Chapter 6
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Chapter 6: Mauser and Keluobo
Karl found his own career and immersed himself in the ocean of knowledge with a more passionate attitude towards learning. He needed to understand the old forces of the past before creating a completely new system.
After the afternoon classes ended, Leader One did not go to the library with Karl as usual, instead, he left the campus directly.
Leader One also had his own career, one that could help advance human civilization and save the world.
He was going to visit a manor outside Berlin.
In 1833, Berlin city was very undeveloped, with the outskirts even more so. A light rain yesterday had made the roads extremely muddy, causing the carriage to struggle through the mud.
Leader One got off the carriage early, gave the driver some money to return home directly, and walked the rest of the way.
It was past four o’clock in the afternoon when Leader One finally arrived at the Estate of Brandenburg Prince-elector.
This land was originally purchased by Frederick the Great in 1746, who lived in the Sanssouci Palace in the northern outskirts of Potsdam City but needed a palace in Berlin for occasional visits. So, he acquired and built a smaller estate in the outskirts of Berlin City.
The estate, though described as small, was actually quite grand, covering an area of about 40 hectares. It included oak forests, a large potato field, an artificial lake, and two large palaces in the Rococo art style.
Currently, Leader One owns the estate, but he never lives there.
Leader One gave all his money to scientists and engineers, especially those with big dreams but little money. He let them all stay in the estate, providing royal treatment and ample research funding for them.
Two signs were placed at the entrance of the palaces, “Prussian Academy of Sciences” and “Prussian Engineering Institute.”
Inside the palaces, the decoration was exquisite and elaborate, dazzlingly beautiful, but…
The halls and corridors were filled with huge wooden boxes, ores, metal parts, scrap… and the air was thick with dust.
Leader One gave the palaces to a group of energetic genius engineers as a research institute, but they ended up destroying the palaces, living up to his expectations.
Leader One walked through the messy environment and saw two young people at the end of the corridor carrying a basket of metal scraps.
They were two very talented young engineers. The one on the left was named Alfred Keluobo, and the one on the right was Anders Mauser.
Since three years ago, after receiving help from Leader One, they moved from their hometowns to Berlin, and have been living inside the Estate of Brandenburg Prince-elector, turning the luxurious palace into a place for experiments.
Of course, this huge palace is not only occupied by the two of them, but also by several metallurgists, chemists, precision machinists, and a large group of assistants and researchers.
Leader One greatly appreciates them, as their research results directly contribute to the progress of human civilization history, indirectly preventing wars and promoting peace.
Especially the two before him, Keluobo and Mauser.
“Have you made any progress in your research lately?” Leader One put on a gentle smile, asking the two to set down their boxes first, then shaking their dirty hands.
Even though their hands were covered in gunpowder residue and metal powder, Leader One didn’t mind at all, looking at them with anticipation in his eyes.
Andreas Mauser was not good at talking and had some social anxiety. He was very reserved in front of Leader One, often letting Alfred Keluobo speak on his behalf.
“Your Highness, we have completed your idea and developed those bullets you envisioned.”
Mauser and Keluobo had originally come out to dispose of waste, but because of Leader One, they forgot about the waste box and excitedly led Leader One into the laboratory to show him things.
The palace used to have nine rooms on the east side of the first floor. However, now the walls have been knocked down to create a factory. Everywhere you look, there are simple workbenches and boxes of materials. The beautiful wall paintings and reliefs have been completely destroyed, and the bright ceiling has been darkened by smoke.
But Leader One didn’t mind. His full attention was on the strange metal object the size of a thumb.
“I’ve never seen anything so ugly,” Leader One commented.
Mauser nervously scratched the back of his hand, then ran to a corner of the factory and retrieved a precious blueprint from a locked box.
Mauser handed the blueprint to Keluobo, who said, “Your Highness, what you’ve drawn here is impossible to make. We’ll have to simplify it based on similar principles.”
The blueprint was drawn by Leader One himself, showing a very ordinary bullet in three views and a cross-section.
It had a sharp tip, followed by the rim, neck, shoulder, casing, groove, and primer.
