One Step Forward
While the petrochemical industry was finding its footing in Baku, research into petroleum byproducts was in full swing in Haseo as well.
Fwoooosh.
A man had poured gasoline into a small container and was lighting a fire through the vents.
"Whoa! It evaporates just sitting there, and now it catches fire too?"
At last, the substance he had been searching for had appeared. For a man studying engines, this was the fuel that would open a whole new road — gasoline itself.
"If I atomize this and ignite it, that should do the trick!"
What he was researching was the internal combustion engine. In principle, an internal combustion engine and a steam engine were the same: the force of expanding gas when heat was applied. The only difference was whether that combustion happened outside or inside.
Research into internal combustion had never truly stopped, but there was exactly one reason no suitable design had ever materialized — there was no suitable fuel.
"And it's a liquid on top of that. Making a fuel tank will be easy too. I've got to fix that engine right now!"
Excited, he dashed into his office. He had to redraw the blueprints and fabricate new parts at the workshop as soon as possible.
Scribble, scribble, scribble.
"Keep the basic form, install an injector on this intake port to spray the fuel in..."
Without so much as a thought of going home, he clawed at his hair and revised the blueprints over and over.
"This thing explodes if you handle it wrong, so safety has to come first, obviously."
There was so much to think about.
Vrrrmmm — clang!
"That's the last piece!"
It was a small engine, only a couple of handspans across, but every ounce of his effort — the discovery of the fuel, the revised blueprints — had gone into this work of art. Since everything was made by hand, the parts never quite fit, and he had made dozens of trips back and forth to the workshop.
And now, at last, the prototype was coming together.
Click-clack, click-clack.
Having tightened the last nut, he looked the engine over, checking for anything he might have missed. If even a single bolt was loose or a part left off, the whole thing would blow sky-high — with him on top of it.
"Alright, let's hook up the fuel line and give it a turn."
Eeeek — clunk — eeek — eeek — clunk — clunk.
As he cranked the handle jutting out from the side of the engine, black smoke began pouring from the model. The principle was combustion driven by compression, but it seemed a little short on power.
Clunk, clunk.
"Grrr! Come on, turn!"
Gritting his teeth, he cranked until his arm felt ready to fall off. In the chilly weather, beads of sweat began to bead on his forehead anyway.
Clunk — chung — ku-ku-KUNG — ku-ku-ku-ku.
"Ohhh! There it is!"
The engine finally caught, coughing black smoke as it began to spin. This was the first internal combustion engine test run on oil rather than the gas line used for earlier experiments.
Vvv-vvv-vvv-VWAP!
"Kuhk!"
But as the engine turned over, the hand crank spun faster and faster — and then flew off, smacking him square in the forehead.
"D-dammit..."
Vision blurring, he crumpled to the floor, a lump swelling on his forehead in mere seconds.
Ku-ku-ku-ku-ku-ku.
Oblivious to the man sprawled before it, the engine chugged away merrily, puffing smoke to its heart's content.
"Mmmph... ugh, it hurts..."
The engine had long since sputtered out, and the man who had been knocked unconscious by the crank only now opened his eyes.
"Damn it..."
Rubbing the lump on his forehead, he decided something more was needed. After all, there had been that time he broke his arm doing this.
"It feels like the engine needs more force to turn over, doesn't it? Hmm... it only needs cranking to start, so why don't I try mounting a small electric motor?"
Starting the engine just required spinning it fast enough for compression ignition to kick in. So all he had to do was install something that would do the cranking for him. Electricity ran throughout the Daehan factory complex, and motors could be found anywhere.
Krrrrr — BANG!
"Hey! You scared me!"
"Honey! What on earth is going on in here!"
"Huh? What's the matter, dear?"
The man researching internal combustion engines here was Ja Dongja — and the person who had just stormed in was his wife, Yi Mari. Right now, fire was practically shooting from her eyes. She looked thoroughly, dangerously angry.
"You haven't come home in DAYS!"
"Huh? Has it really been that long?"
