Chapter 174: [Joule]

The railway from Liverpool to Manchester was the first strict railway in the world.

The so-called "railway in the strict sense" is a railway without horse-drawn carriages. Railways earlier than this often used a mixture of steam and horses, which was a strange style.

The horse-drawn railways of the late Qing Dynasty are often seen as a farce, which was actually a repetition of what the British had done.

People obviously prefer the ones without horses to the ones with horses.

So more than a decade ago, the Liverpool-Manchester railway was born and successfully triggered a trend, and countries around the world began to build railways.

The railroads in the United States had not yet been built to the West. The Apaches who followed Ma Shao to ride the train were seeing a railroad for the first time, and naturally observed every detail of the train with curiosity.

Ma Shao was also looking around.

But unlike others, he was looking at the train with an archaeological mentality.

He was not surprised that the locomotive had a conspicuous chimney, but other than that, the train had some obvious horse-drawn carriage heritage.

For example, the driver on the train looks exactly like the driver of a horse-drawn carriage. He sits almost in the open air behind the chimney, as if the boiler in front of him is the slow horse he wants to whip.

The carriage was similar to that of a horse-drawn carriage, made of wood, with a roof and windows on all four sides, and was very simple.

Despite this, people are still very enthusiastic about taking trains, and basically every train is full of passengers, and those who are boarding a train for the first time are particularly excited.

"It is this railway that has sparked a railway craze around the world. Now almost all countries want to have their own railways like Britain," said Mayo.

Ma Shao asked, "When was it built?"

"It seems to be around 1830." Mayo said, "After it was built, it became an amazing investment project. As far as I know, those who hold its shares can get a 10% return every year..."

Before boarding the train, Ma Shao noticed a detail - the spiral hook.

At this time, trains were still using spiral hooks to connect carriages. This was an unreliable device that hooked two carriages together with an iron chain and then tightened them. It was inefficient and unsafe.

About twenty years later, the more advanced James coupler will gradually replace the spiral coupler and will be used for hundreds of years.

Ma Shao felt that he should have invented the Zhan coupler earlier.

By the standards of his previous life, the experience of riding this kind of train was terrible. The road was bumpy and the carriages were crowded with people, some standing and some sitting.

Fortunately, Liverpool and Manchester are not far apart, only a few dozen kilometers.

Two hours later, they arrived in Manchester and headed to a residential area in the suburbs.

New Bailey Street, Salford.

The streets are always filled with a faint smell of beer that lingers, and the people living here are accustomed to it.

Because there is a brewery here, the taste it produces has become a part of people's lives.

At this moment, in a villa near the brewery, the young brewery owner was writing something in his study.

"To William Thomson... I have done some reflection on last year's experiment of measuring the temperature difference of the waterfall, and I have to say that it was a poor idea..." the paper read.

Just then, a woman walked into his room and said in a somewhat dissatisfied tone: "Are you writing to Thomson again?"

"Yes, what's the matter?" The brewery owner stroked his beard and carefully considered his words in the letter.

"How can you do this! I am your wife, but you communicate with others every day!" the woman said again.

The brewery owner frowned: "Thomson is a man..."

"Isn't this worse?" the woman insisted, "It was this man who ruined my honeymoon last year. You made me lose a complete honeymoon just to measure the temperature difference of a waterfall with him! And your measurement turned out to be nothing!"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry..."

The room was quiet for a moment.

The wife calmed down and then said, "A guest is coming."

"Who?" asked the brewery owner.

"William——"

The brewery owner blurted out: "Thomson is here?"

The wife took a deep breath and said, "No, it's William Mayo, your classmate."

"Mayo?" The brewery owner thought for a moment, then stood up reluctantly, "I don't know him well, why did he suddenly want to come and see me? I hope he's not here to borrow money..."

As a wealthy capitalist, he would occasionally run into old friends who came to him to borrow money.

Soon, he met up with his old classmate William Mayo.

"Long time no see, Joule." Mayo greeted first, then turned around and said, "Captain, this is my classmate, James Joule."

The Great Chief?

Joule could not help but feel puzzled, and at the same time carefully looked at the person next to Mayo, a young man in a suit with an unusually burly figure... a yellow man.

It was quite rare to see yellow people here, and the title of "Big Chief" made him even more confused.

"Who is he?" Joule asked.

Ma Shao took the initiative to introduce himself: "Hello, I am Ma Shao, the great chief of the North American Apache. If you think this name is difficult to pronounce, you can also call me 'Albert' - Isaac Albert is my English name."

While speaking, he secretly looked at Joule in front of him.

At this time, James Joule looked to be in his late twenties, very young, not the familiar old man in the textbooks, although he also had quite a beard.

It is not the well-known unit of energy.

In 1848, James Joule was a wealthy brewery owner and a minor folk scientist.

If it were a few years earlier, his status in the scientific community could be described as that of a country bumpkin.

After hearing Ma Shao's self-introduction, Joule's doubts did not diminish, but he still shook his hand politely: "Hello."

Mayo explained: "Joule, you may know that I went to the United States two years ago. Chief Ma Shao is a friend I met in the United States."

"Welcome." Joule nodded and said politely, with a perfunctory look almost written on his face.

He never expected that this old classmate, whom he hadn't seen for a long time, would bring a North American savage with him when they met. What did this mean?

However, Ma Shao's next words made him stunned.

"Mr. Joule, I have read almost all of your papers on heat generation by electric current, work-equivalent of heat, thermal dynamics theory..." Ma Shao knew them all by heart.

"In particular, the experiment you designed to measure the mechanical equivalent of heat is very clever. I even bet that it will become a must-have in future middle school textbooks."

Ma Shao added: "I agree with some of your most important points, such as that heat should be a manifestation of movement, not the so-called 'thermal mass'."