Road to the Crown

Chapter 113: Atmospheric Steam Engine

17th April 1574

"Let the feast begin!"

Despite quite a lot of the guests still travelling with their more extensive luggage and entourage, as soon as I got back to the Tarnow with Elia and just a few of my trusty retainers, I rushed towards the town centre to announce the start of the fest.

Rather than trying to make them skip the fun, I simply wanted to save them the trouble of dealing with the official part that unofficially most of the nobles simply despised, yet did their best to uphold due to the nature of their social standing.

With the new batch of my premium beer instantly delivered to both the town centre where the higher social circles would have their town and in lesser quantity to the commoner's ground, so that even the poor part of my subjects would have the chance to revel in the luxury of normally only applicable to the lives of the nobles.

At first, I thought that this entire event would be nothing more than just a waste of time with some occasional chances of meeting with a figure that I could use later on for the sake of expanding my projects or influence, and the reality didn't disappoint me all that much.

As soon as the official introductions were done, rather than wasting my precious time on silly dances or just drinking beer with the nobles around, I instead moved back to the castle, while leaving Elia along with a few people to make sure she would be safe to cater to the guests.

If I were to do something like this in the modern times, I would be met with the huge scorn of all sides of political spectrum, starting with leftists hating the fact that I pushed the responsibility on a damned woman, while those on the rights hating me for not taking proper care for my own wife, who could be pregnant.

Yet in my new times, the wife wasn't only a womb that was supposed to bring more children to the family, but an important person in a said household! If not for the fact that in this particular case I had to hold the control over the entire treasury of ours to make sure all the projects had enough gold to develop at a fast rate, I could forget about ever seeing a red-golden again in my life!

As soon as I got back to my own chambers, I sat in front of what Elia called a "drawing table" but what was, in essence, the simplest of the desks one could find in the world, along with a pile of clean paper sheets, a piece of charcoal in a special handle aimed to prevent one's fingers from getting dirty and a set of sharpened, goose feathers along with a capped, small bottle of ink.

I knew that for most of the nobles in not only the commonwealth but the entire continent, this set would be worth a few silvers at most, with most of them only bothering to spare any thought about the writing utensils as they could fetch a few beers worth of price on the market, yet for me, this was the greatest treasure that my lands could offer!

Without even a hint of hesitation, I grabbed a piece of charcoal from a small tray on the far corner of the table, and pushed it along the dry layer of paper, adding first few lines for the project of my steam engine.

With no prior experiences of trying to create this kind of tool, I couldn't rely on the system to provide a complete blueprint for me, catered to the problems this particular engine had to solve. Rather than that, I wrote down a few lines highlighting the points of what I wanted this steam horse to do, before trying to figure out a way in which it could work.

Yet instead of trying to create complicated machinery required to make a proper steam engine, I decided to go with the mechanism far more popular and easy to make, yet for the wider populace known only from the places that used it even in modern times.

The atmospheric steam engine that is!

Instead of using the high pressure created by turning the water into vapour, it was the force of counterweight that lift the cylinder up, while turning the valve between the cylinder pipe and the boiler and allowing the steam to fill the tube. At its maximum height, another valve would turn, opening a pipe that sprinkled cold water inside the tube filled with vapour, instantly lowering its temperature, and leading to its condensation. With the volume inside the tube now changing, the pressure from the air itself would push the cylinder back down, closing the cooling water valve, and opening back the valve connecting the cylinder to the boiler, allowing the process to be reset and restarted.

But while turning the up and down movement into a circular movement required by any of the real machines to work was easy, how I would go about transfering this momentum through the expanses of the mine?

A rope.

Putting the massive building outside of the mine itself, it would simply spin a single, big circle, that would be connected with rope or later on, a metal chain. This kind of connector would be later pulled to the transmission pole, on which a set of gear circles would spin as well, and allow yet another rope or chain to be attached to the next pole, all the way to the place where the energy would actually be required!

As for the systems that would make use of this free energy, if I were to waste my time on figuring out the designs for all of them, then before any of the machines would be put to actual use, my sons would be ruling what would remain out of my underdeveloped lands!

Yet as soon as I finished drawing the project for this atmospheric engine before I could even waste some of my precious materials on making my first attempt at building it with my own hands, I felt my consciousness trembling before I saw a flash in the corner of my vision.

Instantly moving the window with the system back to the royal place in the middle of my sight, I couldn't prevent a big, crazed smile from emerging on top of my lips.

"Steam engineer title acquired!"

"Unlocking basic steam engineer tools!"