There was always a certain kind of person in this world: skilled at invention and creation, but poor at marketing. That was why they had to find people like Stanley to help sell the products they developed. Andrew Meikle, a mechanic at the Houston Mill Factory in Scotland and one of Georgiana's countrymen, was one of them.
His threshing machine could process eight quarter-tons of oats per hour with four horses and four men. His machine used a beating method rather than rubbing the grain free. It could be powered not only by animals, but also by water. Unfortunately, George Washington bought only one and did not introduce it to America on a large scale, much less make Meikle rich.
When opportunity fell into your lap, it felt like a dream—as though it could not possibly be real.
Yet even a genius needed someone who recognized his worth before he could truly display his extraordinary gifts.
For Georgiana, recommending the lighthouse lamp was easy. Egypt's Lighthouse of Alexandria had not only been built high, but also large, so that a sufficiently enormous fire could be lit to guide passing ships at night. People at the time had not yet considered the refraction of light or lenses, and Napoleon liked this sort of "Eastern," "ancient" thing.
What troubled her was whether that young man would truly use the funding for invention and research after receiving it, rather than squander the money she gave him.
There were more than fifty thousand gemstones in Napoleon's private treasury. Georgiana had seen them; piled together, they looked like a heap of glass beads. She considered it worthwhile to exchange one gemstone for a talented person.
But people changed. In the eyes of the impoverished Corsican artillery lieutenant, the former opera star had once been beyond