Factory Inspection
Waldemar's journey through Austria came to an end after two weeks. Had he not lingered several days at Bad Ischl, that celebrated spa town, simply to soothe Alix, he would never have stayed nearly so long.
The moment he returned to Berlin, Siemens delivered a report that stopped him short.
"A commercially viable steam turbine already?"
"Of course, this is not an achievement we can claim entirely as our own."
Siemens was careful to stress that the breakthrough had come through a partnership with Schwartzkopff, the locomotive specialists. Waldemar was satisfied either way. Cooperation or not, they had a result.
"What's the output?"
"On the order of five kilowatts."
Waldemar had no instinctive sense of what that figure meant.
"And in horsepower?"
"Roughly 6.7 horsepower."
That, he understood. A Dreadnought-class battleship puts out something like 23,000 horsepower. Still a long road ahead. But every journey began with a first step. Waldemar decided he wanted to see Siemens's steam turbine with his own eyes.
"Then allow me to escort Your Highness to Charlottenburg."
Under the guidance of Ernst Werner von Siemens, the head of the firm, Waldemar paid a personal visit to the Siemens Charlottenburg works. The factory was a cluster of three- and five-story buildings in red brick, functioning less as a single modern plant than as an industrial campus in its own right.
Together they entered the steam-turbine testing hall that had been set up in one corner of the grounds. Inside, a prototype turbine sat linked by brass steam pipes. At Siemens's command the trial began: steam erupted, and the turbine spun up to a high, keening speed.
"Ah. So that's how the thing actually works."
Watching the machine in motion filled in the vague, secondhand knowledge Waldemar had carried around until now. Moments later the bulbs wired to the generator flickered to life, and the hall bloomed with a brilliant glow.
"This is the steam turbine we have developed."
Siemens made no effort to hide his pride in the company's work.
"Magnificent. Truly magnificent."
Waldemar's praise did not stop at words. He had his attendant distribute gold purses prepared in advance — to the engineers on the floor, to the workmen, even to Ernst Werner himself. Seeing his patron so plainly delighted, Siemens felt a satisfaction of his own.
"How long would it take to push this engine past a thousand horsepower?"
The question sent Siemens into thought.
"Given the state of the art, five years at the absolute minimum."
He added that, in truth, it would likely take longer still.
"Five years or more."
Considering the technical difficulty, that was not so very long.
"Is there a particular reason Your Highness is so eager to accelerate the turbine's development?"
There was, of course. With the naval arms race among the great powers looming on the horizon, they needed to press the technology forward. Only then could they sweep the steam-turbine market that was about to open. Waldemar had no intention of standing by while Britain's Parsons monopolized that market, as had happened in the original timeline.
"Before long, the steam turbine will drive the old reciprocating piston engine entirely from the field."
Siemens was optimistic about the turbine's future, but he did not share the prince's certainty.
Since he was already at the Charlottenburg works, Waldemar decided to look at more than just the turbine. Siemens proudly walked him through the company's flagship products.
"These are the phonographs currently in production."
"How do they compare with the American ones?"
"You mean Edison's?"
Siemens did not bother to conceal how the comparison itself offended him.
"Edison's machine and ours are entirely different articles. They have only just begun using wax cylinders. Ours employ a motor-driven wax cylinder, together with a DC motor, an automatic speed regulator, and an electrical rotation-control device. The result is a far more stable recording."
In other words: there was no technical comparison worth making.
"And the price?"
At the mention of price, Siemens's confidence wavered.
"On that score alone, ours are somewhat more expensive. The performance, however, is beyond question."
"Then you'll need marketing."
"Marketing?"
Waldemar did not subscribe to the craftsman's creed — so beloved of twentieth-century Japanese manufacturers — that if you simply built a superb product, consumers would recognize its excellence on their own. Even the Japanese of the twenty-first century had eventually swallowed their pride and thrown their weight behind marketing. Of course it isn't entirely wrong. But waiting for word of mouth to spread is a cost in itself. He explained to Siemens why marketing mattered.
"Is it not enough for a company simply to make a good product?"
"Making it well is important. Making it known is equally so."
