The scraper rubbed against the glass, making a piercing sound.
Arthur Jenkins held a flat-head scraper used for cleaning lathe burrs, scraping forcefully down the inner wall of a discarded kerosene lamp chimney.
The black soot powder fell like fine snowflakes into the white porcelain mortar in front of him.
Thomas Edison, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, stood by a small high-temperature crucible used for melting solder. He held a glass rod in his hand, staring at the small amount of black ash accumulating in the mortar.
"Not enough, Arthur. Go to the warehouse and get twenty more lamp chimneys. Scrape off the loosest layer of surface soot. Don't take the hard residue at the bottom."
Edison tapped the edge of the mortar.
"Tom, this powder is too light. It scatters as soon as the wind blows." Arthur coughed twice, the area around his nostrils already completely black. "The boss said to press them into a button, but this stuff won't stick together at all. As soon as you let go, it turns back into a pile of loose sand."
"That's why we need a binder."
Edison turned toward the chemical reagent shelf against the wall.
He rummaged through hundreds of labeled glass bottles, pulling out a bottle of rosin and a bottle of natural rubber solution.
"The boss said to put it in the oven and bake it like bread. This means temperature is the key."
Edison dripped a few drops of rubber solution into the mortar and picked up the pestle to begin grinding rapidly.
"Rubber provides elasticity, and rosin provides the shape. Put it in the high-temperature furnace to burn off the excess impurities, leaving only the carbon skeleton. Hurry up, pour in all the soot you've scraped!"
All night long, the acoustics laboratory was filled with the smell of scorched rubber.
The two of them experimented repeatedly over thirty times.
For the first twenty-odd times, the small discs pressed in copper molds either crumbled into powder upon leaving the furnace or turned into hard, dead lumps due to excessive temperature, completely losing the elasticity required to change electrical resistance.
Until the next morning, when the rising sun shone through the skylight onto the floor.
Edison used iron tongs to pick a coin-sized mold out of the crucible and dropped it into a basin of cold water. With a "hiss," steam rose.
He couldn't wait to reach into the basin and fish out the small black disc.
The surface of the disc presented a matte carbon black.
Edison pinched it hard with his fingernail. A slight indentation was left on it, but the disc did not shatter. When he released his finger, the indentation actually slowly returned to being flat.
"Elasticity."
Edison's bloodshot eyes stared intently at the black lump in his hand, his cracked lips trembling.
"Particle friction under a microscopic structure—the boss was right. Arthur! Put this into the transmitter's porcelain cup and wire it up."
Arthur hurriedly used a screwdriver to disassemble the transmitting device, carefully sandwiching that "Carbon Button" between two brass conductive plates.
Directly in front, an extremely thin iron diaphragm pressed tightly against the Carbon Button.
"Connect the battery and set the output voltage to ten volts. You go to the other end of the factory floor and take the receiver," Edison instructed.
Holding the cylindrical brass receiver, Arthur followed the stretched insulated wire, ran out of the lab, through the corridor, and to the end of the main workshop a hundred yards away.
Edison took a deep breath and leaned close to the metal mouthpiece.
"Mary had a little lamb. Can you hear me? Arthur, answer me!"
A few seconds later, Arthur's frantic footsteps echoed in the corridor.
Arthur burst through the lab door, shouting like a madman.
"I heard it, Tom! It was like you were whispering in my ear! No crackling from the current. Every syllable was crystal clear! I could even hear you breathing!"
Edison slumped onto a wooden chair as if drained of strength, looked at the crude transmitter on the table, and suddenly burst into laughter.
"Hahaha... it's done. Go send a telegram to the boss. Tell him that Scotsman in the attic can take his tuning fork and go back to his hometown to plant potatoes."
Three hours later.
The top floor of the Empire State Building, New York.
Felix sat behind his desk, with the set of communication equipment that had just been delivered from New Jersey by a special courier placed before him.
Edison stood before the desk with sunken eyes, but his spirit was extremely excited.
Felix picked up the receiver and held it to his ear, listening to the voice of the doorman in the first-floor lobby reporting the list of visitors.
Although the voice had a slight metallic monotony, it was absolutely clear and distinguishable, fully meeting the standards for commercial application. It was clearer than the previous internal microphones.
