Herald of Steel

Alexander would state the required capabilities of his machine not using horsepower or percentages, but by the amount of work it should be able to do without a certain timeframe.

So in his case, Alexander wanted the machine to be able to draw 250 tons of water from a depth of 10 meters every hour using just 10 kg of coal.

Alexander would make the announcement throughout the city, with detailed diagrams of the machine freely available at the public library.

And seeing this promise of an astounding 1 million ropals, many eager souls would draw themselves to have a try at their luck.

The hype would be such that even Cambyses would come to Alexander to pose, "Why are you offering so much just to lift some water?"

To which Alexander would only enigmatically smile.

For now, though, coming back to Marvin, Alexander felt he had seen all he had to see, and thus decided to end the tour.

But before that, he had to ask himself if he wanted to assign the man a few additional tasks.

Such as showing him the diagram of a fully plate armored knight and asking him to try and replicate it.

Or asking him to write a book on metalworking, as a way to teach future generations about his work.

This would not only help Alexander retain the expertise of his master craftsman for eternity, but he could also use it to start a school, producing more craftsmen.

Alexander thought of also making the man delve into research himself, such as telling him to find the optimum tempering temperature and holding time for any given piece.

Or even making him a scholar, by defining what was meant by a metal's hardness, strength, and toughness respectively.

Because although colloquially, these three words were synonyms, in the world of metallurgy, they had vastly different meanings.

Hardness refers to how hard it is to scratch something.

Strength means how large a force a material can take without permanently deforming.

And toughness meant how much energy it takes to break something.

This and many more ideas flooded into Alexander's mind.

But ultimately, he refrained from issuing any such orders.

The man was already busy enough and was sure to become even more as Alexander intended to expand the size and scope of the iron plant to increase production, using the newly arrived Tibians as the bulk of the labor.

According to him, the total number of men working there should increase from 10,000 to 15,000 or even more.

Thus, with the heavy burden scheduled to drop on the supervisor, Alexander intended to give these tasks to the weapons and armory workshops.

That seemed much more appropriate.

And that was how that day concluded for Alexander, with him forgetting to instruct Marvin to make those earmuffs that he wished to administer to combat the terrible noise all around.

With the visit to the iron workshop over, Alexander would go to visit the glassmaking shop the next day.

And there, he would first observe the ongoing production of various expensive and luxurious glass and crystal pieces like cups, glasses, saucers, plates, bowls, window panes, and decorative pieces to name only a few, asking the workers about the various new tools they had made by themselves to help in their creation.

The glass workshop had a fund for this kind of purpose.

Alongside the current work, Alexander also sought if the task he had asked the men to complete had been finished.

Which was the task of preparing a series of lenses he had asked for his microscope.

It might come as a surprise, but Alexander's profession had actually made him a kind of expert on the matter.

It was a kind of requirement since a lot of time in his field of study was spent on looking at materials at a microscopic level, observing the atomic layers and structure of the thing.

Thus Alexander even had a full three credit theory course just on how various kinds of microscopes worked, along with the knowledge of how the lens in one worked.

This made him feel confident enough to be able to make one himself.

Thus having done all the math for his required 1000x magnification, which was the bare minimum to be able to observe specimens like bacteria with any sort of detail, Alexander sent the numbers to his glass shop, informing them of his desired thickness and curve of the lens, also called the radius.

While he sent the design of the body of the microscope to a wood workshop.

The body was to be made of wood and looked mostly like a regular microscope.

The lens was to be fitted into a tube with a holder that was able to be slid up and down through a slot in the tube, thus allowing the user to focus and magnify the object they were observing at will.

Sure, this manual way of adjusting the focus for each of the three lenses might seem archaic and tedious, and might not be the not most elegant solution, but Alexander thought it was good enough.

The man planned to have three tubes on top of each other, each housing a lens of specific magnification and focal length, thus producing a compound microscope with many times more magnifying power than you could get with a simple single lens.

Alexander was quiet with his design and could not wait to peer through it.

He had even brought the body with him.

Now, he only needed the engine- the lens.

"We are sorry, my lord. But we have been unable to complete the order." However, when Alexander went to collect them, the glassmakers had this unfortunate sentence to comment on, as they then showed Alexander all the crushed and broken pieces of glass they had tried to convert into their desired shape but failed.

"Making the lens in the desired shapes and dimensions that you asked for has proven far harder than we anticipated, my lord…

even with all the diamond tools you provided us. Our apologies," The man in charge of the project lightly bowed his head in regret.

And was soon joined by his second in command who elucidated on their difficulties,

"Yes. We are still having problems trying to cast the glass in the desired thickness. And even when we can do it, whenever we try to grind and polish it into that concave shape you desired, it keeps cracking or snapping. We require a bit more time… to learn how to shape the glass, my lord."

"...." Alexander was a bit surprised to hear this.

Because he had not till now really considered this issue.

He figured that since they produced so many products every day, the glass miths had already mastered at least the preliminary expertise in handling glass.

But it seemed making something out of glass was very different from shaping a small, delicate piece.

Especially when that small piece needed to be crystal clear.

And so, judging by how the glass smiths were sending looking furtive and longing looks at Alexander, wanted him to provide him with some tips on how to solve it.

But alas!

Although Alexander knew how to make glass, and the calculations on how to shape it, he did not actually know how to manually do the thing.

He guessed there must be very specialized tools to grind and shape them, but other than the fact that diamonds could cut through glass, Alexander knew of nothing of them.

Such details might have been available in some of his more specialized courses, but Alexander had not taken them, instead focusing on iron.

Thus with that gap in his knowledge, Alexander skirted around all those glassworkers' perceived desires like he had not noticed them.

And since the invention of the microscope was not anything critical, Alexander did not feel the need to pressure the men too much.

So with a little tap on the shoulder smiled, "Okay. Don't feel down about it. Continue to practice, and let me know when you finish. Perhaps you will need to make some special tools."

This hint made many of them see the problem from a different perspective, and some even took it as Alexander testing them, to see their true abilities.

Thus as the extension of the deadline produced a great grin and profuse thanks from the workers, some of the ambitious felt a great need to prove to Alexander.

With that done, Alexander had one last thing to observe, the manufacturing of an air pump, for his football.

The ball itself was made from a combination of stitched rubber and leather.

While the pump's hollow body was made of metal, with a tight rubber dress on top to cover any leaks or cracks.

The piston was too made from metal too, with a rubber disk at the end to make it snuggly fit and prevent air from escaping around its edges.

There was a one-way valve made of leather and rubber installed at the bottom which let air flow in one direction only, preventing backflow and improving the pumping action.

A hose connected the valve to the outside, thus enabling it to blow air.

Alexander planned to first introduce the sport to his army, and then hold an exhibition match to the public.

There was already a large stadium under construction in the city.

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