Chapter 11
After Mauser left, I studied the part drawings he’d left behind almost every day.
The drawings had side views and cross-sections, centerlines and dimension lines, all arranged in an orderly fashion. The basics were familiar from my previous life, but unlike then, everything the computer had automatically aligned was drawn by hand.
I tried to imitate them. I pinned the paper to the desk, set a ruler against it, and drew a line. The first was more or less straight. The second slanted a little, and the third wasn’t parallel to the first.
When I rubbed at it with an eraser, I only smudged the paper.
“What are you drawing?”
“I’m trying to draw straight lines, but my hand won’t cooperate.”
I kept practicing technical drawing, miserable at the thought that I had to go through all this when I could do it with a click on a computer, while lamenting the fact that there was no computer here. A few weeks later, a large wooden crate arrived from the Mauser company.
As soon as I heard, I dragged Oskar along and ran to Father’s small conference room. Inside the crate was a Gewehr 98 test rifle made based on the improvements I’d drawn.
The bolt handle curved downward, the sling swivels had been moved to the side, and the rear sight had been simplified.
“They really made it.”
Oskar marveled.
I picked up the rifle.
Its weight felt familiar. I opened and closed the bolt, and my hand moved lower than before.
Click.
At first, I was satisfied.
‘It worked?’
On the second attempt, the knuckle of my finger got caught slightly against the receiver.
“Ow, ow...”
I shook my stinging pinched hand.
I tried gripping it slowly again. The bolt handle was too low, leaving too little room for my fingers. It somehow fit my small hand, but I imagined it would be much more uncomfortable for an adult soldier wearing gloves.
Oskar took the rifle and worked the action.
“It’s fine for me.”
“Your hands are small too.”
I had an officer of the Imperial Guard try it.
The officer worked the bolt twice, then said cautiously,
“It takes less arm movement than before. But the handle is a little difficult to grasp.”
“A little difficult” was about as harsh a criticism as he could offer in front of a princess.
I tried slinging it over my shoulder, too.
The swivels were too far back, so the rifle hung at an angle instead of vertically. Every time I walked, the stock swung away from my body, then struck my thigh. The balance on the sling felt oddly uncomfortable, more so than the rifle’s weight itself.
“Why did they do it like this?”
I opened the manufacturing record that had come in the crate.
It had my notes copied down exactly as written.
‘So it sits against the body.’
Since I hadn’t specified an exact position, the craftsmen had moved the swivels to the place that required the least alteration to the existing parts and stock.
At least the test rear sight had turned out the way I wanted.
The makers hadn’t ignored my ideas. They’d simply made decisions about the parts I hadn’t specified.
‘Well, they should’ve just used their judgment.’
I thought that to myself, then immediately felt the sting of guilt.
I remembered how, in my previous life, professors would ask only for something to ‘look nice,’ be ‘sturdy enough,’ or be ‘easy to use,’ then get angry when the result wasn’t to their liking.
I was doing exactly that.
“What’s wrong?”
Oskar asked.
“I’m reflecting on my mistake.”
“Mistake? They were the ones who made the rifle.”
“It’s my fault for not explaining properly how to make it.”
A few days later, Paul Mauser returned to the palace with a draftsman.
Paul Mauser asked as soon as he saw the improved rifle,
“Does it match what Your Highness had in mind?”
I thought for a moment, then shook my head.
“No.”
Father’s expression beside me stiffened.
“What is wrong with it?”
I explained the bolt handle and sling swivels one by one. Father looked ready to reprimand Mauser on the spot.
Before he could, I spoke.
“But they didn’t make it wrong.”
Father looked at me.
“You said it was different from what you had in mind.”
“Because I didn’t draw it properly.”
Paul Mauser looked at me without saying a word.
The draftsman beside him set the test rifle and its production drawings on the table. He was a middle-aged man with a lean build and round glasses.
“Your Highness asked us to bend the handle downward, but you did not specify the angle or length. So the company decided on a design that would change the existing structure as little as possible.”