"What is the wear-and-tear rate of the telephone materials?"
Felix put down the receiver.
"The Carbon Button will undergo slight deformation after prolonged vibration. According to my estimation, after a month of high-intensity use, the sound will attenuate. The carbon block inside will need to be replaced."
Edison thought for a moment and gave an approximate estimate.
"Replacing consumables once a month, alright. Perhaps this will be another steady stream of income."
Felix glanced at the assistant standing nearby.
"Frost, go find Benjamin Pierce."
A few minutes later, a middle-aged man wearing solemn black legal robes and gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose walked into the office.
He was the chief patent attorney for the Argyle Family Executive Committee.
"Pierce. Take the blueprints for this equipment and Tom's work logs regarding the Carbon Transmitter."
Felix pointed at the pile of documents on the desk.
"Then catch the next train to Washington."
Pierce stepped forward and flipped through a few blueprints.
"Boss, this is a brand-new field of communication. Which categories of patents do we need to apply for?"
"Everything, of course," Felix said, leaning back in his chair.
"Write down every term you can think of. 'Variable Resistance Transmitter,' 'Carbon-based Sound Amplification Device,' 'Communication Terminal Combining Electromagnetism and Resistance.' Don't leave any legal loopholes for anyone."
Pierce pushed up his glasses, looking thoughtful.
"I think I understand. I'll go have a cup of tea in Patent Commissioner Fisher's office. He took our library's 'renovation fund' before; he knows how to navigate this kind of expedited channel."
Felix stood up and walked over to Pierce.
"Move fast. There's a fellow named Bell over in Boston who could submit his electromagnetic telephone schematics at any time. I don't care what he submits; your task is to ensure we build an absolute barrier around the 'core components of sound transmission.'"
"If he patents the concept of the telephone, we will monopolize the 'throat' that allows the telephone to make sound. Without our Carbon Transmitter, his telephone will never leave that attic."
Pierce stuffed the documents into his briefcase and locked the brass clasp.
"Don't worry, Boss. Legal clauses are my battlefield. I will use patent law to hang those lawyers in Boston."
Watching Pierce leave, Felix turned to Edison.
"Alright, Tom, go back and get some sleep. Once you wake up, start developing a Telephone Switchboard. Current machines can only handle point-to-point calls. I want you to find a way to build a central device that can connect hundreds of lines to each other, just like a railway dispatch station."
Edison's eyes instantly lit up, and he grabbed his hat.
"Leave it to me, Boss."
Calm returned to the office, and Felix walked to the window.
In this era without any radio wave interference, he was the first to grasp the needle and thread for weaving an information network.
That thin copper wire was about to become a noose more lethal than steel or coal.
It wasn't very friendly to the Western Telegraph Company under his command, but that's fine; it's just a stepchild anyway.
On the outskirts of Pennsylvania, along the upper reaches of the Ohio River.
The sky was like a moldy sheet of lead, with a continuous cold rain falling. The river had surged, its turbid yellow slurry carrying dead branches and animal carcasses washed down from upstream; the current was swift and violent.
Andrew Carnegie stood on the muddy riverbank.
His wool overcoat was completely soaked, clinging tightly to his body, and his leather boots were sunk deep into the muck.
Carnegie did not use an umbrella, allowing the icy rain to flow down his scraggly beard and into his collar.
In the water before him, dozens of shirtless workers were wading in waist-deep icy water. Using thick hemp ropes and iron nails, they were binding freshly felled logs together to assemble crude rafts.
"Tighten it! That rope is loose!"
Carnegie roared at the men in the water, his voice hoarse from the cold and overuse.
His brother, Tom Carnegie, ran over holding a tattered umbrella and grabbed his brother's arm.
"Andrew, you can't let the workers into the water anymore. The temperature is too low; three men have already cramped and were nearly swept away! This simply isn't working!"
"Shut up!" Carnegie shoved the umbrella away.
"That Bill has bought out all the barges; we have no boats to use. If we don't get this iron ore across this stretch of river, the blast furnaces might go out tomorrow! Tell me, can you afford the cost of them extinguishing?"
Tom pointed at the river, his expression grim.
"But these rafts can't possibly carry the weight of the iron ore; they'll sink!"
"If they sink, bind them again. Add another layer of logs."
