Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology-Chapter 1175: WWI: IC Breakthrough (1/3)

Bhartiya Academy of Military Sciences, Nagpur, Akhand Bharatiya Empire.

Ever since the war started more than a year ago, the Academy of Sciences, especially the Academy of Military Sciences, has been running nonstop in overload without a moment of peace. The number of research projects shot through the roof, with most research proposals coming from the military for the development of newer and more advanced weapons. Due to the unsatiability of the military and their demands, the academy had no choice but to expand its staff and recruit more researchers.

In most cases, apart from the exceptions of seasoned researchers jumping in from other organisations, people who were being recruited were greenhorns, young talents who recently graduated from various universities throughout the empire, who had high malleability and could be moulded anyway the institute needed. However, for the process to even start, someone had to take on the responsibility to bring the recruits up to the level of the Academy of Sciences as quickly as possible, so that they could immediately participate in various projects and contribute their intellect.

Mahasanghapati was a researcher, although a junior one who had just gotten promoted from an intern a few months ago, a researcher nonetheless. He was the unlucky one responsible for bringing the juniors up to speed, and he had been doing the same thing for the last two months. He was depressed. ’No wonder they promoted me so quickly; they clearly didn’t have anyone else to pick on. Damn it!’ He cursed at the management, but alas, there was no way he could resist the orders. If he were an intermediate researcher or a senior researcher, he could directly reject the management and do his own thing, like the other intermediate and senior researchers, but sadly, he was still at the beginning of his journey, and the management still had a little control over his actions, especially during the current time of emergency.

’Sigh!’

The dormitory for researchers in the Academy of Military Sciences was located within the building complex; it was simply a different block, only a few hundred metres away. He entered his dormitory, slammed the door shut, and slumped onto the sofa, dead tired. Since morning, he had briefed over five different groups of interns about the basics of the Academy of Sciences and what they should remember, squeezing out all the enthusiasm out of him. But if he is being completely honest, his job wasn’t all that bad, since the interns who usually come to the Academy of Military Sciences are usually brilliant people who have made various achievements in other places.

They are smart and can easily understand everything, so he only has to repeat something once for everyone to get the gist of it, but it is just that he was looking forward to joining the research group of Professor Indra Karma and participating in the research of a new kind of hydraulic pressure delivery system. Ever since he had read his research on the dynamics of internal energy transfer, he had become a fan of him and was eager to work with him, but sadly, he was stuck here, which was why he was frustrated to such a degree. And on top of all that, Mahasanghapati could not even blame the management, since, similar to the research department, they were severely understaffed as well, more so than the research department, because to get into the management, one has to go through a more stringent security check than the research department. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Catching his breath, some colour returned to his face, and his dull eyes, dulled from the day’s work, regained some liveliness. He got up and, with brisk steps, arrived in front of his desk. He turned on the light and started to draw on the draft paper. Time ticked by slowly, and in the blink of an eye, an hour had passed, and the dust bin next to the table had been piled up with crumpled paper.

Mahasanghapati let out a deep breath, leaning back into his chair and tying his hands behind him, above his head. He was not frustrated, as he was already used to it. He would rather do this than brief the interns, but oh well.

He had a vague idea in his mind for a new kind of power system, completely different from the steam power system that had already been well established, or the electric power system, the dynamo that is all the rage as of recent.

Mahasanghapati realised that for movement to happen, it does not only have to be through the pressure of steam or atmospheric pressure, but it can also happen through combustion. So his idea is to make some kind of machine that uses combustion instead of steam or electricity. This is the idea he had gotten when he was in university, and it was also his topic for the thesis defence. It is also one of the reasons why he was selected for the Academy of Sciences, and surprisingly, for the Academy of Military Sciences, but his idea had not been polished. Although he knew it was possible, he did not know how to make it possible.

He did not have the idea for the mechanism in mind, and he did not even know where to start the research from. It had already been a year since he joined the Academy of Military Sciences and spent most of it as an intern. Maybe that is also one of the reasons why he was relegated to his current position to brief the recruits. Yet another reason why he didn’t try to resist the arrangements made by the management, even though the privileges of researchers are many times more than the privileges of the managers.

Thinking about it made him sigh again, but he quickly cheered up and got back to work. Such a thing happened several times until he was ready to tuck himself into bed in dejection, something that had been happening in his life quite frequently for the past few months.

Finally, looking like a zombie, he went to take a bath before going to sleep, but suddenly.

"Boom!"

He was startled by the loud and dull sound coming from within his room. But then he hit his head in annoyance, he had forgotten he had kept a cooker on the flame.

"Idiot!!"

He hurriedly wiped the water from his body, put on a towel, and quickly went to the kitchen with careful steps, while trying not to slip.

"I’m ok, it’s just my cooker," he cried out to the guards that arrived at the door. ’Looks like they left, ugh, how embarrassing.’ He finally looked into his kitchen, and he became annoyed; his paint had been ruined.

He went forward, trying his best not to step on the food, and turned off the gas. He took out the plate of the cooker that had burst and looked inside. He clicked his tongue with a little regret; the gasket had burst, but suddenly something clicked in his mind. He looked at the cooker, where the walls could be seen completely burned in a dark brown colour, but in his eyes it appeared as if it was gold, like the bright morning sun. His eyes widened, and a wave of enlightenment washed over him.

"That’s right, combustion doesn’t have to happen outside; it can happen inside as well." He suddenly exclaimed, his eyes gleaming with renewed brilliance, brighter than they ever were. His body was filled with energy, and he clenched his fist with excitement.

Without putting on his clothes and without even wiping his head, he quickly sat down and began to sketch.

He realised that all this time his thoughts had been put in a well, and he was the frog, unable to see outside the well. In a steam engine, energy is generated in the boiler and then transmitted to the piston chamber to produce motion. The same principle applies to a dynamo, since it, too, is driven by a steam engine.

Even in other systems proposed by researchers, such as hydraulic engines, where water is forced into a chamber with a piston to create movement, the heat is still generated in the boiler rather than within the chamber itself. In every case, he had been unconsciously fixated on mechanisms where combustion occurs in one place and the energy is transferred to another through some medium.

But now, the bursting of the pressure cooker was like a soaring eagle that had forcefully dragged him out of the well and showed him the wider world. It suddenly hit him, something so obvious, yet it was a world away just a moment ago. He realised it does not have to be like that at all. It is all right if the explosion happens within the chamber itself. In fact, he felt that it would be more efficient this way, since the loss of energy could be minimised. Although he felt that the demand for materials would be even higher, he immediately put aside the practical concerns for the time being. He just wanted to perfect his design, at least theoretically, so that the research on the feasibility could at least start somewhere.

Only ten minutes later, he was done. "HAHAHAH." He laughed loudly, almost like a maniac.

He finally had a direction and a solid theoretical base to start the research. He no longer hesitated; he donned his night clothes in a hurry and went to summon the project review team.

It was quite late at night, but it didn’t matter, as one of the most important organisations of the empire, the Bharatiya Academy of Military Sciences, works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That means there is always staff, and there are always researchers who are burning the midnight oil to conduct research and experiments.