The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1372 A Fire

As the fire was not serious, the neighboring business came to ask for compensation. The bakery owner offered to help put out the fire and compensate them with bread.

The merchant next door was obviously not satisfied, so he threatened to call the police, and even drove away the fire brigade composed of social volunteers who came to put out the fire.

While the two sides were arguing, the fire started again. However, this time the two families were unable to put out the fire together, and as time went on, the fire spread to more shops. At this time, the two families had no choice but to seek help from the fire brigade organized by the local government.

But when they arrived at the fire station near the market, they found that the fire brigade had already been dispatched to put out another fire, so they had no choice but to hire a professional fire brigade.

Most of these professional fire brigades have government backgrounds, and the official city fire brigades have a tacit understanding with them and will deliberately share their profits with the former.

As we all know, professional fire brigades focus on paid firefighting. The bigger the fire, the higher the pay, and the longer the fire burns, the better the business.

So it was not uncommon for the fire department to raise the price. As a result, the fire spread to the lamp oil factory. As we all know, oil tank fires are very dangerous today.

So the fire department chose to run away directly.
Then the fire spread from the commercial street to the slums, and from the slums to the aristocratic residential areas outside the center.

The major families immediately called in their own fire brigades to show their skills, and some noble children with nothing to do even went up to tall buildings to watch.

It must be said that the fire brigades of these nobles were indeed extremely powerful. They were all equipped with the latest steam-pumped fire carriages, and their firefighters were all young and strong.

Just when they were about to show their skills, they suddenly discovered that there was no water in the fire hydrant.
The fire hydrant was invented in 1801. At that time, only a few cities in Europe had popularized this invention, but this was nothing to the aristocratic district of Vienna.

However, early fire hydrants were not connected to tap water pipes, but were large buckets that could hold a lot of water.

The fact that there was no water in the fire hydrant at this time was obviously due to negligence of the workers responsible for maintenance. Of course, it is also possible that no one had maintained it from the beginning, or even the bucket did not exist.

In any case, the fire brigade could only run to the nobles' homes to get tap water, but distant water cannot quench immediate thirst, nor can it put out nearby fires.

The fire still spread to the noble area. Fortunately, most of the noble residential areas were stone buildings, and there were also reserved fire isolation zones, so the fire was eventually brought under control.

This incident also strengthened Franz's determination to reform the fire brigade. Based on later experience and in order to prevent mutual buck-passing and even extreme situations of setting fires to improve performance, Franz decided to ban all unofficial fire brigades in the city center.

This approach sounds extreme and may be detrimental to diversification, leading to many problems such as inefficiency, insufficient coverage, reduced social participation, and increased government burden.

But in fact, if a country's fire brigade cannot even cope with a fire in the city, it should not seek help from the public and foreign experts, but disband it.

Moreover, compared with the chaos such as mutual buck-passing, arson, and random commands, the increased costs are not worth mentioning at all.

In fact, under the premise of duty and state guarantee, the official fire brigade is surprisingly efficient. Many people can't imagine that these are still the lazy guys who take the money but do not work?

Of course, the fire brigade’s appearance was only the last resort. Most of the urban fires in the 19th century were caused by people’s lack of fire prevention awareness and backward infrastructure.

Therefore, Franz planned to enhance people's awareness of fire prevention through education and publicity on the one hand, and carefully plan urban construction on the other hand.

In short, the use of gas will help reduce urban fires, as long as there is no explosion in the gas pipeline like the one in Fuyuki City.

Faced with the short-term oil surplus, Franz thought of developing an internal combustion engine. In fact, the internal combustion engine is not a new thing. In 1794, the British Street proposed to obtain power from the combustion of fuel and first proposed the concept of mixing fuel and air.

In 1833, the Englishman Wright proposed a design that directly used combustion pressure to push the piston to do work.

The Austrian Imperial Academy of Sciences also designed several internal combustion engines with the funding of Franz, but the problem was that the thermal efficiency of these internal combustion engines was lower than that of steam engines.

What's even more outrageous is that such an internal combustion engine costs much more than a steam engine, and is complicated to operate and difficult to maintain. All of this is due to the immaturity of the technology.

Just like after the steam engine was invented, no one paid attention to it for quite a long time until a man named Watt improved the steam engine, which was when the industrial age truly began.

However, people only know Watt, but not Savery and Newcomen who invented the steam engine.

Unfortunately, the Austrian Empire became the pioneer at this time, but Franz was very confident that he would not become cannon fodder. After all, he was not alone, and the entire Austrian Empire was behind him.

Etienne Lenoir, the first French inventor in history to invent a practical internal combustion engine, was inspired by Franz and came to Austria. After all, not all scientists are so patriotic.

In fact, this was not the first time that Etienne Lenoir came to Vienna. He once studied chemistry and engineering at the University of Vienna.

However, he left Vienna after a French factory offered him an olive branch. However, his good days did not last long.

Due to years of war in France, Etienne Lenoir lost his job. He couldn't find any job in France, so he made his way to Vienna by washing dishes and shining shoes.

To make a living he can be Belgian, French, and of course German.

When Etienne Lenoir arrived at the University of Vienna, he took out an old but clean suit from his tattered suitcase and put it on. Finally, he carefully took out a pair of worn leather shoes and put them on his feet.

After dressing himself, Étienne Lenoir shaved himself at a fountain and washed his face.

After doing all this, Etienne Lenoir appeared in front of the guard at the University of Vienna looking very confident.

"Dear sir, I have talents in chemistry and engineering, and I would like to meet the president. Here is my letter of recommendation."

Several guards could see through Etienne Lenoir's inherent poverty at a glance, but because they had been taught a lesson by Franz, the guards at the University of Vienna were among the people who respected scholars the most in the entire Austrian Empire.

The guards who beat Doppler and called Franz "bastard" and "illegitimate son" either went crazy or died after returning from the gendarmerie. Even a few onlookers disappeared.

In fact, Franz did not intend to make it so bloody, and he just wanted to teach the thief a lesson. However, for other departments of the empire, it was not enough to just let it go, after all, the royal family had already taken action personally.

If they can still let those rubbish live alive and kicking in the world, wouldn't that be a slap in the face of the royal family? Wouldn't that make them look incompetent?

Therefore, neither the military police nor the secret police would allow those guys who look down on others to continue living.

Although it was a bit of an overreaction, it must be said that the guards at the University of Vienna were much better towards scholars at that time.

At least Franz never heard anyone complain again that the Vienna University guards looked down on strangers or foreigners.