Carnegie gritted his teeth, his eyes fixed intently on the water.
Tons of dark red iron ore were being painstakingly moved by workers with wheelbarrows onto the first large raft that had just been completed.
The raft let out a pained creak under the heavy pressure, and turbid river water seeped through the gaps between the logs. The entire raft sat extremely low in the water, nearly level with the surface.
"Untie the lines! Push out with the long poles!" Carnegie ordered.
Five workers holding long wooden poles jumped onto the raft and untied the thick ropes bound to the stumps on the shore. The raft swayed in the rapid current, moving slowly toward the center of the river.
Carnegie held his breath.
As long as this batch of ore could reach Braddock downstream, the steel mill could hold on for two more days.
However, the turbid currents of the Ohio River showed no mercy.
As the raft reached a bend in the middle of the channel, the shear force of the current suddenly increased. The front of the raft kicked up violently and then slammed down hard.
*Bang!*
A loud crash rang out. The hemp ropes binding the logs together could no longer withstand the pressure of dozens of tons of iron ore and snapped instantly.
The entire raft split down the middle.
The mountain of iron ore poured into the river with a thunderous crash, sending up massive plumes of water. Several workers with poles screamed as they fell into the water, instantly swallowed by the turbid vortex without even a chance to struggle.
"Save them! Get the ropes, quick!" Tom shouted frantically from the shore.
Carnegie stood in the mud, watching the scattered logs floating on the surface and the ore that had completely sunk to the riverbed. His body swayed, and his eyes were filled with despair.
One thousand dollars worth of ore and five lives had vanished into nothing in just those few seconds.
Argyle's methods were incredibly ruthless.
Cutting off his supply line via the waterway was even more fatal than crashing the market on Wall Street.
The workers dragged the few survivors ashore.
Those men were so cold their lips were purple, and they were constantly vomiting muddy water. A deathly fear pervaded the entire riverbank.
Tom walked to Carnegie's side.
"Andrew, let's admit defeat."
There was a sob in Tom's voice.
"This method of transport is killing people, and the miners are about to strike. They say Carnegie's money is cursed and they won't work anymore. Over at the Baltimore Railroad, Mr. Garrett's supply of railcars is also tight; they're busy converting to Standard Gauge."
Carnegie turned to look at his brother. Those eyes, originally full of ambition, were now bloodshot.
"No... I will never admit defeat."
Carnegie hissed these words through his teeth.
He wiped the rain from his face and turned toward the carriage parked on the dirt road.
"Andrew! Where are you going? What about the blast furnaces?"
Tom chased after him, questioning.
"Bank the fires; use the minimum amount of coal to keep the embers alive," Carnegie said as he climbed into the carriage, not looking back.
"I'm going to Philadelphia to find Drexel. Those Midwest railroad bonds are still in our hands—that's money! I'm going to exchange them all for pounds sterling to buy the things Argyle cannot buy!"
The coachman cracked his whip, and the horses started off with difficulty through the mud.
Carnegie sat in the jolting carriage, his hands tightly clutching the leather bag filled with bonds.
He was like a gambler who had lost everything, preparing to stake his last piece of clothing on the table.
The following evening.
Philadelphia, second-floor reception room of Drexel Bank.
Carnegie did not see Anthony Drexel; that old-school banker had claimed illness and refused to see him. Receiving him was the bank's Senior Vice Manager, Victor Cole. Cole was a pale, calculating young man.
There was no fire lit in the reception room.
Cole sat behind the desk, leafing through the case of Midwest railroad bonds Carnegie had brought.
"Mr. Carnegie, we understand your situation very well," Cole said, tossing the bonds onto the table.
"But these things currently have extremely poor liquidity on the market. Railroad construction in Chicago and Omaha has stalled due to the tightening of federal loan policies. These bonds have been downgraded to junk status."
Carnegie sat opposite him, the mud spots on his clothes having already dried.
"This is solid collateral in the form of right-of-way, Victor! Mr. Morgan has channels in London to sell them! I need cash to bribe the dispatchers within the Pennsylvania Railroad. Only by using illicit cash to smash through Argyle's land blockade can my steel mill survive!"
Cole leaned back in his chair, hands crossed.