Dongja had been so absorbed in the engine that he'd lost all track of time.
"I was worried sick about you... Honestly."
"I'm sorry. But I finally got a lead on the engine!"
"Oh! Really? Congratulations!"
Apparently, Mari's anger had been born purely of worry for her husband — one glance at the bright, sunny face now congratulating him said as much.
"Oh? Sweetheart? What happened to your forehead this time? Sob..."
"Ah... I got smacked by the crank while starting the engine. Ugh..."
"That's dangerous! Find another way to do it."
"Well, actually, there's something I'd like your help with."
Dongja and Mari had met for the first time in this very laboratory and fallen in love at first sight. And she was an electrical engineer — nobody knew motors and electricity better than she did. As they discussed the starting problem together, she simply moved her workstation into a corner of his lab.
"Hmm. So you want to use a motor to spin the engine, right?"
"That's it exactly."
"Then why complicate things? If we add a storage battery, the engine could start itself without any external hookup at all!"
Her proposal was to skip the wiring to the power distribution panel entirely — to make the whole system self-contained.
"Hmm? Not sure if it'll work, but let's give it a try?"
"Let's start right now!"
The two, made for each other in every sense, fell into perfect rhythm and set to work on the engine.
Whirrr — chunk.
"Careful, honey."
"I know. I've done this a hundred times!"
The reason Mari was watching with such concern was that Dongja was drilling holes through a steel plate to mount the motor beside the engine. To her eyes, the machine chewing through that steel plate looked absolutely terrifying.
Eeeek, eeeek.
"Phew. Done."
"Let's leave the battery on the floor next to it for now and see — honestly, just leaving it there makes me nervous."
"Agreed. We'll need to work out a proper housing for that too."
What the couple had brought was a lead-acid battery, the kind used mainly in laboratories. Since it used sulfuric acid as its electrolyte, it sat in a glass tank — and as it stood, it was hazardous.
"Let's step back and try starting it from there."
"Right."
And so husband and wife, hand in hand, retreated behind the wall. A motor switch had been wired out there in advance, allowing them to run the experiment from a safe distance.
"Here goes the switch."
"Okay."
Click.
Electricity, machinery, chemistry — experiments were always dangerous, whatever the field. That was why every laboratory made sure to have a shelter like this one.
Veeeing — clunk! Veeeing — clunk! Clunk!
As the motor forced the crankshaft around, the engine coughed up its stale old smoke like an old man with a chronic cough.
CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! Ku-ku-ku-ku.
After hacking up black smoke a few more times, the engine finally began spinning under its own power, strong and steady. Small as it was, the internal combustion engine roared through the laboratory.
"Oh! It worked!"
"Wow! It's running!"
"This is all thanks to you!"
"No, no! You did all the hard part!"
"Ahahaha! Thank you!"
Still trading compliments, the couple observed the engine for a good while. Approaching it rashly, even with it running smoothly, would have been far too dangerous.
Bubble, bubble, bubble.
After watching it a while longer, they noticed the lead-acid battery tank beginning to boil and fizz.
"Huh? Mari? What's wrong with the tank?"
"Oh! It's charging!"
"Huh? Why?"
"If you run a motor in reverse, that makes it a generator, silly!"
The motor they'd built to start the engine had flipped around and become a generator. So at first everything was fine — but once the battery finished charging, the water in the electrolyte began to break down and bubble off.
"What do we do!"
"Uh... ah! Just flip the switch off! Cutting the power is enough!"
"Got it!"
Click.
After all, starting the engine had only ever been a matter of connecting and disconnecting the motor's electricity — so cutting that line would keep things safe for the moment.
"Whew... if I'd been alone, that could've been a disaster."
"Right? This stuff gives off gas really easily."
"Thank you!"
"Oh, it's nothing..."
It was pure luck that the battery was an open design sitting in a tank — if it had been sealed in some box, they wouldn't have gotten a fire, they'd have gotten an explosion. But the couple hadn't thought that far; they just stood there blushing at each other.
