Chapter 10: London

Finally, I came to the center of this world, London. A long voyage of up to 5 months across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Bidding farewell to the harsh and deadly life at sea, Downing has completely different emotions from his imagination towards the foggy capital of London. Downing, who was accustomed to the life of a city with a completely clean energy future, thought that he should be extremely disgusted with this dirty industrial capital, but unexpectedly, a hard journey at sea turned such a city into a down-to-earth paradise, and he could finally sleep peacefully.

The place where Downing rested was also extraordinary, the East India Club. This is a kind of gentlemen's club, at this time the hotel industry has not yet flourished, even if some hotels are relatively small, and the upper class generally chooses the gentlemen's club. This is a kind of clubhouse for gentlemen to gather with friends, play popular games, eat, stay. The East India Club, as the name suggests, is an affiliate of the East India Company, and its rulebook states that membership is as follows: East India Company attendants - priests, clerical personnel, soldiers, sailors, and medical personnel who have served all its leaders, including those who have retired from the army and navy of Her Majesty the Queen who served in India, members of the East India Company, and all legitimate professionals who have supported or are supporting the Company in providing legal services to the Company......

Downing would be the head of the East India Company's communications room, and a high-ranking member of the company personally appointed by the "Governor-General", the highest position of the East India Company, and would naturally be eligible to stay here.

The East India Club is located in St. James's Square, which is located in the London Library, which is one of the top three most fashionable residential areas in the United Kingdom, located in the City of Westminster, one of the two most important urban districts in London, and is the center of government, where the Queen's office Buckingham Palace, the seat of Parliament, the Palace of Westminster, and 10 Downing Street, the seat of the head of government, gather here. The other most important urban area is more powerful and older, it is called the City of London (city_of_london), which is the financial center of the United Kingdom, also called the City of London, and the queen has a symbolic etiquette to enter the core of capitalism - it requires the approval of the mayor of the financial city, and the position of the mayor of the financial city may be the only part-time job in the world by a big financier, not only without a salary, but also a year's worth of municipal management fees, and all financiers rush to it, The mayor of the financial city is both an honor and a social advantage. The headquarters of the East India Company were located in the Financial City.

A large number of nobles and important institutions were stationed here, and there are 33 house numbers around the square, of which the first 21 are the core addresses closest to the square, and the East India Club occupies two prime addresses, No. 16 and No. 17, which can be viewed from the window in the center of the square.

At this time, Downing was by the window, enjoying the scenery of the square in the early morning while imagining a new life. Little did he know that he had become a popular figure in the East India Club under Rawlinson's encouragement last night. The most influential members of the East India Company were the Rothschild family, who originated from the German Jewish financiers, who squeezed England's earliest and most influential Bahraini family to the United States, which is one of the hegemons in today's financial city. The lack of a backbone in the Bahrain family was the main reason for the failure of the London financial war. In this era, banks were basically given by family names, and whichever financier joined the bank, they would basically change the name of the bank. For example, Rothschild's full name is "n." m。 Rothschild & Sons", the Bahrain family split into "Francis Bahrain & Company" and "Bahrain Brothers & Company", and the strange Barclays Bank is now called "Barclays, Beven, Barclays & Crichton".

Rawlinson, a banker himself, was about to become governor of the state bank in Victoria, Australia's richest state, and he was in contact with the financiers, the central figures of the East India Company.

The epoch-making invention of wireless telegraphy naturally attracted everyone's attention. Oral rehydration salts for cholera, chlorine disinfection have caught the attention of financiers with hospitals, shipbuilders are interested in reverse osmosis desalination technology, and the Smith family from Birmingham has noticed the new steelmaking process Rawlinson mentioned.

The Smith family, you listen to this surname, smith originally means skilled worker, blacksmith means blacksmith, this financial family controlled the Nottingham Bank was founded by iron-making industrial bankers, their home Birmingham is a well-known iron city in the United Kingdom.

Samuel? Smith was the first to notice Downing walking into the billiards room, and he immediately greeted him, greeting him with an extremely friendly smile: "Mr. Windsor!" Good morning! ”

Downing naturally responded warmly to Samuel's friendliness, after all, it was a good start to have friends just after arriving in London.

When he looked at the billiard table, he was dumbfounded, he didn't even have a bag for dropping the ball, how can he play this? The Victorian movement was truly extraordinary.

Samuel enthusiastically taught Downing to play this pool rule called "Gallon". The main thing is that the cue ball hits two sub-balls in succession to score.

After getting the guidance of a familiar hand, Tang Ning quickly adapted to this kind of Kailun gameplay and began to interact with Samuel.

London is gradually becoming the world's financial center, the Smith family from Birmingham has already come to London to expand their business, they have many bank brands, due to the addition of Penn and many Smith members, now the full name of the Smith family's bank in London is "Smith, Penn & Smith".