Leader One had been learning painting from a large group of court artists since he was young, and he was particularly skilled in oil painting. This oil-painting-style bullet blueprint had a special magical touch to it.
Looking at it from a 21st-century perspective, the bullet was really quite ordinary. This was exactly how people imagined a bullet to be.
But now it is 1833, the era of queuing up for execution by guns, belonging to the world of muzzle-loading firearms, with just a beginning sight of breech-loading firearms.
These days, when people shoot guns, they first need to take out a small paper packet containing black gunpowder, tear it open, pour a little gunpowder into the gun barrel, then stuff the rest of the gunpowder and paper packet into the barrel, and finally insert a metal small round ball.
Use a long iron rod to poke into the barrel, compact the gunpowder, paper packet, and metal ball tightly, then you can shoot.
The invention of metallic cartridge will only appear twenty years later, and Leader One’s design of modern metallic cartridge will have some signs fifty years later.
Drawing a picture to make modern metallic cartridge for Mauser and Keluobo is really a difficult task for them both.
However, these two people are indeed technical geniuses, they really created the metallic cartridge, even though it appears simple and even ugly.
Leader One picked up that bullet, feeling that it was extremely ugly, a metal ball embedded in a metal stick, showing rough and hammered traces.
This early metallic cartridge was hammered out bit by bit by Mauser and Keluobo using hammers and chisels.
“How is the performance of the new style bullet?” Leader One asked.
Mauser, “Very good.”
Keluobo, “We tested it with her rifle in Hall, compared to the original paper cartridges, the power, range, and accuracy have all significantly improved. If we can make a rifle specifically for this new type of bullet, the effect would be even better.”
Mauser, “Tell His Highness the drawbacks.”
Keluobo, “The drawback is that it can only shoot one bullet, the casing gets stuck in the barrel and cannot be removed, you have to change the gun after each shot.”
Leader One, “Hmm… that’s right, the Hall rifle doesn’t have an ejection structure, so the casing would naturally get stuck inside.”
The two proposed making a gun specifically for this new type of ammunition in order to accurately test its performance and solve the ejection issue.
However, Leader One vetoed the idea, as the metal fixed cartridges they had developed were too rudimentary and rough, falling far short of Leader One’s expectations.
With the technological leaps of the Industrial Revolution era, machines capable of precision processing would soon appear, making it easy to produce qualified metal fixed cartridges.
“You continue researching the bullets, if you have time, help out in the basement metallurgy laboratory and the upstairs industrial machine tool laboratory. Louis Schulz is researching new stamping machines if successful, it will greatly assist you in making bullets.”
“Both of you, please rest assured. The future belongs to you, I can promise that your dreams will come true,” encouraged Leader One.
Mauser’s dream is to have a rifle named after themselves.
Keluobo’s dream is to create the best cannon in the world.
On the third floor, a group of young gun enthusiasts, supported by Leader One, established Rhine Metal laboratory.
Louis Schuler, who occupies the second floor of the palace, plans to dedicate his life to studying industrial machinery and metalworking tools.
The metallurgy laboratory in the basement was formerly St. Anthony Ironworks, bought by Leader One, who continuously recruits talented individuals in the metallurgy industry and plans to rename it St. Anthony Metallurgy Laboratory.
A group of older men in the basement have spent their lives working with steel, showing masculine traits, so they might as well be called the MEN.
In the Academy of Engineering palace on the estate, Leader One has filled it with men who can change the world.
Unfortunately, the other palace is quite empty. Currently, there is only one person in the Prussian Academy of Sciences, named Michael Faraday. Leader One paid a great price to bring this genius from England.
It’s still too early now. In another ten years or so, the Prussian Academy of Sciences will be overcrowded. Leader One plans to have the Prussian Academy of Sciences take charge of all future Nobel Prizes.
Translator: Volume 1 (Chapters 1-50) has been published on Amazon (https://amzn.to/3ULqGpF). I like this novel very much, so no matter if people pay to read it, I will continue to translate it.
Many terms need to be verified during translation, so my translation speed won’t be too fast. I need about 1 month to translate a volume, and the entire novel has 7 volumes.
I will release 1 chapter / 2 days on the site.
