As the sun set in the west, rosy clouds rose along the horizon, bathing Vienna in even more dazzling colors.
The busy people had no time to admire the beautiful scene. Olabif was an exception. Recently, the laboratory had assigned him an easy task—practically a vacation.
Basking in the evening glow, Olabif did not forget the work in his hands. He picked up something that looked like both a receiver and a microphone and shouted loudly into it.
That was right—this was his work for the day. Since it was a vacation, there naturally was not much to do. Three call tests a day constituted his entire workload.
At first, the tests had been conducted just outside the laboratory, but the distance had gradually increased. Now, Olabif was already more than twenty kilometers from the laboratory. Any farther, and he would have to leave Vienna.
Olabif had worked at the Royal Academy of Sciences for five years. There was no surprise in that; overtime was as commonplace as daily meals in research institutions.
In those five years, Olabif's longest vacation had not even reached three days. So-called long vacations merely meant being transferred to a more relaxed position to ease the pressure.
Telephone research had always been one of the laboratory's key projects. The term "telephone" had already existed in Europe in the eighteenth century, and in 1860, Italy's Antonio Meucci had invented a telephone.
However, the thing was difficult to use—or perhaps could not be used at all. In the original timeline, Bell had always been credited with inventing the telephone in 1876, simply because his improvements had given it practical value.
Naturally, they could not wait that long now. Franz had set his sights on this relatively easy-to-conquer technology long ago.
The testing distance alone showed that the