After repelling Timothy's troops, Border Town regained its tranquility.
Roland selected three people from the City hall's Department of Education and two teachers to form a team, carrying Soroya's photocopied books to Longsong Stronghold. No matter how effective it was, he had finally taken the first step in assimilating Longsong Stronghold.
Although Pérot was not good at commanding battles, he was indeed excellent at administration. In just one week, two thousand handymen had arrived in Border Town under the escort of the Knight. If the second batch of ten furnaces had not been put into production, Roland would not have dared to establish a hard road between the two places. Now, he finally had the opportunity to squander it.
This road was named Kingdom Main Street by Roland, and was under the sole responsibility of the Minister of Construction, Carr. Its structure was exactly the same as that of Border Town's streets, both were cement-stabilized gravel layers. In the era when there were no heavy vehicles, such a road surface was enough to carry out transportation tasks. Moreover, it had a good drainage performance and could be paved with asphalt or concrete depending on the situation.
In terms of construction materials, four steam-driven mills replaced manpower and carried out the stone crushing work, producing dozens of tons of gravel every day. The weak transportation capacity limited the further increase in production. It took more than a hundred people a day to carry so many stones in carriages to the construction site. If it were the road overlords of the future, only one cart would be needed to transport all the stones.
In the furnace area, except for the four clay bricks, the rest of the blast furnaces had been put into the production of cement powder. After many component tests and the iron powder supplied by the mine, the cement produced by Border Town was now far better than the first batch of products, both in quality and stability.
However, the large number of people transporting gravel and cement powder also brought a lot of negative effects to Border Town, the most serious of which was the problem of dust. In the afternoon, with only a slight breeze, dense dust could be seen flying all over the sky, and the streets had turned pale yellow. Although most of the townspeople did not mind such a situation, for Roland, there was nothing worse than having to close the doors and windows on a hot summer day.
Therefore, the carriages carrying cement and gravel were quickly installed with covers to reduce the scattering during the transportation. At the same time, with the help of Leaf's ability, the small town was covered in shade in just a few days. The luxuriant and leafy parasol trees lined up symmetrically along the streets, making the town appear green as far as the eye could see. Coupled with Roland's call for all his subjects to take the initiative to sprinkle water to reduce the dust, the problem was quickly solved.
The straight-line distance between the two places was less than 70 kilometers. However, considering that the construction of the road had to avoid the foot of the Impassable Mountain Range, the total length of the road was about 100 kilometers. The estimated construction period was one year. With good roads, some forms of transportation could also be put to use, such as bicycles and steam cars.
In his vision, the development of education and the construction of roads were all measures to connect the two places together, just like the integration of cities and towns in later generations. After the land development between the two places was completed, Longsong Stronghold and Border Town would merge into a huge city. If he could turn the hills in the south into a part of the city, and then open up the border mountains, he would even have an outlet to the sea.
Of course, developing so much land required more people, and in order to cope with the possible outbreak of war in the future, the city had to be self-sufficient in agriculture, while also providing a large number of workers for industrial production. According to preliminary calculations, he needed to introduce about 100,000 people, and the largest city in Graycastle, King's City, only had about 20,000 to 30,000 people.
Roland set his sights on the north and south of Graycastle. These two places had experienced the flames of war, and when winter came, it was likely that there would be a large number of refugees who lacked food and clothing. As long as they were provided with food and warm shelter, they could be absorbed into Border Town. Even the refugees of the Kingdom of Everwinter and the Kingdom of Wolfheart were within his consideration. For this reason, he also wrote a letter to the merchant Margaery, asking her to help him inquire about the situation in these two countries.
…
After writing down the recent development plan, the Prince folded the paper and put it in a drawer. He stretched and decided to go to Anna's room to see how her lenses were cut.
Ever since he understood the reason for Soroya's evolution, he intended to make a microscope that could observe the structure of cells.
If they could observe the wonderful microscopic world with their own eyes, maybe it would lead to more witches evolving new abilities, or at least it would arouse their interest in learning.
For the production of a microscope, it was not difficult to make two convex lenses used to magnify the target. The difficult part was that the focal length of each hand-polished lens was different, so matching the eyepiece with the objective lens was a delicate work, and it was necessary to repeatedly adjust the distance between the two lenses.
After briefly explaining the principle of convex lens imaging, he gave Anna a few pieces of excellent quality crystal, letting her try to cut the lenses and measure their focal length. Now that three days had passed, Roland's heart was full of curiosity as to what extent Anna had achieved.
Walking to the door of Anna's room, Nightingale smiled at him and stood with her back against the wall, as if to show that she would not follow him in. Since she reduced the time of her invisibility, Roland no longer had to guess her whereabouts. Whenever he was alone with Anna, Nightingale would always choose to stand in a distant position.
Pushing the door open, he saw Anna sitting in front of the table fiddling with a metal tube.
"How is it?" He walked forward and asked.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Roland was stunned. He saw a few microscope-like instruments on the table, and they were very similar to the schematics he had drawn.
"I made a few test products according to the drawings you gave me, and I can indeed see many details that are usually difficult to see." She raised her head, and her slender bangs slid down to one side. "I used it to observe the surface of the paper, the leaves, and the water, and found that they look very different from the usual." Since the hot air balloon trip, Anna no longer used honorifics when the two of them were alone, which made him feel very relaxed.
"How did you make it?" Roland was surprised. "That diagram is just a rough outline."
"The outline is enough," Anna said with a smile. "You see, as long as the eyepiece and the objective lens are fixed at a suitable distance, it can magnify the image. Then, you use an iron tube to fix them, and the main body of the microscope is completed. When I tested the magnification effect of the lens, I found that the objective lens and the target have to be maintained at a specific distance to see a clear image, and if my hand shakes, it will become blurred. From your diagram, I can also see that you need a shelf to fix the lens, and the table below that carries the target can be moved up and down to obtain the best object distance. " She paused, "The piece at the bottom of the diagram is a bit difficult to understand, can you tell me what it is used for?"
Roland glanced at the drawing and found that he had made a mistake. It was a reflector, used to increase the light that passed through the target. In this era, the mercury mirror had not yet been invented, and the general aristocracy still used bronze or iron mirrors to tidy up their appearance. In the Imperial Palace, they stuck a piece of silver on the back of the glass to obtain a better reflection. Even without this mirror, as long as there was enough sunlight, the microscope could still be used.
After he explained it in detail, he couldn't help but sigh at Anna's amazing comprehension. Just based on a rough outline, she was able to produce a nearly complete finished product. If it were him, he would never be able to do this.
Looking at the white neck that was exposed when she lowered her head to examine the new lens, Roland couldn't help but move forward, wanting to kiss her, but she pressed her hand against his face and gently pushed him away. "Wait a moment, Your Highness, I'm busy."
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