The moment the meeting was dismissed, Napoleon II quickly went to his study room where he immediately prepared for the schematics, blueprints, and instructions that would industrialize France.
He started with the steam engine.
Steam engines were simple. Brutally simple. He had designed them before, broken them, fixed them, watched them fail in ugly ways and learned why. Compared to steelmaking or chemistry, this was forgiving territory.
Boil water. Water turns to steam. Steam expands.
Steam pressure acts on a piston. Linear motion converted to rotation. Rotation drives work.
Only after that did he draw.
A vertical cylinder. Thick walls. No ornament. A piston inside, sealed with packed leather rings soaked in oil. He noted the problem immediately—precision. France did not yet have machine tools capable of boring perfect cylinders. So he adjusted.
A vertical cylinder. Thick walls. No ornament. A piston inside, sealed with packed leather rings soaked in oil. He noted the problem immediately—precision. France did not yet have machine tools capable of boring perfect cylinders. So he adjusted.
Large diameter. Low pressure. Slow cycle. It must have forgiving tolerances.
He sketched the boiler next. Basically this is a pressure vessel. Riveted iron plates. Wide firebox. Low-pressure design to avoid catastrophic failure. He underlined it twice.
Low pressure. Safety before power.
A separate condenser followed. That was the heart of it. A smaller chamber off to the side, kept cool, where exhaust steam would collapse back into water. He added arrows. Flow paths. Valves.
Cylinder stays hot. Condenser stays cold.
Coal consumption drops. Efficiency rises.
He paused and flexed his fingers. Ink stained his skin. He didn't bother wiping it off.
Next came motion conversion.
The beam engine was familiar to the French. Simple. Reliable. But limited. He added an alternative beside it.
Crankshaft. Flywheel.
Rotational inertia smooths output. Continuous motion.
He labeled tolerances in plain language, not numbers.
"Good enough"
"Must be tight"
"Failure here is acceptable"
"Failure here is fatal"
Once the main engine was done, he didn't stop.
He drew variations.
Mine pump configuration.
Mill drive configuration.
Waterwheel-assisted hybrid setup.
He showed how to couple the engine to existing systems instead of replacing them.
Hours passed.
By the time the candles were replaced once, he had filled a dozen sheets. His handwriting grew smaller, denser. He switched ink colors to separate concepts. Red for danger. Blue for motion. Black for structure.
Then he set the engine aside.
Next: tooling.
Steam-powered lathe, mills, drills.
Those came next.
Napoleon II knew this part was just as important as the engine itself. A steam engine without proper tools was useless. It would exist only as a single machine, impossible to copy properly.
He picked up another sheet and began sketching again.
A lathe first.
Long bed. Heavy frame. Simple structure. No decorations. No unnecessary curves. The goal wasn't beauty. It was stability.
The power source was obvious. A belt connected to the flywheel of the steam engine. Wide leather belt. Easy to replace. If it snapped, the machine stopped. No explosions. No shattered metal.
France didn't have the precision yet for small, fast machines. So he designed everything big. Thick shafts. Wide tolerances. Forgiving errors.
Next came the cutting carriage.
Simple sliding mechanism. Manual control at first. No automatic feeds yet. Workers needed to feel the resistance, hear the metal, understand when something was wrong. Machines should teach men, not kill them.
He added a note.
Reject parts early. Scrap is cheaper than accidents.
Then came milling machines.
Vertical spindle. Fixed column. Moving table. Nothing fancy. Powered by the same belt system. One engine could run several machines using shafts and pulleys. He sketched overhead line shafts next.
Factories didn't need dozens of engines. One engine could serve an entire workshop.
After that, drill presses.
Heavy base. Tall column. Slow rotation. Strong clamps. He underlined the clamps twice.
Men lost hands because someone thought holding metal by hand was faster.
Once the basic tools were done, he paused.
This was the real foundation.
With lathes, France could make round shafts.
With mills, France could make flat, precise surfaces.
With drills, France could align holes.
With those three alone, better machines could be built. Better engines. Better pumps. Better presses.
He drew arrows between the pages.
Now for the mass production of the raw materials.
Steel.
Without steel, everything he had drawn so far stayed fragile. Iron bent. Iron cracked. Iron wore down fast. Steel endured. Steel held shape. Steel made machines reliable.
How to produce steel in a large amount? That's where the Bessemer Process came in.
He had already explained how it worked to Delaunay. What he now needed is how to build it.
He drew the schematics and labeled the parts along with the instructions for materialization. It took him about another two hours to complete the design for Bessemer Converter but the moment he was done, he slid it aside.
Now, that should be it. If there was something that he had forgotten, he'd just add it if the engineers mentioned one.
As he was about to call it a day, he realized something. The memories from his previous life were still clear, mostly from knowledge. While they are still clear he should note every knowledge he had left from his previous life and record it.
After all, he'll produce it at one point in time. Electricity, telegraph, telephones, televisions, cameras.
"Looks like I'll be staying here for long then," Napoleon II said as he cracked his knuckles.