Designing Phase Part 2

Morning sunlight had already climbed high over the eastern hills by the time Ernest finally set his drafting pencil down.

His study no longer resembled a nobleman's office; it looked like an overworked design bureau after a crunch deadline. The massive oak desk had completely disappeared beneath overlapping sheets of heavy drafting vellum. Cross-sectional diagrams of the horizontal boiler occupied one corner. Firebox stay-bolt layouts and thermal expansion notes covered another. Stephenson valve gear kinematics, stress diagrams, cylinder bore tolerances, and three pages of logarithmic calculations stretched across every available inch of polished wood.

Even the floor beside his chair had become a temporary filing system, occupied by neatly stacked force balance equations waiting for a second pass.

For nearly seventy-two hours, his entire universe had contracted down to a single machine.