In 1855, British engineer Bessemer invented the converter steelmaking process, replacing manual stirring with machinery and greatly improving production efficiency.
In this era, people had little awareness of secrecy, and the news quickly spread. Of course, even if they wanted to keep it secret, they could not; once a patent was filed, the technology was exposed.
The converter steelmaking process was not some lofty, cutting-edge technology. The reason people had not adopted it was mainly a matter of mindset, not because the machinery for stirring was particularly difficult to produce.
When the news reached Vienna, it immediately caused a sensation. This meant steel production efficiency would rise sharply, easing the embarrassing shortage of steel on the market.
While idly flipping through a newspaper, Franz saw the technology and only then remembered that steelmaking techniques in this era were still extremely primitive.
Austria's largest steel conglomerate employed more than a hundred thousand people, yet its annual steel output was only a little over five hundred thousand tons.
With such meager output, it still accounted for half of the New Holy Roman Empire's total steel production and was hailed as the largest steel conglomerate on the European Continent.
Austria's steel output was second only to that of the United Kingdom, ranking second in the world, while its total production capacity had already surpassed France's.
These figures were enough to satisfy the Vienna Government. Austria's steel production capacity was now growing at an annual rate of more than twenty percent—a downright cheat-code-like pace of development.
The main reason for the surge in production capacity was market demand. The steel market was completely unable to meet demand now. Not only Austria, but the entire European Continent was in a state of shortage.
At present, the principal international steel exporters were the British. Belgium was