(A somewhat incorrect depiction of Atacama Desert, with the Minimum Tonne Equivalent in the center stage)
January, 1892
Almonte, Tarapacá
Augustin Mouchot couldn't help but notice that how much Almonte had changed in the last few years. It went from a sleepy village in the desert, to a thriving town, and was well on its way to become a city thanks to the
Franco-Chilena. If only the company itself didn't engulf it first and devour it like microorganisms did. It already dominated the town in three out of four directions. Constantino Serrano was already lobbying with the regional government to rebuild the town five kilometers to the north, promising assistance and funding to build a new and better city, the most modern in Chile.
He noted a worker going riding a bicycle of the new model invented in Britain, and marvelled at the simplicity and efficiency of the design. He briefly wondered why he didn't think about that, and chuckled at the many, many times he'd heard pettier people say that what he's done is nothing special. "A child pointing a magnifying glass at an ant does the same" a critic said once.
But nobody did it at the scale he proposed before, and certainly nobody had done it at the scale he was working now. A scale that casted a shadow over all of Almonte, even if it was three kilometres away, taller than the insolent trees in the town square and even taller than the Church's bell tower. To his knowledge, the tallest structure in Chile, perhaps the tallest structure in South America. A giant designed by a Chilean engineer, Victorino Lastarria, who was thrilled to work with the
Franco-Chilena, crediting the company with surviving the rainy winters in the south of Chile.
The work also casted a shadow on himself. After almost thirty years, more than half of his adult life, he could say for certain that no new challenges awaited him. No new ideas to test, or new technologies to develop. From now on, all that remained was the refining of his technologies, to manage teams of scientist and engineers to squeeze the last percentages of efficiencies out of what once came from his mind. Weird still, he had encountered feelings at what he - and his Chileans associates and friends - had created in this inferno. A company that worked on ideas, not resources. A silent, safe and sanitary workplace for the workers. An business venture who could afford to experiment on a grand scale without risk.
His life vision casted a long shadow on himself.
Which is why Madame Goyenechea asked him if there was something wrong when he met her and her entourage at the new train station.
- Nothing, if anything, everything is going according to plan.
- And that worries you,
Docteur?
- Not at all. It's just that... It's not a very pertinent to our schedule today. How was your trip?
- Very good. The railroad certainly changes things. And I see things have changed here, as well. - She said, looking towards the enormous solar collector. - So that's the thing that will drive my mines out of business? - She asked, waiting for a cheeky response from Mouchot.
- Of course it will. That machine alone will produce around 1/500th of Lota's annual production. Lota produces Anthracite, right?
- Bituminous, actually. - She responded.
- Make it 1/400th then. - And, as he predicted, Isidora Goyenechea betrayed an expression of awe for half a second, as she got in the coach that would lead them to the . He was victorious this time.
Isidora Goyenechea asked more about the numbers, about the building and maintenance costs, about the amount of workers, the energy production, and maximum temperatures reachable by the device. To each answer, she silently nodded.
And then, as she got closer to the device, an entirely different question:
- Are those... Sea Shanties I hear?
Augustin Mouchot sighed... after all his ideas for sun tracking proved unfeasible, he had to accept Alejandro Puig's ridiculous suggestion of treating it as a sailing rig, with a crew of people making constant adjustments using cables and ropes. Judicious use of mechanical advantage reduced the needed hands to just fifteen - ten during lunch time - but it was constant work. And thus, sea shanties were sung in the middle of the desert, only interrupted by the correcting barks of the supervisor.
And once they were close enough, that same supervisor shouted orders at them. He ordered them to stop, and to not come any closer.
- Do you have any idea to whom you're talking that way? - Isidora Goyenechea's assistance shouted back.
- Lady Goyenechea de Cousiño and
Docteur Augustin Mouchot... and you. - The overseer said, matter-of-factly.
- Stop using that tone or you'll lose your job.
- I'll lose my job anyways if I don't use it and keep you from wondering into a hazardous area. Get close enough to the focus, and you'll begin to roast. It takes about three minutes to roast an entire cow to perfection at twenty meters of the focus... and you, specifically, look like the kind of person who'd get close enough to the focus for this warning to be needed. - the Supervisor - an ex Enlisted Sailor, Mouchot was willing to bet his entire participation in the
Franco-Chilena - said with venom in his voice at the impertinent and well dressed man. - Lady Goyenechea, excuse me for my impertinence, but we're in a hazardous zone. While you're near the device, you'll listen to my instructions and do as I say.
- This is entirely reasonable, Mister...
- Hermes Soto. Everyone calls me
Sargento.
- Very well,
Sargento. How can we proceed?
- You'll start by putting on the protective gear. And then you'll join me at my overwatch position.
They all did as instructed (the man of the entourage did so with a bitter expression, as if he was suffering an indignity). Thick white garments covered them entirely, only punctuated by almost opaque vision slits. By the time they were done, everyone looked the same.
- We're conducting tests today. We have still to iron some troubles with the focusing array to reduce the focus area to its theoretical limits, but we're about 75% there. Enough to melt the calcite that makes most of the copper ore from Chuquicamata.
- And this is the daily amount it can melt? - Isidora Goyenechea asked.
- At these conditions, we ought to melt this tonne in about fifteen minutes. The tests we've conducted suggest we can melt 25 tonnes during the Winter Solstice and 55 during the Summer Solstice, with a daily average of 40 tonnes. 2% of that is copper.
- So we're looking at a minimum of 500 kilos of copper per day and... just shy of 150 tonnes of copper yearly? - Goyenechea asked.
- Indeed. Now, I have to ask you to check your equipment again. If you stare at the sun and it is uncomfortable, then change the gear you're wearing. The sun should look like a firefly through these.
Nobody complained, so
Sargento began barking orders again. "Direction, two seaward, fast! Declination, three south, slow! Focus Angle, three clockwise! Focus point farther!"
Nothing happened at first, then a faint point on where the ore would be, which grew more and more intense at it outshone the sun. Then the beam became visible and, finally, the very ore began to glow from the heat. It was liquid at that point.
"Direction, break sun, fast!" -
Sargento said, and the beam disappeared in seconds as the singing machine moved away from the sun entirely. - "You can now remove your visors". The ore, which was at ambient temperature a few moments ago, had been turned into a pool of lava, with the copper flowing through an exit. "Of course, this is just a demonstration and refining is a much more complex process. But any process that needs heat can be supplied this way." -
Sargento said as the last part of his speech
Mouchot wasn't surprised, he'd done the calculations himself and knew that these results were to be expected. But Isidora Goyenechea and her entourage were.
- It melted a tonne of rock as if it was nothing, burning
nothing*. - Isidora Goyenechea said. - How is coal going to compete against these monsters?
The Minimum Tonne Equivalent machine or, as Isidora Goyenechea herself dubbed them, "The Monster of Atacama" represent the summum of Augustin Mouchot's idea for a Solar Collector. Although the design would be refined in the next years and decades - with computerized and sensor-based solar tracking becoming feasible only in the following decade - it has remained more or less static in time. As a design that hasn't seen a significant change since it was first developed in the 1880s it is a resounding success. As Mouchot's dream as the alternative to coal, it has only been feasible outside Atacama in parts of California, Jordan, Libya and Namibia and failed everywhere else.
If it is considered a failure, though, one must consider that it was the failure that made the Atacama Desert one of the most strategically important parts of the world.
*: These calculations are accurate. I did the math and that's pretty much it.
