As soon as Hugo left the aid station, he saw Hilferstrasse, one of the busiest streets in Vienna at this time.

With its endless bustling streets on both sides, it was hard for Hugo to imagine that it was once the dirtiest, most chaotic, most insecure and infrastructural area of Vienna.

French newspapers say it is full of beggars and pickpockets, gang members fight every day, and half of the boys do not survive to adulthood, while half of the girls become prostitutes before they reach adulthood.

Rats will eat dead people into bones within a few hours, and those bones will be eaten by cockroaches within three days, and then the rain will completely erase the marks of human existence

At this time, Hilfer Street was bustling with people, and richly decorated horse-drawn carriages and various oddly shaped steam locomotives were parked on both sides of the road.

Franz had no intention of working on steam locomotives at this time, but Austrian technology naturally fell in the way.

However, since there is no internal combustion engine, these so-called cars have a steampunk feel to it. Franz felt that these things were polluting the environment, so he created a mechanical tobacco tax on the grounds that smoking was prohibited in Vienna.

The upper echelons of the Austrian Empire were always more open to things that could increase taxes. But even with the introduction of a mechanical tobacco tax, the Austrians' enthusiasm for developing new means of transportation has not waned.

In fact, many people have found a gap in this field of the royal family, so a large number of private capital and "people of insight" have poured in.

But Franz does not have too high expectations for them, after all, the necessary pre-technology has not yet been completed, the design concept of the internal combustion engine has been given by Franz, as for the specific time when these Austrian scientists can figure it out, it depends on the providence.

In addition, Franz's requirements for steam locomotives at this time were agro, after all, steam tractors, which were high-power, low-speed, and low-flexibility machinery, were much more reliable than lightweight manned vehicles during this period.

As long as the fault tolerance is high enough, it can be driven even without an internal combustion engine.

And after a period of research and development, there have been encouraging advances, and steam tractors have proven to be viable and efficient.

Of course, this is only suitable for large farms, but in fact this new type of machinery is too big and too expensive for small farms and ordinary farmers.

At this time, the steam towing motorized more than a dozen tons, or even dozens of tons, and the first test vehicle developed by the Royal Society of Science in Vienna was 13 meters long, with a total weight of 31 tons, but it only had a pitiful 25 horsepower, and the speed was only 4 kilometers per hour (about 5 kilometers per hour for a normal person to walk).

(A modern 50-horsepower domestically produced tractor that is not outstanding usually weighs only one ton.) ）

However, this did not prevent it from being the most advanced agricultural machine of mankind at this time, and Franz believed that a simplified version would soon appear.

In fact, as Franz expected, a simplified version of 50 hp soon appeared, followed by a special version of the twin steam engines, which reached 80 hp but was cumbersome with four drivers.

To get back to the point, Hugo was curious about the strange cars on the streets, and at this time in history, only Britain and the United States paid more attention to steam cars, but even on the streets of London it was difficult to see steam cars.

Hugo was not an avid technology enthusiast, so naturally he had never seen a steam car. However, his inquisitive appearance makes him look very much like a thief or a "hillbilly".

Naturally, he was driven away by the whistle and the butler holding the bell, but fortunately, the dazzling array of shops on the side attracted him again.

Huge glass windows display a variety of quirky goods from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Wine, food and musical instruments from all over the Austrian Empire were also gathered here, but it was the precious mechanical devices and rubber objects that caught Hugo's eye the most.

At this time in Paris, the price of a pair of rubber waterproof shoes was as high as 100 francs. Due to the extreme scarcity of rubber, only a few dignitaries could afford to wear it.

And the fact that there were only five florins in the shops on Hilfer Street really made Hugo feel a little dumbfounded.

The exaggerated number of people on the street also surprised him, after all, he had heard that the population of Vienna was only about 400,000, and Hugo felt that the street was more crowded than Paris with a population of one million.

In fact, since Vienna joined the German Customs Union in 1836, the permanent population alone has doubled, and the floating population is even more difficult to count as the center of politics, economy, culture, transportation, science and technology, and international exchanges in the Austrian Empire.

Hugo also noticed that the street was filled with new tall buildings in addition to the beautiful old buildings.

The buildings were so tall that Hugo even doubted that they were at risk of collapsing.

In fact, there were almost no reinforced concrete buildings in Paris at this time, which is why he had this question.

Historically, Paris began to build reinforced concrete buildings on a large scale after 1880, and at this time, it was still an old masonry structure, and it was naturally impossible to be full of "high-rise buildings".

The buildings in Vienna are not very tall, only four or five storeys, but they are still much taller than the old buildings.

What attracted Hugo the most was not the tall buildings, but the huge display windows in those buildings.

The price of large pieces of glass during this period was still very expensive, although after 1830 due to the invention of molds, the manufacture of large pieces of glass was no longer a secret held by a small number of people, but due to technical constraints, the production was still very low.

Historically, until 1848 Austria was the world's largest producer of glass, and at its peak Bohemia alone accounted for one-third of Europe's glass production.

However, due to the devastation of the Revolution and the fact that Austria's domestic glass manufacturers still used small family-owned workshops to produce by hand, they finally fell into the torrent of the industrial age.

Only 32 years later (1880), the entire Austrian Empire produced less glass than a single factory in the Sunderland region of England.

Franz didn't want this to happen again, so he tried to sell new ideas and technologies to the gang several times under various pretexts.

As a result, it was thought that they were watching their money-making secrets, and Franz had no choice but to wake them up with a slap.

As a result, this slap directly turned Franz into the largest glassmaker in the Austrian Empire, because this group of uncompetitive things was still fighting among themselves when Franz slapped him.

Franz's slap is wrapped in huge capital and technological innovation, and these people can still compete with the former if they join forces to form an alliance and work together.

Of course, if these people can unite to revive their strength, Franz can even choose to give up the market to them again.

But Franz's slap hasn't been swung down yet, and the group of people has already fought each other to the killing line. In addition, the affairs of the Winster family involved many businessmen at that time, after all, they were not clean in themselves.

When Franz finished this fight, the glass industry of the Austrian Empire was briefly monopolized by him.

Then there were drastic structural reforms and technological innovations, so that the Austrians could use such cheap glass.

And as the richest city in Austria, it's no surprise that Vienna's busiest street is made of the best glass.

Hugo "bumped into" a "maiden" named Tina while wandering around, and the two had a good conversation, and the latter took on the role of guide as a matter of course.

In fact, any man will be alert to the "beautiful girl" who suddenly jumps out and takes the initiative to lead the way, but who makes him a romantic Frenchman?

(End of chapter)