Chapter 4
Motor!
An essential foundational component of modern engineering.
Once I get this one right, developing engineering devices from here on out will be smooth sailing.
“But mana flows instead of electricity, doesn’t it?”
“Shh.”
For now, it seemed to lie somewhere between magic and engineering.
Anyway, as long as it worked, that was enough. Modern humanity had never perfectly determined the principles behind flight, yet it still used airplanes just fine.
“Goldie, you know what a pinwheel is, right?”
“Yes. The kind that spins around and around when the wind blows!”
So he decided to understand mana as electricity possessing roughly all the properties of both direct and alternating current.
It was a little expedient, but perhaps he should think of it as electricity that flowed in whatever form suited the device.
It wasn’t exactly accurate, but if he dug any deeper, he might go mad like a mathematician trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis.
Akion decided to draw the line at, ‘It works, so I use it.’ There were too many machines he had to build to waste time proving it.
“If we make a fan like this and spin it….”
“Woooow~! It’s cool! But do we have to turn it by hand every time? Wouldn’t our arms get sore?”
“That’s what gears are for. We can use them to change the rotational speed.”
A manual fan could be made quickly enough.
He could build a fan using the reverse principle of a windmill, adjust its gear ratios, speed, and torque with belts, gears, and so on, and then spin it. That was all there was to it.
When he distributed these throughout the countdom, the farm managers and millers apparently connected the fans to waterwheels.
They used them to create summer shelters for farmers, and apparently public sentiment shot through the roof.
“Let’s go with a direct-current motor.”
The next step was a direct-current motor—a relatively simple motor made from magnets and coils.
He had said ‘relatively,’ but by this world’s standards, it was an absurdly difficult undertaking.
“Young master, may I curse?”
“Go ahead.”
“Young master, have you lost your mind? You’re telling me to cram this many components into a cylinder a quarter the size of my palm?! You might as well kill me!”
“You can do it. You won’t die. Give it a try.”
“Aaargh─!!”
He gathered every renowned expert in precision work he could find, including metalworkers, and put them through hell.
The Enersis mages brought in once again declared that they had developed Akion phobia, and the news spread to the newly arrived project researchers as well.
“See? It works, doesn’t it?”
“The fact that you can make it work, young master, is─!”
“You’ve done another ‘Akion,’ I see. Hohoho!”
“Heh heh. Give up, newcomer. The young master was exactly the same when he assembled the improved incandescent bulb!”
The process was difficult for them, but it was not terribly difficult for Akion, who had handled materials in units of micrograms in his previous life.
That did not make it easy, though.
After all, this world’s technology was at a medieval level, with magic replacing most of it.
“You want us to cut evenly spaced grooves around the outside? Young master, just tell us to cut it into pieces instead!”
“Oh, that’s a good idea. Like stamping it on a sheet of metal. Let’s make a mold and a press first, shall we?”
“Pardon?”
Besides, once he made machine tools like this, they would have countless uses.
Akion nodded in satisfaction in front of the press machine, a handkerchief stuffed against his nose to stop the bleeding.
Of course, several unconscious blacksmiths lay sprawled on the floor behind him, their own noses bleeding. But anyway.
If he had to name the most important parts of a direct-current motor, they were the brushes, commutator, and insulated coils.
Of these, the brush was one of the key components that changed the polarity of the coil inside the motor.
“Let’s use graphite.”
“Graphite? You mean the stuff used to write on posters?”
Graphite conducted electricity, and its layered structure meant it would not create much friction even while touching the coil. It was heat-resistant, too.
And it was one of the by-products of mining, so Enersis had more than enough of it.
“Now for the commutator….”
Next came the commutator, a rotating component that touched the brushes and switched the direction of the magnetic force.
They had copper, as well as high-quality wood that could serve as an insulator.
The problem was the insulation. He had tried various materials, but none of them properly blocked mana and electricity.
Because of this, Akion agonized over the problem, until….
“Huh? Why is this here?”
In the mine warehouse, he found the answer among the piles of by-products.
“Young master. That’s a mineral that splits into thin sheets. Look. Doesn’t its texture seem unusual?”
“It’s just like hard vinyl. That’s mica, all right.”
Mica (雲母).
It was an insulating mineral that was relatively heat-resistant and easy to process as well.
It was a suitable mineral for a commutator, having been used in heating plates for electrical and heating appliances, as well as in capacitors.
Now he only had to combine all of these, one by one….
“No. Scrap it.”
“Gnnngh…!”
“When will I ever get one to pass?!!”
How could the process of winding coils, assembling everything, and fastening each component one by one go smoothly?
Every day was a repetition of making and scrapping.
“Are you asleep?”
“Gah! No, sir!”
“You are asleep… All right… I’ll just work overtime by myself….”
“Gnnnngh…!”
And who was their leader, anyway?
Akion Enersis. Outside the project, he was often called a genius alchemist, but….
“Good work today.”
