Chapter 155 (1/2)

Chapter 155 Visitor

Roland received the first purchase order for the steam engine, and the transaction’s amount was the largest so far.

Each “naked engine” for the price of 500 gold royals, with the first delivery, planned for in two months, followed by an increase of one engine per month until it reached a total of ten engines together. For future technical support, like replacing broken parts or improving equipment a payment of additional gold royals would then be required. Since the natives had never heard of a free warranty service, it meant more money for Roland.

Barov was the one who was most excited about the deal, in his view, every increase in the Town Hall’s revenue no matter whether it was by looting or by trade was worthy of praise. But there were naturally also some who were against it, for example, Carter, Scroll, and Nightingale expressed all their opinion, they felt that it was still too early for them to sell these powerful machines to outsiders, even more so, considering in hindsight, that Border Town didn’t even have enough machines for themselves.

Roland didn’t explain his reason to them because he didn’t look at it only from the view of a Lord. No, he also looked at it from the perspective of a way in which he could promote the speed of the industrial revolution.

It was almost impossible to achieve the task of advancing the process of industrialization alone, even with the knowledge of later generations. After all, the amount Border Town could handle was extremely limited. Even if he produced a lot of industrial products now, there would still be no one there to buy them from him. So, there was only one solution available to him, he must allow more people to join in on the revolution, only by doing this could new power applications sweep across the kingdom like a wave.

What would he get by selling the steam engine?

A sufficient amount of money, a huge number of new jobs, as well as a group of skilled workers, with the latter being the most important part.

This was also the reason for Roland’s low production rate.

With Anna’s new ability, her former and new production efficiency shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath. As long as she had enough raw materials, she could now cut out a dozen of steam engines a day.

Such products could also easily be sold, but that would only be simply the “selling” of a machine.

But if he wanted to develop the industry, he had to set up a special team responsible for production, assembly, and the maintenance of the steam engine. In Roland’s plan, he would build a factory with all the needed tools, such as a boring machine, planning machine, milling machine, and so forth. The complete steam engine production would only be done by the hands of ordinary workers.

In the beginning, it should be expected that the factory’s efficiency would still be low, and the quality of the first products would also be too horrible to look at, but slowly, everything would surly come on to the right track. In addition, with the experience Anna had gathered by creating them step by step on her own, as long as the workers became familiar with the process, it would be guaranteed that the output would start to increase.

The next step would be to use the profits from the sale of machinery to expand the production scale and also to train more workers. While at the same time the already experienced older workers, would gain the ability to manufacture products of higher quality, such as steam trains, steam ships, and so forth.

For Roland, there was no doubt that this would become a virtuous cycle. Those to whom he had sold the steam engine would also indirectly create benefits for Border Town. For example, if they used them for mining, they could reduce the ore prices; if they used them for shipping, it would also promote trade; when used for spinning and weaving, they could make up for their own deficiency.

Roland was already eager to see how the new steam power would spread over the whole nation and all these machines would come from Border Town. And once he was able to unify the entire Kingdom of Graycastle, he could then save a lot of time and work.

He also considered the possibility that buyers could try to imitate the steam engine, but for the new steam engine, he would use new circular cylinder which could only be drilled out by using his boring machine. He had also considered deliberately designed some complex components, which would be hard to reproduce by relying on the current level of technology. Roland didn’t believe that they would be able to produce a qualitatively good steam engine, even if they could count on a witch that was able to provide high temperature.