Scientist Gruppie

Felipe slowly entered the current factory and was instantly invaded by the south of machines moving. -

Then the factory manager saw them; he looked at the levels of Potassium chlorate and two other key chemicals to create the head of the match.

He was quick to realize who Felipe was as he was beside Quincy. The first thing he did was kneel in front of Felipe and put his head on the ground.

"Your majesty, I welcome you."

"German accent… are you Wilhelm Müller?" Felipe asked, very humoured by the kneeling. He has only seen such behaviour by the peasants of the empire the moment they established the empire; they then made it inappropriate unless they asked for it.

"Ah… your majesty knows of me?" He asked as he looked up as if he was seeing a god; it didn't help that the sun was behind Felipe and made him look like a source of light.

"I would know the person I am paying a lot and is German of Origin and is in the USA… I remember you were working in New York."

"Yes… after the fire… I came here… as here it would be more practical… I am just happy that we are not closing down." The German said quite happily as he got back on his feet.

"He showed the ability to manage and direct the factory… very precise with the chemical composition and everything else," Quincy explained.

"Ah… makes sense." Felipe just nodded as he looked at the chemist with fascination.

"Your majesty, I have found a better way to create the tip of the match. It is still in the process of actually being made, but I changed the self…." The chemist quickly stopped as he held Felipe's arm, almost like a child would hold their parent's hand to show them a cool toy. "Sorry, I have been too excited."

"It is okay… please, don't be too cautious with me; my royal titles don't mean anything in these lands." Felipe quickly said. He doesn't want to see another person kneeling to him; he just finds it cringe.

"Ah…"

"I might not be an expert in chemistry, but I know a bunch," Felipe said as he led the way further inside the factory, full of busy men trying to process wood faster to reduce it to small sticks. There was an urge to get rid of such a huge stockpile of wood.

"Your majesty, it is an honour to meet you… your idea for matches is not only genius… but revolutionary… to be able to come up with such an idea t such young age… in all respects, but your talent is being wasted in wars and being a prince. The world almost lost one of the brightest minds to roam the earth just a few months ago… all thanks to land and many peasants."

Quickly, Felipe realized that the German scientist did not look at his title with any admiration, but he was actually looking at his brain? He felt a little bluster, like a hot chick that gets praised by her brains rather than tits and ass.

"The play of conquest is not something we see the result right away. It is enjoyed by our future generations." Felipe explained as he did not get angry.

"… Ah… that might be right… my intentions were no to offend… I am sorry."

"I do not take offence. But tell me, was the USA not built in war and blood?" Felipe asked, smiling.

"Ah yes… it makes sense, I just don't like the fact that there is loss of life… so much potential. I commend you for focusing on basic and higher education in your empire… I guess you are right… power over a region is the seeds we don't see sprout."

"I hope I do; I am not even 18." Felipe joked, but he looked at the chemist and just looked at him with a wide eye.

"Please… let's go." Felipe didn't want to keep talking and just looked at his factory, at least the last one in North America.

"Right."

They quickly went to the chemical side separately; it took around 30% of the factory.

"I have reduced the production efficiency of the paste, but this was made to increase safety over the whole process… I put the graphing of the phosphorous in another completely different part of the place and the mixing of the antioxidants here." The thick smell of chemicals entered Felipe's nose, so he slowly removed his handkerchief and put it against his mouth and nose.

Felipe looked up and saw the ventilation; it was just a straight-out chimney with a top on the cover to prevent rain from entering.

"I think we should start using the Steam to make composite ventilation for these rooms."

"That…"

"We create a negative pressure through the steam that normally goes up anyways," Felipe said as he wondered more. "Or we can just increase the use of carbon and create a ventilation fan."

"This…" Wilhelm began to visualize how vacuum ventilation would work according to the Prince's idea; it was just genius.

"We are processing oxidants; if it was not because of sabotage, an accident could easily happen. Especially when we can smell the odours. How long will it take to create a comprehensive ventilation system?" Felipe asked.

"That will halt production for a maximum of 2 weeks," Quincy said as he had some idea of what Felipe was talking about.

"Do it… this will be the only factory in North America; I want it to produce twice as the other two factories we lost. And if we don't have a comprehensive lab, we will go nowhere."

"Then shall we stop construction to improve the ventilation first?" Quincy asked as if he was asking a crazy person. He didn't see the benefits of doing so; they were already revenue restrained. Plus, they were planning to buy a lot of land.

"Yes, I do not care; this is too much. I cannot breathe here; if a fire happens here, there is no way to regulate it… it would go wild in no time." Felipe said as he was uncomfortable, especially now that he knows that his factories overseas were also made similarly, not exactly the same as that, but with similar mediocre ways of ventilation in the chemical part.

"Your majesty, with all respect… the white matches are really cutting our margins in the States, plus the unwillingness to buy our product has hurt our bottom line. Plus, knowing the current state of the world, I am not sure we are in the position of making this kind of decision to stop production." Quincy said as he understood more than anyone the finances of the Matches company.

"Your majesty, our matches are superior to the white matches; I don't know why we should equal their prices; their matches smell horrid and are also quite unsafe. We can create marketing for us, ensuring people know how unsafe their product is…." Wilhelm stopped as he saw Felipe holding his hand up.

"The price of the match was too high anyways, we will not go down too much, but it will be more expensive than white matches. We are in the process of marketing our matches as safer, but the burning down of multiple of our factories has not helped us do so. So yeah, don't worry about it; let's focus on production within quality." Felipe said as he looked over the large wooden barrels containing very flammable chemicals.

Felipe continued his tour as he finally arrived at the dipping area, where the sticks would just go down just enough to create a head of oxidants on the tip of the stick.

The area had large ventilation windows, unlike the chemical room; after all, there were more humans than normal cero people there. The ventilation also helped to the drying up the matches faster.

The workers stopped working as they saw Felipe looking at them.

The dippers had multiple lines clamping perfectly on each stick by the end. A rack contains 10 huge clamps with 100 for each line segment. One thousand on each large segment of a manufacturing line. Each match was divided by chains with teeth of the size of each stick.

To make the sticks be arranged, there was a need to crank it and lower the whole rack with a lever with a limited range of motion to create consistency within each match. And to make things more efficacy, they would first get dipped in one bath of chemicals before getting dried to go for another type of chemical bath.

The whole thing was rather manual, and instead of 1 production line, there were 6 production lines, creating 6 thousand matches at a time.

Nonetheless, it was a rather complicated mechanism that Felipe had improved, yet, the improvement was not yet to be implemented, though the extension of the factory was now scheduled to have it.

"Please, don't kneel," Felipe said as he looked at everyone about to kneel the moment; Wilhelm made a motion with his arms trying to make everyone kneel.