Helen was asking the construction supervisor about the progress on the factory buildings when she saw a youth of fourteen or fifteen, clad in a tight black coarse-cloth jacket, running toward her. A kindly smile immediately appeared on her face.
That was her grandson, Friedrich, a remarkably gifted child. At thirteen, without anyone teaching him, he had already worked alongside technicians on precision forging.
"Grandmother!" Friedrich waved excitedly and shouted from afar. "The bending and forging test results for the latest batch of gray cast iron are both outstanding!"
Helen was greatly surprised as well. "Really? Those French people have been here for less than ten days."
The youth nodded, panting. "I personally supervised the tests. Its bending performance is 70% better than our previous bar iron. According to the French technicians, the phosphorus content in the molten iron coming out of the blast furnace has been reduced by more than half."
Helen's eyes widened. "How did they do it? Did they improve the blast furnace?"
"You know there was simply not enough time for that. In fact, they merely used a new slagging agent. They also said that once our new blast furnace is completed, the quality of the bar iron can improve by another huge margin."
Helen suddenly thought of something. "Wait—if the improvement is this great, we can completely win the Dutch people's ship-chain order!" Half a year ago, a Dutch shipyard had come to inspect Krupp's products, but they had been very dissatisfied with their bending performance.
Now, backed by French technology, they could absolutely give it a try.
That was a major order worth tens of thousands of Dutch Guilders!
Friedrich nodded, then complained, "If we had worked with the French from the beginning, we would definitely have far more orders than we do now.