If no one knew a thing existed, it would never even be chosen. Siemens was not entirely convinced, but he promised to put more effort into promotion.
The next product he presented was the telephone. Siemens introduced a new model with a clearer transmitter and improved long-distance capability.
"The new telephones will shortly begin delivery to the government and the military."
"Is that so?"
Government contracts and military procurement were a reliable, long-term source of profit. That Siemens was expanding its share in those markets was thoroughly welcome news.
As they walked the factory floor, Waldemar inspected a considerable number of products. Most of what Siemens showed him amounted to refinements of existing designs, but the performance was more than enough to crush the competition — all of it the fruit of enormous research-and-development spending. The one thing that still needed work was the steep price of Siemens goods.
The surest way to bring costs down was economies of scale. That, however, required a prerequisite: standardization.
"From now on, when you manufacture, I want you to put real weight behind standardizing and specifying every component to the criteria set by headquarters."
"Changing component specifications will not be inexpensive."
"I'll cover the cost."
At Waldemar's assurance, Siemens agreed. In the long run, Waldemar intended to drive standardization through every company under his influence — and, beyond that, through German industry as a whole. Only then could they guarantee efficiency of production. Without that, building an industrial empire on the American model is a fantasy.
And one thing more. Waldemar issued Siemens another important instruction.
"I also want you to strengthen your cooperation with the universities."
"Industry-academia cooperation?"
The corporations of later generations did not rely solely on their own research capacity. Through partnerships with universities they turned those institutions into nurseries — places that developed technology and supplied the talent they needed. The universities, for their part, did not come away empty-handed. The partnerships generated revenue, guaranteed their students employment, and sharpened their research competitiveness. Waldemar wanted Siemens to put the concept of industry-academia cooperation to work decades before it would take hold in earnest, sometime after the 1960s.
Siemens listened at first with curiosity, then began to nod.
"Very well. We shall deepen our cooperation with the universities."
He said he would arrange meetings shortly with the technical universities of Berlin, Munich, Hanover, and Charlottenburg.
Talking this and that with Siemens, they had let the evening grow late. Waldemar decided it was too late to return to Berlin and would spend the night at the factory.
"Your Highness intends to stay the night here?"
Siemens was a little taken aback, but he undertook to prepare lodgings.
"Then I shall have a meal arranged at a hotel."
"No. That won't be necessary."
Waldemar went to the company canteen, stood in line with the workers, and took his portion from the same serving counter. The laborers stared in wonder at the famous prince who meant to eat among them.
"Never thought Prince Waldemar would come to our company."
"He's not here on some charity visit. Must be a tour of inspection, then?"
European royalty often made study tours of this kind, so the workers did not find it entirely strange. In the canteen Waldemar asked them whether they were satisfied with their jobs, and how they were treated.
"Best there is."
"You won't find a better company anywhere."
The workers spoke of their firm with genuine affection. Siemens had been a progressive employer even in the original timeline, treating his laborers well. In this world, where conditions were already far better, the company offered a standard of care that did not suffer much by comparison with Krupp. A workers' pension, medical support for illness, industrial-accident assistance, technical education, an apprenticeship system, performance bonuses — benefits that other firms might possess one or two of, Siemens possessed in full. The factory dormitories were clean brick houses, complete with their own park, a technical school, and a church.
"It's really that good here?"
"Absolutely."
The workers insisted that Krupp could not begin to compare with their own company. In point of fact, if one looked purely at the treatment of labor, Krupp was considerably better — but one had to remember that Krupp was an absolute kingdom ruled by an authoritarian patriarch.
Waldemar found himself rather pleased by what he heard. After all, Siemens was his company too. But I can't make every company like this. Siemens was a technology firm; it could absorb the cost of treating its workers well. In industries that competed on labor costs, that was impossible. Shipbuilding — where Germany and Britain were locked in fierce competition — was the classic example of that kind of wage war. Waldemar filed it away as another problem to think through in the long term.
You really do have to visit the shop floor now and then. That's how thoughts like these even occur to you.
Turning over the questions the night at the Siemens works had given him, Waldemar left Charlottenburg.