King Eduard III

After Jonathan had left the room, he began to study the document Jonathan left behind.

It was much better structured and had all the relevant information written on it. This was, without a doubt, Atramento’s influence.

The ideas Jonathan had to make the process less expensive were still structured, but sometimes not entirely coherent. He seemed to have assumed a certain standard of knowledge. But, while he did not understand everything, he did understand enough to know that Jonathan was completely out of his depth.

He considered the situation.

On one hand, Jonathan likely could not bring much more knowledge to the task, but on the other hand, in the end, it could be ideas which he had because of knowledge that was not totally applicable which could help to bring the cost down.

But he could not forget that what he delivered was much more impressive than what Jonathan presented it as. One sheet of paper in his unoptimized process cost only a bit more than a quarter of the prize of a piece of vellum.

That was made even more pronounced when one considered the ease with which the production volume could be increased.

And then there were the very simple to implement ideas that Jonathan already gave for real production.

He considered again.

Right now, with how high the price was, a printing press likely would not really be able to turn a profit. There might be some few special tasks it could do better, and with the price of paper right now, those tasks could be expanded, but they would still be small scale and could be dealt with in another way, easily.

But if the price of paper managed to drop by another 50 or 60 per cent, the story would begin to look different. And he might just have an idea who to give that task.

The hint that Jonathan mentioned was very fascinating. He said that a water mill might help with one of the steps. He could not imagine how that could work, but he also was no expert in water mills.

He decided to let Jonathan design and build the printing press and give the task of optimization to somebody else. But it would not be becoming of him to decide that so quickly, and demonstrating his power in a way that was not harmful could prevent Jonathan from getting ideas.

So he sent a missive to the summoned, in which he gave him the task to create a drawing of what he imagined to do with a water mill.

Three days later, a messenger brought Jonathans answer to him.

Jonathan had used a bit more paper to create his answer, which the king found interesting on two points.

The first was showing him the thing he created, demonstrating that the process worked, even if there were still some problems to be addressed.

The second was maybe not his priority, but the paper was much less expensive than vellum, and as such he might not always need the most expensive thing, just because it was expensive.

What the king did not know, could not know where the advantages of paper Jonathan did not mention but was aware of.

Paper was safer. While the ink on vellum could be removed, that could not happen with paper, at least not without chemicals that were not invented yet, and which did not work with every ink.

In fact, Jonathan was reasonably certain that his coal-based ink could not be erased.

Also, he simply liked to write on paper more, even if it had not the same feeling that modern paper had.

The king looked at the papers and found that the one lying on top had been written on.

It was basically a warning from Jonathan that, while he knew that it was possible, he had basically no idea how it would work.

Anything showed there was to be taken with a grain of salt.

The king looked at the other pieces.

Those had sketches on them, which had sloppy writing near them, in handwriting, he could not identify. He assumed it was Jonathans.

The pictures where interesting, but they were not a coherent whole, but instead ideas about specific parts of the final whole.

More than enough to get someone started, but not enough to build one of these things only following the information provided.

He then started preparations for the handoff, and decided that Jonathan would begin working on the printing press in a week.