"London can indeed absorb these bonds, but Mr. Morgan has recently expressed concern over your war of attrition in Pittsburgh. Your steel mill has been losing money, while Argyle's Lex Steel is doing quite well."
Cole pushed up his glasses.
"Drexel Bank can discount these bonds for you. But the discount rate can only be thirty percent of the face value."
"Thirty percent?!"
Carnegie stood up abruptly, his eyes blazing with fury.
"You blood-sucking swindlers, this is darker than a robbery. When I traded steel rails for these bonds, they were valued at eighty percent! You must realize we are allies; your bank also holds shares in our company!"
"This is the market's pricing, Mr. Carnegie. What you hold is only worth this much now."
Cole remained unmoved, not even lifting an eyelid.
"If you don't accept it, you can take these papers to Wall Street in New York and try your luck. However, I suspect the traders there won't even give you ten percent."
Carnegie stared intently at Cole.
He understood that this was the cold-bloodedness of capital.
When he lost his utility or sank into the mire, his allies would be even more ruthless in bleeding him dry than his enemies.
The blast furnace fires must not go out, and the workers' wages must be paid. Bribing the dispatchers required gold coins.
He had no choice.
Carnegie slumped dejectedly back into his chair.
"I'll sign."
Carnegie's voice sounded as if he had aged ten years in an instant.
"Give me the cash, every last cent of it."
Cole gave a satisfied smile and pulled a contract from the drawer.
"It is an honor to serve you, Mr. Carnegie."
New York, the top floor of the Empire State Building.
Sunlight streamed through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, making the brass paperweight on the walnut desk gleam.
The rich smoke of a top-grade Havana cigar drifted through the air.
Felix sat in a high-backed leather chair, clutching a briefing that had just been delivered by Flynn, the intelligence chief.
Tom Hayes, president of Patriot Investment Company, and George Templeton, president of the Imperial Bank, sat in the guest chairs opposite him, both looking as excited as hunters ready for the kill.
"That fellow Carnegie actually managed to hold on."
Felix tossed the briefing onto the desk, a faint, enigmatic smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"That short Scotsman mortgaged his backlog of Midwest railroad bonds to Drexel at a fire-sale price of seventy percent off. He secured a lifeline of cash, then paid a premium to bribe low-level dispatchers of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the Allegheny Mountains. Using late-night freight gaps, he's been smuggling West Virginia coal into Braddock."
Hayes let out a cold laugh.
"He's just delaying the inevitable, Boss. The discount rate offered by a vampire like Drexel is equivalent to drinking Carnegie's blood. For every ton of steel rails he produces now, he's losing not just manufacturing costs, but also massive interest and discount losses. As long as we roll out the 'Five-Year Installment Credit Plan' across the board and snatch up all the orders from those Midwest railroad companies, his blast furnaces will be nothing but a pile of scrap metal in less than two months."
Templeton pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and agreed.
"Exactly. We can issue low-interest cash loans directly to those railroad companies on the condition that they only purchase rails from Lex Steel. That way, Carnegie's barter game will be completely finished. He'll be choked to death in Pittsburgh."
Felix didn't respond immediately.
He stood up and walked over to the massive globe beside his desk. His finger traced lightly along the East Coast of North America, then crossed the vast Atlantic Ocean, finally coming to rest on the map of the European continent.
"There's no need."
Felix turned around, his deep gaze sweeping over his two confidants.
"Stop the targeted strangulation of Carnegie. Proceed with the 'Five-Year Installment Plan' as scheduled, but don't waste any more energy or capital targeting him specifically."
Hayes was stunned, the excitement on his face instantly freezing.
"Boss? You're letting him off? You have to realize he's like a rat in a trap right now. If we just throw one more stone, he'll be crushed!"
"A rat struggling at death's door in a trap isn't worth my full attention."
Felix walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of bourbon.
"Carnegie is a tough nut to crack, and Old Morgan still has a steady stream of pounds in London to funnel to him. If we insist on swallowing him whole now, we'll have to burn through massive amounts of cash flow in a steel price war. That's a battle of egos, not business. We can perfectly well wait for Old Morgan to keep pumping in blood and then swallow him in one gulp when the time is right."
Holding his glass, Felix walked over to the large European military map.
"Alright, Gentlemen, pull your eyes away from that smoky little mud pit in Pittsburgh. Look up and across the ocean."