“Hrrgh.”
“See you all tomorrow… No, I suppose it’s today. Anyway, see you in the morning. That’ll be in about five hours.”
“Gnnnngh!”
Among the project researchers, he was called ‘the Devil of Overtime.’
Because he worked overtime as casually as he ate meals.
Of course, people worked overtime in this world, too. But it was limited overtime beneath dim candlelight.
“Heh, hehe. Is it morning already?”
“It’s still night.”
“Grrrgl….”
But a laboratory lit by incandescent bulbs—improved incandescent bulbs, at that—?
It was so bright that working overtime was difficult.
That was just how it sounded, though; it was an environment optimized for working overtime.
So no one could use the heat as an excuse, he hired several sturdy commoners to keep the manual fans running twenty-four hours a day.
“Thank you for your hard work. Now, there are a few things that need further improvement─.”
“Aaaagh! Aagh!!”
“He’s getting away! Catch him!”
“If you leave, I’ll have to work even harder! Please don’t run away!!”
Akion’s relentless grind reduced them all to husks.
It was early summer.
*
When Akion made the incandescent bulb, he had endured countless hardships and repeated crunch-mode sessions to produce it.
However, the full-scale support he had received back then was all for show.
Both personnel and resources had been limited at the time, and Akion had nevertheless managed to create it.
That was why everyone called him a genius alchemist.
But now….
- Click.
He had far more personnel and resources than he had during the incandescent-bulb project.
On top of that, he had Count Delford’s full support.
Even after combining the mages’ material expertise with every improvement made along the way…
- Whiiiiir~!
“Hahaha.”
Only a month and a half.
He had completed the motor in one month and fifteen days.
The components packed tightly inside the cylindrical cast-iron case spun briskly in perfect coordination.
Making the bearings had been difficult because of their complicated structure and the need for lubricant, but he had solved that problem by making a lubricant from petroleum, soap, and finely ground graphite.
Now, what if he attached a propeller suited to the motor shaft?
- Buuuuung~!
“Haaaah.”
The cooling fan was complete.
It was midsummer and hot, but the motor, sucking mana straight from the mana stone, spun the propeller and whisked away his sweat in an instant.
“Oh wow! You’ve finally finished it!”
“Yeah. Here.”
“Wowowow~!”
Goldie happened to visit the workshop just then.
When he turned the motor toward her, her drooping ears and hair fluttered in the breeze.
“It’s cool~!”
With her drooping eyes and mouth hanging open as she went, “Ah~!”, she looked exactly like a child.
Unnecessarily cute.
Akion barely restrained the urge to pet her.
“Hehehe, all my sweat has dried! Oh, young master! The count said he’d like to put carriage signs on other people’s carriages too. Is there room in the production schedule?”
“Again?”
Come to think of it, there was the ‘Baby on Board’ sign he had attached to his birth father’s carriage before.
Akion had made it intending to offer his father a showy act of filial devotion.
But who could have guessed? It became a huge hit.
As a result, nobles were all asking if they could attach one to their carriages, too.
“No. Why?”
“Because it’s cool!”
As it turned out, Delford had ridden his carriage all the way to the capital and bragged about it everywhere.
He had at least honored the Northern Grand Duke’s family’s request, since that was where his fiancée was, but if he gave away any more, they would have to strip incandescent bulbs from the streetlamps.
“No. We’re already barely keeping up with incandescent-bulb production. Give them to other nobles? Turn them all down.”
“There were also several people who wanted to sponsor your workshop.”
“Give me a separate list of their names.”
But he could not resist research grants.
Enersis’s full support was immense, but when it came to budgets, bigger was always better, wasn’t it?
As Akion beamed over the research budget that was about to swell wildly, Goldie was turning the portable fan in her hand this way and that, admiring it.
“But, young master. Are you going to sell this to nobles, too?”
“Who knows?”
He had set up a separate production line for incandescent bulbs by preparing another workshop, but it was still too early to mass-produce motors.
Besides, his goal in developing engineering machines was to improve everyday life.
He wanted to enrich the subtly primitive daily life of this romantasy world.
Still, since it would be nice if the product appealed to Count Delford as well, it would be worth considering commercialization….
“Shall we go with ceiling fans?”
“Ceiling fans?”
“Yeah. Enormous fans attached to the ceiling. We can use materials with adjustable mana conductivity according to the switch setting so the speed can be controlled….”
Ceiling fans like the ones found in homes in the United States and elsewhere.
They were commonly called ceiling fans.
“But will this little thing work?”
“Of course. I made motors in different sizes, too, so it’ll work. We’ll put them in my room, Father’s room, and the servants’ lounge.”
“Oh wow! Really?! You’ll put one in our lounge, too?!”
“Of course. Aren’t you hot?”
“Of course we are!! Wow! Oh wow! This is so exciting~!”
Akion planned to install them in every room of the mansion.
Then even midsummer would be nothing to fear.