Samuel's ancestors were the chairman of the East India Company, and Samuel is still the company's dignitale and majority shareholder. The last investment spot in the East India Company's communications room, apart from the Governor and Rawlinson, had been snatched up by the overlords from the Rothschild Bank, and Samuel felt that he should do his best to snatch the right to be an investor in the steelmaking law.

In the process of playing, Samuel "casually" talked about his family's iron and steel beginnings, but Downing didn't say much, because he had decided to build the largest and best steel mill in Britain in the future, because this business would be the most profitable since the first industrial revolution, the steel age.

Samuel was about to reveal the steelmaking method revealed by Rawlinson last night, when Lionel, the boss of the Rothschild Bank, the grandfather of the City of London constituency, MP (member of the House of Representatives), the richest man in Britain, even rushed to the East India Company Club early, because he was too interested in wireless telegraphy, which meant that it was possible to transmit telegraphs across the ocean, at least across the English Channel, which was 150 miles wide on average, and the narrowest point, also known as the Strait of Dover, was only 21 miles wide. In August last year, the British and French telegraph companies tried to erect a submarine telegraph cable through the English Channel in Guò, but the technology was immature and failed. Now that there is high technology that can easily cross the Channel, and the Rothschild family, as a transnational financier, the great leader in England, no one understands the importance of a timely intelligence system better than him.

The battle of the entire Rothschild financial dynasty is a famous case in the financial world "Waterloo speculation", when the Duke of Wellington of England played against Napoleon, the French god of war, Rothschild's England and France were two days earlier than the official news of the victory of the war and planned a conspiracy to deceive British and French investors, which was originally a big victory for England, but they shorted British public bonds, so that they fell from the face value of 100 pounds to 5 pounds, and secret agents took the opportunity to buy British public bonds on a large scale. In France, they use the opposite strategy, going long first and then shorting. The two leaders made a total profit of more than 2 in this unprecedented speculation. £300 million. You know, at this time, the British government's revenue was only one million, and the world's largest project, the canal, only cost a few million pounds. As a result, Rothschild Bank was even able to support the Bank of England, the UK's central bank, in the event of a liquidity crisis. In the era of the gold standard pioneered by Newton (that is the same Newton), it was not uncommon for central banks to have liquidity crises, because the pound was pegged to gold and paper money could not be issued indiscriminately.

After the war observers got the results, in order to ensure that such important news could be transmitted smoothly, they sent six fast horse messenger teams, two of whom were detained by the French army as spies, one of whom was running too fast, and the axle broke halfway and arrived at the destination three days later, and one was killed by a stray bullet on the road, and finally only two messengers arrived at the destination one after another.

What kind of "information age" will the era of wireless telegraphy be?

Note: The above story may have been a rumor spread by the Nazis in order to discredit Rothschild as a Jew, and was made into a movie. Nathan at the time? Rothschild was an agent for the British government to buy gold and silver in preparation for the war, and it is unlikely that such a thing would have been done, but it is more reliable that the Luo family got the news 48 hours before the official news.

After confirming that the half-breed freak who was playing pool was the one who invented wireless telegraphy, Lionel pushed in forcefully despite Samuel's "first-come, first-served" approach, demanding to see his short-distance real product.

Maxwell's "Kinetic Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" was published 14 years later, laying the foundation for the theory of radio, and in this era when the properties of radio were unknown, Downing's invention was enough to pretend to be a ghost, and it was a veritable black technology. (http://.)。

In stark contrast to Lionel's urgency, in the face of the richest power in England, Downing actually finished the game with Rawlinson and won the victory of the newly learned gallon game, and then slowly returned to his room like a gentleman to get his experiment, and the billiard room was already crowded, and the club manager had to step in to maintain order and invite the lower status people out.

Tang Ning's small real yàn product is very lazy, no components have been optimized, the result can only be transmitted to more than ten meters, everyone is very disappointed with this result, and Tang Ning did not try hard to convince everyone how many times this distance will be increased in the future, anyway, the contract has been signed with Rawlinson, and it is meaningless to be noisy now. Lionel remained silent and invited him to his house as a guest.

After sending off Lionel, the plague god, Samuel was able to continue to "knock on the side" of the steelmaking method.

Seeing Samuel pursuing the project so "religiously", Downing couldn't bear to turn it away completely, thought about it, and said, "Do you have any familiar pottery factories or workers?" I want to use ceramics to realize the whole process completely, but it's useless to just talk about it, and some details I haven't fully figured out, and I need to do it. ”

Samuel enthusiastically stated that although he was not familiar with the trade, he was willing to find the best potter to help Downing with this reality. Well, since he is so powerful, Tang Ning is willing to try to accept this partner.

Keep playing billiards.