Belgium was a European center on which Downing had high hopes, with its seaports, industry, French, German, and Dutch languages, and a constitutional monarchy, but the head of government disappointed Downing. In order to make his trip to Europe more enjoyable, Downing no longer thinks about these great things that cannot be done, but wanders the streets of Brussels, trying to find the surprise that comes with it.

Hugo was a man with populist tendencies, and although Downing was willing to finance his newspapers, Hugo was still reluctant to travel with him in Europe, for fear that others would say that he was a tyrant. Alexandre Dumas is more realistic, this guy who lives a luxurious life is unwilling to give up this opportunity to befriend the big tyrants, and he also volunteered to be Downing's French teacher. Downing didn't let the free French teacher suffer either, and all the expenses he went to were borne by Downing, and he visited all the famous places in Brussels.

Or the disappointment of the Belgian government, but also because Hugo did not have much time left in Belgium, Downing did not make too many stops in Brussels, and when Hugo left Brussels for the port of Antwerp, it was also the time when Downing left for Switzerland.

In these troubled times, Switzerland is a paradise on earth. Napoleon conquered not only Belgium, but also Switzerland, so the legal tender of Switzerland was also the franc. In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna convened by the European powers to arrange the international order after Napoleon's defeat, Switzerland was granted permanent neutrality, and its territory has not changed since. Switzerland's last war, known as the War of the Secession League, took place in 1847 and lasted less than a month, with no more than 100 casualties, mostly by friendly forces. Since then, Switzerland has entered a paradise without war. The new constitution of 1848, based on the federal system, was modeled on the U.S. Constitution, which laid the foundation for the country's modern political structure.

Switzerland began its industrialization process with the constitution of free representation in 1831 and the founding of the University of Zurich in 1833. Of course, Switzerland at this time was more of a countryside than England, France, Belgium and Prussia. Even in the capital city of Zurich, there is a large amount of undeveloped land.

Switzerland's lakes and mountains are so stunning that Downing bought a low-key villa on the shores of Lake Zurich and prepared to make it his second home in Europe.

"Stop your body and let the soul catch up." These days, Downing thinks little about technology and industry, the future and the past, Britain and the Qing Dynasty, and most of his time is learning French and feeding the swans on Lake Zurich.

Time flew by in a leisurely manner, and in the middle of summer in July, his soul finally caught up, and the industrialists embarked on a new journey, preparing for the establishment of Eurosteel, to raise funds from entrepreneurs from all over the continent, with 10,000 pounds at 1% of the shares, with a maximum of 5% in each country.

If there's one man in the world who can beat British Steel, it's Downing himself. Since even his Chinese roots are suspected, he can't put all his eggs in one basket, and Eurosteel is a big move for him to unite the continent against the superpower Britain.

This time, it was assumed that he would still use the same steel converter used by British Steel, but he was actually using another method of steelmaking, the open-hearth method. This method reduces the contact with nitrogen, makes the steel harder, and is not difficult to control by filling with a large amount of air at once like a conversion furnace, it has a modulation time of several hours, so it helps to make a more suitable steel according to the customer's needs, and it is free from the limitations of the conversion blast furnace, and the volume of production is also larger.

The reason why Downing does not use this technology in British steel companies is because in the stage of rapid increase in steel production, the customer's requirements for steel quality are not so high, and the speed and quality of the conversion furnace will be much higher when the pure oxygen compressed air process is used in the future.

Downing now has a fairly mature industrial technology team, as long as he gives orders, a large number of employees will go to him to open the Europa Iron and Steel Plant, and the financing from industrialists in European countries is to make his business expand faster, and he has no problem with funds at all. You know, British Steel, an old hen that lays golden eggs with an annual income of 3 million pounds, owns 60% of the shares.

He even had time to go to the Zurich Opera House to watch Alexandre Dumas's shows, and listen to it in the French he had just learned a little bit as if he didn't understand it.

