Hearing his words, Barov gave him a meaningful glance and then lowered his head, only then did he slowly agree, “As you bid, Your Royal Highness. “
“Do you have anything else to report?”
“For the time being, no, Your Highness,” he coughed twice. “I’ll now go and deal immediately with the allocation of the houses.”
“It isn’t urgent, you can take your time with that issue,” Roland opened his eyes then stood up, “First come with me to take a few pictures and we can relax the mood.”
“Taking… pictures?” Barov asked shocked.
“You’ll recognise it immediately,” the Prince answered with a smile.
Entering the castle’s front yard, they saw that Carter, Iron Axe, and Soraya who he had previously called had already arrived. Placed in the corner of the garden were several pieces of four to five meter long planks, while an item on the ground that was covered with canvas.
“For now, Border Town is still considered small, but when the land in the south is developed, and the road between Longsong Stronghold and Border Town is finished, it’s scale will be dozens of times larger than it is now. By that point, you will have to spend one or two days on the road if you want to walk from the eastern side to the western one. Therefore, we need something that allows us to travel faster from one place to another. However, breeding horses is not only very expensive, but it is also impossible for every citizen to invest a lot of time for learning how to ride them.” Roland said as he opened the canvas, “Because of this, I plan to promote this new type of transportation method in Border Town, it is easy to use, and its price is also much lower than a horse.”
“What is this…?” Carter was instantly attracted to the novelty, “It has two wheels and an iron shelf, is it a cart?”
“The two wheels are placed in front of each other, instead of side by side, it will be tough to maintain balance,” Barov shook his head. “I do not see how it will be able to replace horses.”
Only Iron Axe kept silent, calmly waiting for the Prince to explain further.
Roland smiled, “This thing is called a bike, I will demonstrate how you should use it.” He placed both feet on top of the pedals, assumed a standard starting posture, one foot on a pedal, then he began to ride the bike along the path of the flower garden.
With Anna’s welding technique and Soraya’s coating skill, producing a bike manually wasn’t challenging at all. Its principle and structure didn’t hold any difficulty, for example, the rubber required for the inner tubes had been replaced by coating, which was directly drawn over a paper roll. With regards to this, Roland even customized a simple and easy to use bicycle pump. While the outside and the breaks of it were made with a hardened leather coating. The frame was made out of hollowed pipes, and for the brake wire, they had used a copper wire and an anti-corrosion coating. The only issue was with the chain, for it, he needed to completely rely on Anna, cutting and shaping one chain link after another and afterward connecting them all to a string. As for the kind of pedal, which were directly installed on top of the wheel as had been used for the first bicycles, he didn’t even consider them.
Coming to the end of the lap, Roland pressed the brakes, easily jumped off the bike and turned around only to be faced with a row of stunned men, which caused his heart to fill with pride. This was the reaction a change to a superior mount deserved. Compared with horses, that needed to be tamed and fed, bicycles seemed to be more frugal.
“I’m going to open a new bicycle factory in the industrial district, for the production of this transportation tool. But for this we not only need to recruit workers, but we also have to make them known the publicity, promoting them to the whole territory as soon as possible,” Roland briefly explained. “This is also the purpose why I called you over today. You will first learn how to ride this bike, and then let Miss Soraya paint a picture of you riding them on top of the planks. I want all my subjects to know that as long as they spent one or two gold royals, they can have the same mounts as the Lord, First Army Commander, Chief Knight, and City Hall Premier Minister all have.”
Chapter 246 New gunpowder program
What was the symbol of the industrial age, Roland first thought was of a speeding train continuously running down a railroad track, emitting rolling clouds of steam.
The cast-iron cylinder covered with oil, the thick and robust crankshaft together with those huge iron wheels, its rumble and vibration full of vibrant rhythm, as well as the sound of the steam-whistle piercing through the vast sky was what was associated with the machinery of the first steam trains. Compared with the mechanical designs of the later generations, which hid its structure under an outer shell, used high-precision machining to reduce the tremoring and a mechanical system which emphasized sound insulation and sound absorption the first engines undoubtedly showed more directly the power and beauty of industrialization.
He also wished to cover the territory with railroad tracks so that trains towing railway carriages with goods and people could go to and from all part of the Western Territory. Yet even though this was a good dream, it was still just a dream. Actually, it was not unthinkable to manufacture a steam train, only that the large amount of steel needed for the tracks would be far above the production capacity of the North Slope Mine Kiln’s group.
Therefore, he could only settle for second best, which left the human-powered bicycles as Roland’s best option. The flatter the roads within his territory were built, the greater the benefits of cycling would be. Furthermore, compared with the relatively complex structure of the steam trains, a bike almost didn’t require any maintenance at all, besides occasionally putting some oil on the chain.
If Roland wanted to start mass production of bicycles, he naturally couldn’t let Anna produce all of them by herself, so he had to first open a factory and train a group of workers that would specialize in the production and assembly of bicycles. Considering that the earliest date for the completion of the Kingdom Avenue would be in next spring, it wasn’t necessary that the factory would immediately be able to produce large batches. Due to this, it was possible that the workers could slowly become familiar with the needed production lines made by Anna and would only needed to produce a dozen bicycles for the first month. One of the most technical demanding parts was the chain, every chain link had to be made with a stamping press and would afterward be connected with a pin by hand.
However, to manufacture the parts made out of rubber, like the tires and brakes, Roland would still need to rely on Soraya’s ability. But as long as all the other parts were ready, Soraya could always draw her magic pen and quickly draw a lot of them. The same was true for the bearings. Since he couldn’t produce reliable ball bearings, he could only take a cut off part of an iron part and use it as a sliding bearing. For that, the inner ring became coated with a smooth mirror coating, which produced an effect which wasn’t much worse than the former method.
When the first bikes would be sold, only the nobility would be able to afford such an expensive vehicle, but in order to spread this to the masses and create a hype, Roland also intended to implement an payment by installment system to minimize the burden caused by purchasing as much as possible. Of course, only people that were in possession of an ID could go to the City Hall and apply for such a payment.
The three had trained for a whole afternoon, Carter Lannis, worthy of the title of the Chief Knight, was the first to master the skill of cycling; followed by Iron Axe, who was the second to successfully cycle around the garden. Only Barov, who after trying it more than a dozen times was still unable to succeed; and was only able to advance in a crooked line, almost falling to the ground. In the end, Roland had Soraya draw a static scene of him standing beside the bicycle and holding the handlebar.