"Well, it's the weekend. Should we head home early today?"
"S-shall we?"
They'd just succeeded at one experiment — what on earth were they going home early for?
As the couple tidied the laboratory and walked home hand in hand, the warmth between the newlyweds was so intense that even the ice along the roadside seemed ready to melt in midwinter.
Whooooosh.
"Eek! It's cold!"
"Come here."
The weather tried its best to be mischievous, blowing icy gusts at them — but the two simply pressed together and kept walking, glued to each other.
Whiiiiiiish!
"What kind of wind blows like this?"
"Still warm, though..."
The weather, unable to bear the sight any longer, gave up its tantrum. For some reason, the lonely winter wind gradually quieted down. Did it die?
Screeech.
Three days later, the laboratory door opened again and out came the couple. Dongja looked thoroughly haggard, while Mari was as radiant as a flower in bloom. What on earth had happened in the meantime...
"Alright, let's run the experiment again."
Dongja reached for the starter with hands that trembled violently. He looked like he was having a very hard time of it.
Krrrrr — ku-KUNG.
The engine, which had been running along nicely, made a sound as if something had caught — and died.
"Hmm. Stalled again."
"Why does it keep cutting out like that?"
"Well, the engine runs on explosions from compression, but sometimes they fire too early, or sometimes the explosion doesn't happen at all."
It was the chronic ailment of every early internal combustion engine. Skipping a beat was fine — but a premature detonation brought the engine to an instant halt. Honestly, breaking down or blowing apart was the greater worry, so this much counted as fortunate.
"Hmm... then what if we set off the explosion ourselves? Would that work?"
How wonderful that would be, if only it were possible. If he had a way, Dongja would love to do exactly that.
"There's no way to light a fire inside the combustion chamber..."
"Why not?"
"It's a sealed space, isn't it?"
"So drill one tiny hole and make an electric spark through it. Problem solved!"
And there it was — his wife proposing a solution he had never once considered. She was suggesting they build a spark plug.
"Huh? That's possible?"
"Of course it is!"
Having found new hope, the couple's faces lit up brilliantly. Even the zombie-like face Dongja had worn after his weekend ordeal brightened.
"What do we need to get?"
"I'll have to look into materials first. You said this thing explodes, right? It needs to be sturdy and heat-resistant."
"Exactly."
"Leave it to me!"
So Mari went out to investigate all manner of materials, while Dongja set about figuring out how to drill the hole in the engine and seat the igniter inside.
Screeeech — greeeeeeng.
The space was less a laboratory than a full-blown workshop. Since they had to fabricate nearly every part themselves, all manner of machining equipment stood ready in the room.
Sweat dripped from Dongja's forehead as he shaped each piece by hand — but his face was full of smiles.
"Wow. This tiny thing costs more than gold?"
"That's right. They say it's not available in large quantities."
"Well, we only need a little, so it should be fine?"
The couple carefully assembled the spark plug, fitted it into the hole Dongja had prepared in advance, and connected the wiring. With the generator on hand, electricity would hardly be in short supply. And with the flywheel turning, a spark would leap at exactly the moment it was needed — which meant far fewer stalls from here on out.
"Alright! Let's try it again!"
"Let's go, let's go!"
Studying side by side like this was pure joy for the couple. Once again, hand in hand, they retreated behind the wall. It was the dead of winter, yet spring blossoms seemed to drift through the air between them.
Click — krrrrrrrng.
"Wow! Now it starts right up!"
"This is really something!"
"Ahh, this is thrilling!"
"Thank you so much — this is all thanks to you!"
"Well then, shall we head home early today too?"
"Sure!... Uh, um..."
With yet another problem solved, it was apparently time to go solve another one. Thanks to his genius wife, their technology was advancing by leaps and bounds — but his lower back was barely surviving.
And so Daehan's internal combustion engine was off to a roaring start, nurtured on love and agonized screams (?).
'Having Mari along is wonderful and all...'
Still, now and then, he did wonder what it would be like to work alone...
Just once in a great, great while...