Empire Rising: Spain

Chapter 72: Chapter 71: Spain’s Shortage of Talent

After the Franco-Prussian War ended, Europe entered a period of peace.

Of course, the reason the situation was peaceful was that the British Empire was too preoccupied with the Irish autonomy movement to focus on anything else.

The official name of Britain is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Kingdom of Great Britain is composed of England and Scotland.

This has led to Britain having similar issues as Spain, where, apart from the dominant English, the Scots and the Irish didn’t seem to fully recognize the government’s rule.

However, at this time, the British Empire was the undisputed world leader, the most powerful naval nation. Relying on the glory of the Victorian Era, it temporarily suppressed the independence desires of the Irish and Scots.

With internal issues in Britain, the French licking their wounds from the war, and the Germans starting industrial ventures with large sums of money, the golden development period for other countries in Europe began.

More than two months passed quickly, and the main building of the Electricity Laboratory, which Graham longed for, was finally completed.

Urged by Graham, the Royal Electricity Research undertakings smoothly relocated to the new laboratory main building and officially began research on generators.

If one were to mention direct current and alternating current in future generations, people would first think of Edison and Tesla’s War of Currents.

But in reality, direct current and alternating current were born much earlier; it was just that too much time was spent in the early exploration stages, which went unnoticed by governments, delaying the large-scale application of electricity until the late 19th century.

Why say this?

Graham can be regarded as a remarkably outstanding talent in the field of electricity. His contributions to electrical energy were among the top five in the 19th century.

But such talents were not valued in France, and there were many talents like Graham, including the renowned Nikola Tesla from fifteen years later.

Once moved into the new laboratory, Graham decided to build an alternating current generator and a direct current generator and then explore the use of electrical energy from there.

Although pioneers like Faraday and Henry had already confirmed the principles and feasibility of manufacturing generators, the generators they made were more for experimental use and did not demonstrate whether electrical energy could be practical.

Graham decided to continue the explorations of Faraday and Henry, striving to discover affordable electric power that could be practically used to repay Carlo for his support.

Carlo actually had some knowledge about electrical energy. Of course, what was called knowledge reserve would merely be common sense in future generations.

It was through over a hundred years of exploration by pioneers like Graham that people in later generations could enjoy such convenient and efficient electrical energy over a hundred years later.

Carlo even knew the accidental story that pushed Graham to industrialize electricity. During an exposition, while installing two generators, Graham accidentally connected the wires incorrectly, thereby feeding electricity back into another engine.

This accident allowed electrical energy to rapidly become practical, and the scientists present were ecstatic as their long-pursued practicality of electrical energy was unexpectedly realized so simply.

A generator is a generator, but it can also become a motor. This discovery rapidly made electricity one of the most important energy sources of the Second Industrial Revolution, subsequently changing the world.

But all this had to wait until Graham completed his generator. After all, having the equipment first gives a reason to propose an idea; without evidence, the rationality of the claim could not be demonstrated, so it’s better to let Graham try it out with an actual generator to see if it’s immediately apparent.

The Royal Engine Company and Graham’s Electricity Laboratory were almost adjacent. Although it was called an engine company, it might as well be called an engine research room.

Both are his enterprises, and Carlo wouldn’t favor one over the other; naturally, he intended to inspect both.

Compared to the Electricity Laboratory there, the engine research room here was much quieter.

This was inevitable. Although the main researcher in the Electricity Laboratory was only Graham, there were plenty of technical talents to assist him.

On the engine laboratory side, it counted only Daimler, Benz, and Maybach having the ability related to research and development; discussions were also only among these three.

Although these three were top-tier in the field of automobiles and engines, achieving something significant in that field with only them was clearly impossible.

Carlo also laid out his next step: to recruit high-level talents for the Electricity Laboratory and recruit mid-to-low-level talents for the engine laboratory.

In Carlo’s mind, both laboratories needed at least three to five scientists plus dozens of technical talents with some knowledge reserves as assistants.

As the laboratory research projects became more advanced, the laboratory staff configuration was continually increasing.

Now everything was still in the early stages, so having fewer people was manageable. This also constantly reminded Carlo that Spain still seriously lacked talents in related fields.

It wasn’t just in the areas of electricity and engines; Spain needed a large number of mid-to-low-end talents to fill the gaps in industries including chemical engineering, physics, and chemistry.

Thinking of this, Carlo couldn’t sit still.

Carlo summoned the Director of the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau, Kadir, and assigned him a new task – to go to various European countries to find those impoverished scientists and technical talents and invite them to immigrate to Spain.

If large-scale immigration were to be opened up, it would be a burden on the current Spanish government.

The income of a large number of domestic farmers hadn’t improved; attracting a large number of immigrants at this time would be seen by Spaniards as taking away their jobs.

So, apart from attracting a small number of laborers from Italy, Carlo didn’t intend for the Spanish Government to open immigration channels for attracting large-scale immigration.

The laborers imported from Italy were engaged in extremely manual tasks, which were precisely the jobs Spanish farmers were unwilling to do.

This wouldn’t cause dissatisfaction among Spaniards since those jobs were not within their range of choices anyway.

Considering that immigration might cause conflicts with Spaniards, Carlo tasked Kadir with precisely finding those impoverished scientists and technical talents to bring in a batch of urgently needed mid-to-low-end talents to Spain through a quality over quantity approach, while also looking for scientists who could potentially be brought on board.