu Houxuan has been taking time to gather together the best craftsmen for training and to convey the concept of standardization to them. He has also unified the measuring tools and improved their accuracy.

It is to prepare for building a factory.

Because factories and home handicrafts are different, if standardization cannot be achieved, the maintenance cost will be very high and the factory's product specifications will be very chaotic.

And today, Zhu Houxuan finally feels that the time is ripe, both in terms of market and technical capabilities.

Zhu Houxuan began to work on the spinning jenny.

In the textile industry, spinning is a more troublesome task than weaving and consumes more manpower. Spinning is the process of spinning cotton, linen, silkworm cocoons, etc. into yarn.

In later history, with the emergence of the flying shuttle loom, the efficiency of weaving was greatly improved, and cotton yarn was in short supply. Because the cotton yarn needed for weaving was still spun slowly by the spinning wheels of many family handicrafts.

Under such circumstances, the Englishman James Hargreave invented a new spinning machine in 1764. Unlike the original spinning machine, this spinning machine arranged the spindles vertically and drove them with a spinning wheel, which greatly improved the efficiency of spinning.

Hargreave named the spinning machine after his daughter, and this is the world-famous Jenny spinning machine.

There were also multi-spindle spinning machines in the Ming Dynasty, but these machines still had the spindles placed horizontally, and could only arrange five spindles at most. In fact, most of the spinning machines on the market in the Ming Dynasty had four spindles.

As a landmark invention that opened the Industrial Revolution, the Spinning Jenny's drawings, actual pictures, exploded diagrams, operating schematics, etc. naturally often appear in various popular science books.

Zhu Houxuan, who had an excellent memory, dug out all the things he remembered about the spinning Jenny and verified them with each other. Having received a standard science and engineering education, it was naturally not difficult for him to understand its structural principles.

So he gathered the best and most trusted craftsmen to build the various parts of the spinning jenny. Finally, under his guidance, all the parts were assembled. It took two days to make a spinning jenny with 32 spindles.

This spinning jenny machine has a simple structure but a very clever design. When spinning, the operator only needs to turn the large wheel of the spinning wheel machine to drive the shaft, and the shaft will rotate the spindle through the rope loop. After completing this step, the large wheel is slightly reversed and then rotated forward to make the yarn fall off the spindle hook. Finally, the spindle pressure plate is lowered to make the spindle and the spindle rotate coaxially, and the yarn is wound onto the spindle to complete the whole process and spin the cotton into cotton yarn. The 8-spindle spinning jenny machine has increased the efficiency of spinning to times that of the Daming spinning machine. The most important thing is that it can be continuously improved on this basis. At most, there can be hundreds of spindles on a machine, and then it will be replaced by a more efficient water-powered spinning machine.

In fact, Zhu Houxuan was also studying the water-powered spinning machine, because the structural schematic diagram of this thing was already available.

In Wang Zhen's "Book of Agriculture" in the Yuan Dynasty, there are detailed records of water-powered spinning machines. Wang Zhen called this water-powered spinning machine "water-powered spinning wheel". It is a textile machine invented in the late Southern Song Dynasty and popular in the Yuan Dynasty.

The "water-driven spinning wheel" is specially used for twisting long fibers, and is mainly used for processing linen yarn and silk. The linen spinning wheel is larger and different from the human-powered spinning wheel. It is equipped with 32 spindles, and has four parts: rotating spindles, twisting, water wheel and transmission device. Two leather ropes are used to drive the 32 spindles to operate. Each wheel is driven by water and can twist 100 kilograms of linen yarn every day.

Wang Zhen introduced in detail its structure, performance and usage at the time, and attached a brief diagram of the machine, thus providing conclusive evidence that the world's earliest water-powered spinning machine did exist in China.

After this large water-powered spinning wheel was introduced to the West, it was improved into the Arkwright water-powered spinning wheel.

Zhu Houxuan originally wanted to go straight to the stage of water-powered spinning wheels in one step, but after careful investigation, he found that taking too big a step would easily lead to failure.

First of all, the spinning Jenny and the water-powered spinning wheel each have their own advantages. With the current technical level of the royal palace, the water-powered spinning wheel cannot surpass the spinning Jenny in all aspects and needs continuous improvement.

Although Zhu Houxuan can provide the main mechanical structure design and principles, some details still need to be studied and solved by craftsmen, such as how to improve the twist and tensile properties of the spun yarn.

Moreover, because it is driven by water, the factory must be built on the riverside and is affected by the seasonal differences in river water volume, resulting in unstable production. It also involves the issue of rural irrigation water rights.

Therefore, under the current technical conditions, the two will coexist for a long time.

"Your Highness, this machine is amazing! It is faster than any spinning machine I have ever seen, and the yarn it spins is of very uniform thickness." Hou Sen looked at the rapidly spinning spindle in shock.

"The knowledge bestowed by the gods cannot be wrong." Zhu Houxuan said with a smile. He was now becoming more and more proficient in using excuses.

"What does this deity look like? Should we build a temple for him? This will be of great benefit to people all over the world!" Qin Ming also sighed.

"Why build a temple? That god doesn't care about this." Zhu Houxuan glared at Qin Ming.

"Hou Banban, I have an important task for you." Zhu Houxuan looked at Hou Sen. He was not going to look for a white glove for this matter. He wanted to let his trusted people take the lead.

"Your Highness, please speak. Hou Sending will try his best."

"I am going to build a cotton mill and I want you to manage it. Are you willing?"

"A spinning mill? But if I go there, His Highness will be short of people to serve him, right?" Hou Sen said anxiously.

(End of this chapter)