Felix tapped the brass head of his cane against the Rhine region on the border between France and Prussia.
"The real windfall isn't in these small price margins. It's right here."
Templeton stood up and walked to the map, his brow furrowing slightly.
"The situation between Prussia and France is indeed tense. The issue of the Spanish succession has Napoleon III and Bismarck at each other's throats. But Boss, what does that have to do with us pausing the strike against Carnegie?"
"Because war is the most efficient money shredder, and also the most frantic money-printing machine."
Felix took a sip of the strong liquor, pure capitalist greed burning in his eyes.
"Once Prussia and France go to war, millions of troops will be slaughtering each other on the Central European plains. What will they need? They'll need endless supplies of grain, tough beef jerky, bandages to stop bleeding, morphine for pain, and steel behemoths that can send enemy warships to the bottom of the sea."
Felix turned to look at Hayes.
"Tom. From today on, the primary mission of Patriot Investment Company on Wall Street has changed. Stop worrying about the minor fluctuations in railroad stocks. Use every bit of cash we can get our hands on and go to the Chicago Board of Trade! Go and aggressively buy up futures contracts for wheat, corn, and oats! Buy as much as you can! Lock down this year's entire harvest from the American Midwest breadbasket onto our ledgers!"
Hayes sucked in a sharp breath.
"Hoarding the nation's grain? Boss, if the war doesn't break out, or if it ends quickly, and this massive amount of grain rots in warehouses, we'll face astronomical storage fees and the risk of a price collapse!"
"It will definitely break out, and it will be a bloodbath," Felix said with a tone of unquestionable, prophetic certainty.
As a soul with memories of the future, he knew the historical trajectory of that summer in 1870 all too well.
The brutality of the Battle of Sedan, the fires of the Paris Commune—it was a war of national destiny that would reshape the map of Europe.
"And it's not just grain."
Felix pressed the brass intercom on his desk.
"Send Bill and Jones up."
A few minutes later, Bill and the pot-bellied Jones walked into the office, dripping with sweat.
"Boss, you wanted to see us?"
Jones wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Felix didn't waste any words and gave the orders directly.
"Correct, Jones. Starting tomorrow, the production lines for Spam, corned beef, and hardtack at the Chicago slaughterhouse will run on twenty-four-hour triple shifts. Stop supplying low-quality meat to the Southern plantations; shift all production capacity to military-standard sealed cans."
Jones's eyes widened.
"Military standard? Boss, the Federal Army isn't at war right now. Who are we going to sell all those military rations to?"
"To the Europeans across the ocean, of course."
"By the way, don't print English on the packaging. Print half in German and half in French. The quality must be up to par—add extra salt and preservative spices. I want to ensure these cans can float at sea for two months and still be edible for the soldiers when they reach the front-line trenches."
"Bill."
Felix turned to the president of the Metropolitan Trading Company.
"I'm here."
"You're in charge of coordinating logistics. Besides the trading company's own fleet, rent every ocean-going merchant ship on the East Coast. If you can't rent them, buy them. Keep a steady stream of Jones's canned goods, Hayes's hoarded grain, the first-aid kits from Umbrella Corporation, and the Vanguard forces' supplies moving toward the ports of Hamburg and Marseille. We're betting on both sides."
Bill nodded, but as a seasoned veteran of the shipping business, he raised a practical concern.
"But if France and Prussia officially declare war, the Atlantic routes won't be safe. France's naval strength is far superior to Prussia's; they'll definitely blockade the North Sea and the English Channel. If our merchant ships fly the American flag, under international neutrality laws, they might not be sunk, but they'll easily be seized for inspection. If they're found to be carrying war materiel, both the ships and the cargo will be confiscated."
A cold smile curled on Felix's lips.
"That brings us to the final item on my agenda for today."
Felix picked up his cane and put on his bowler hat.
"Frost, ready the carriage. Tell my private train to fire up its engines. We're heading to the New Jersey coastline."
"Let's go see MacGregor and find out what kind of steel monsters he's been hatching in the shipyards with my gold over the past two years. If the French dare to intercept my cargo ships, I'll arm those ships to be more lethal than their own cruisers."
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I don't know about you guys but I'm glad it's been 10 chapters since we saw Anna