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Leonardo had developed his own unique approach to designing machines and linkages. Though he attended a guild school and never received formal training in this field, his designs for gears and conveyor belts were sometimes more adept than those of theold craftsmen.
They all stood before the control panel, watching as the ink-stained iron ball slowly made marks on the paper.
Nearby, professional coders were already in position, spelling out the letters by matching them with the telegraph code chart at the same speed.
"Greetings to Her Majesty the Queen. — From Luka."
When this message was read aloud, a cheer erupted throughout the study.
From Luka to Florence, even with the fastest horse riding day and night, it would still take at least three days. But now, a message can be delivered in just three minutes!
In the future, whether it’s news of a war or other emergencies, Florence will receive messages at an unbelievable speed!
Hedy laughed as she toasted with the officials, while Leonardo sat beside her, listening to the scholars argue.
Some old conservatives insisted that all of this was a scam, even going so far as to rally a group of people to sign a petition to personally verify whether this invention was real.
He asked about the local weather, the population of Luka, and even posed a simple math problem through the line.
The operator responded promptly from afar, adding a curse from Mr. Zino:
“Damn, which fool of an official is asking all this nonsense?”
The old scholar awkwardly turned his face away and was soon escorted by friends to drink.
To celebrate the official birth of this great invention, they held grand balls at several locations that evening and brought out several large barrels of wine for all the academy's guests to drink freely.
—Now, the technique of aging wine in charred oak barrels has become popular in Florence, and glass bottles with cork stoppers are becoming a common sight.
So, the engineering department called for the recruitment of three major construction teams, alongside researchers from the university, to set up new communication lines—
To Pisa, Genoa, and Rome.
Once these three lines are completed, the technology will likely evolve to an even more advanced level, naturally connecting more ports and cities.
It was at this point that a new trend began to rise in Italy—tea drinking.
This fad was supposed to appear a century later, but due to Columbus' successful voyage, it spread rapidly as soon as it arrived.
The fleet brought back tons of tea leaves, which successfully defeated the once-golden-priced pepper, becoming the most favored luxury item of the nobility.
Although Columbus had personally seen how the Easterners brewed and prepared tea, due to the stock being snapped up by various merchants, he and his crew didn’t have the time to properly educate others on the authentic way to drink it.
Some nobles placed the tea leaves into delicate porcelain teapots for brewing, then poured it into saucers to cool down and drank it as if it were soup.
Others tried adding it to their meals or meat broths, or grinding it into powder to use as a seasoning like pepper, but the results weren’t very successful.
When Hedy leaned forward to brew the tea for Leonardo, he was still inhaling the fresh aroma from the tea jar.
“It seems there’s a lot of nuance to it?” His eyes sparkled as he raised the tea spoon. “Is this for scooping out the tea leaves?”
“No,” Hedy chuckled. “Since we don’t have ice now, I’ll just give you a taste of how the English drink their tea—though the English don’t quite know what this is yet.”
“English-style?” Leonardo asked curiously. “Then how doAmericans drink tea?”
“Iced black tea,” she replied, shaking the cup. “We only drink iced tea—although the English view it as a symbol of vulgarity.”
As she presented the hot tea, she placed the porcelain cup and tea spoon down for him, showing how to pour the tea and how to add sugar and milk.