In Alexandre Dumas's eyes, Downing is a weirdo who doesn't enjoy it, probably a bit like Nathan, the founder of Rothschild's financial empire England, "nothing that makes me happier except work". The amorous Alexandre Dumas simply could not understand that this mega-millionaire, the young, handsome Baron Buckingham, who was many times richer than the 8 million francs of the Count of Monte Cristo, was very conservative, conservative to the point of not being able to speak. None of the most beautiful actresses in the Zurich Opera House could touch his heart, not to mention that Downing had more than a dozen beautiful female secretaries, but basically only dealt with three male assistants, and underneath the smiling exterior was an arrogant heart like the snowy top of the Alps.

Of course, Dumas didn't know that Tangning's incompatibility, and his disdain for any beauty, was related to his identity as a future guest, and to his girlfriend Wanqing, whom he often dreamed of and remembered.

Only equality can have beautiful love, he and Wanqing are equal, and they are both MIT students. He is unequal to any woman in this world, and the ideological gap is too big. The devotion of contemporary people was most difficult for Downing to accept, and when he visited the church, he basically only looked at the appearance on the outside, and rarely entered the church in depth and awe.

He doubted that he would die as lonely as Newton. Of course, maybe loneliness won't happen, don't forget his great ambition to adopt 100,000 orphans around the world, a father with 100,000 children will never be truly lonely, right?

The orphans he adopted were all extremely bright children, and for this reason, he invented an IQ testing machine that could roughly measure children's math, language, and hands-on abilities. Mathematical ability is related to the child's recognition pattern, the intelligent test machine is a typewriter, but it is connected to a special paper tape, and the typewriter will hit the line break button on the typewriter to type two groups of patterns embellished with small dots, and the subject is required to confirm which group of patterns carries more small dots. There are various rules to follow for the appearance of small dots, and children with strong pattern recognition ability will soon naturally find the pattern and make quick judgments. This simple rough test can measure a child's mathematical pattern recognition ability.

Language ability is mainly judged by the ability to learn new words, and the principle is to type a set of simple and easily recognizable patterns, and the words appear under the patterns at the same time, so as to test the children's memory speed of words. It is examined again over a few hours or the next day to determine the child's ability to remember permanently.

The ability to build Lego bricks is a fun way to test children's hands-on ability. The International Academy cooperates with orphanages in major cities around the world, and pays a large "transfer fee" to each young genius it finds, and then sends it to London for education. Now, there is also an international academy in Zurich for gifted orphans from the European continent. Due to Tang Ning's deep pockets, many orphanages that were struggling to operate also received direct funding from him.

To test the wire transfer system, Downing founded the Zurich Bank, which applied the technology on a small scale and managed the various industries in Zurich with the bank as the center. In addition to Eurosteel, the International Academy, and the SIX Swiss Stock Exchange. Yes, Switzerland does not yet have a unified stock exchange market, and Zurich's financial position is not at all comparable to that of London, New York, Paris, and Berlin. Similarly, the business was launched in Switzerland, which has not yet become one of the world's financial centers, because the British telegraph company will provide an automatic quotation system for the Swiss Stock Exchange and will create the world's first "market maker system".

The so-called market maker system is a kind of financial innovation to improve the liquidity of the stock market. In the original securities trading system, the buying and selling of stocks is basically from the hands of one stock holder to the hands of another stock holder, which is equivalent to an individual to an individual, it is conceivable that when you want to buy, there may not be someone to sell, and when you want to sell, there may not be someone to buy, resulting in the sluggish circulation of the stock market, and the quotation of stocks is not professional and arbitrary. The SIX Swiss Exchange will introduce professional securities underwriters, strong and reputable underwriters to issue shares on behalf of the company, and they are strong enough to provide professional quotations at any time and make transactions complete in a timely manner.

At the beginning of the system, the Swiss Stock Exchange itself was the market maker, and the qualifications of companies applying for listing were examined through a special audit department. The project was so large that Downing had to become a Swiss citizen, and of course, he would retain his British citizenship, which would help him to do so.