He pointed to the cross-section.
“If we move it higher from here, the hand has to travel farther. If we lower it further, we’d have to cut deeply into the stock. Which way to go is a decision for the designer, not the maker.”
“Then what about this swivel?”
“Your Highness asked us to make it sit against your body. But you did not specify where to place it.”
He laid the production drawing beside my scribble.
“A blank space on a drawing doesn’t mean freedom. It means someone has to make that decision.”
His words sank in. Embarrassed, I looked back at the test rifle.
My idea hadn’t been wrong. But I had tossed out an idea and expected the finished product to complete itself.
The draftsman took several tools from his bag.
They were a set square, a compass, a ruler, and a pencil.
He quickly drew part of the Gewehr 98’s bolt on a sheet of paper. He aligned the front and side views, drew a centerline, and marked dimensions at key points.
“If you draw it this way, any technician can make the same shape.”
I leaned forward.
“Where can I learn to do this?”
“Mechanical drafting. Before that, you need to learn geometry and measuring techniques.”
“Mechanics, too?”
The draftsman’s hand stopped.
“Of course. Though I don’t know where Your Highness heard that term.”
I hastily shut my mouth.
Father studied my expression, then smiled.
“If a few drawing lessons will solve this, then we can hire a tutor.”
“It’s not drawing.”
I immediately objected.
“I want to learn mechanical drafting. Geometry and mechanics, too. And I want to know how materials fail.”
Father’s smile vanished.
“Bessie.”
“Yes?”
“You already have more than enough subjects to study.”
“You can cut an hour of French.”
My French tutor would probably have fainted if she’d heard that.
Father thought for a while and didn’t answer at once.
A princess studied languages, history, etiquette, music, and religion. She did study mathematics, but not as someone who would one day work in a factory or an arsenal would.
“What do you intend to do with what you learn?”
“I want to make what I come up with properly.”
“Are you talking only about guns?”
I hesitated, wondering if he might refuse permission if I said I wanted to make only guns.
“No. Other things, too.”
At that, Father let out a sigh.
Paul Mauser spoke carefully.
“Your Majesty, the Princess does not need a university-level education right away. She can start with geometry and technical drafting. If her interest doesn’t last, she’ll naturally stop; if it does, you can reconsider then.”
Father asked,
“Would it be all right to teach engineering to a girl?”
“Machine tools don’t ask the designer’s gender.”
‘This man sure knows what to say.’
Father seemed to like that and stroked his mustache.
A few days later, the decision was made.
I wouldn’t be sent to a formal school. Instead, it was arranged that I would study ‘geometry and technical drafting’ with a private tutor inside the palace. To outsiders, it would be described as advanced drawing and mathematics.
Father kept trying to convince himself right up to the end.
“What is wrong with my daughter understanding German machinery while the princesses of England learn the piano?”
Mother heard him and made it a condition that I continue piano lessons, too.
For the record, my French lessons weren’t reduced. I just lost an hour of free time.
On the first day of class, I entered the classroom full of anticipation. But there was no rifle or bolt on the desk. Instead, there was a wooden cube.
My teacher was Dr. Schneider, a former artillery officer. After greeting me, he pointed at the cube.
“Today, we will draw this.”
“When do we get to draw guns?”
“When Your Highness can draw a box accurately.”
“Isn’t it just a square?”
Dr. Schneider turned the cube.
“Try drawing it so that a technician who hasn’t seen it can make an identical one.”
I picked up a pencil. Even if I’d never drawn by hand before, surely I could manage this much.
But I immediately regretted saying that. The drafting exercise I thought would be over in no time left three crooked squares on the paper after an hour. The lines that were supposed to correspond were subtly misaligned.
The doctor marked the mistakes in red pencil. Almost every line turned red.
I looked down at the finished sheet.
‘I didn’t even do this by hand in college...’
In my previous life, I’d earned a master’s degree, and now I was starting all over again with a single cube.