Inception of the Steel Industry

The first rays of morning sunlight spilled across the rolling hills surrounding Oriel Estate, casting long, pale shadows over the dew-drenched lawns below Ernest's study.

He hadn't gone to bed. Not even for an hour.

The drafting table remained buried beneath a white-capped ocean of vellum. At its center rested the pear-shaped pneumatic converter blueprint. Beside it lay the heat-balance flow diagrams of an integrated steelworks.

Every stoichometric equation had been reviewed twice. Every thermodynamic assumption questioned. Every metallurgical shortcut violently eliminated.

Yet the more Ernest studied the drawings through the haze of a three-day sleep deficit, the more convinced he became that he was staring at the wrong problem. He wasn't looking at a machine. He wasn't even looking at a factory layout.

He was staring at the skeletal framework of a completely new economic order.