One morning a few days later, Joseph, once again dressed in full formal attire, took Napoleon, who was in full military uniform, into a lightweight two-wheeled carriage to attend the speed-of-light measuring experiments that were to be conducted this evening at the Château de Bourron, just outside of Paris.
Château de Bourron, the property of the Orleans family, is a castle built on top of a small hill. The castle is said to have been built as a military fortress in the twelfth century, and today, it has long since lost its military value. When this castle was first built, it was made almost completely uninhabitable in order to strengthen its defenses. So today, the castle is almost in a semi-abandoned state. But for experimentation, this place is great; it's far from the city, and there are few residents in the neighborhood, so there's almost no light pollution. And from the top of the high castle it was also possible to clearly see the fire reflected from the reflector about four or five lieue (a lieue is about four kilometers) away. This is all crucial for the evening's experiments.
But it was a bit out of the way and a bit far from Paris, and no public carriages would come to it, so Joseph rented a lightweight two-wheeled carriage to get there.
The light carriage traveled all morning until about three o'clock in the afternoon when it reached the vicinity of Château de Bourron. Below the small hill where the castle was located was an estate of the Orleans family, and those who came to participate in the experiment at this time stayed in this estate. The cart stopped at the entrance to the manor. Then, an attendant came up and asked. Joseph identified himself to the attendant, and in a short while, the manor's iron gates were pulled open, and the moped drove into the manor along the stone-paved road, stopping in front of a large house with a distinct baroque style. An attendant came up and pulled open the carriage door, and when Joseph and Napoleon got down from it, a messenger in a wig led them in.
That attendant led them through the hall to the little garden at the back, and there was a little glass conservatory in that little garden. This is nothing in later times, but in this day and age, this is not something that the average family can afford. At this moment, several people were sitting inside drinking tea while viewing the roses blooming inside. Joseph walks over and notices Condorcet, Lavoisier, Laplace, Monge, and the rest of them are there. But there was no sign of their host, Duke Chartres.
"Ah, Joseph, come here, come here ..." As soon as he saw Joseph, Lavoisier waved to him. Joseph walked up and greeted them one by one, again thanking Monge and Laplace in particular for their recommendations. Of course, this thanks would have sounded to Napoleon like thanks for recommending his paper.
Then Joseph introduced them to his brother: "This is my brother Napoleon. He is now at the École Militaire in Paris. He's also interested in science, so I made it a point to bring him here to open his eyes. By the way, why haven't we seen His Royal Highness the Duke?"
"His Highness the Duke was there originally. Not long ago, however, he was summoned ... by his majesty the king and did not know what it was about." Lavoisier said, "But His Royal Highness the Duke has asked his steward, Mr. Will, to stay here to assist us, and now everything is actually ready for the evening."
Over the course of several days, the men of the Academy of Sciences, with the cooperation of the Orleans family, had accurately determined the straight-line distances from the watchtower at Château de Bourron to the tops of the two unnamed hills in the vicinity. They also cut down all the trees at the top of the two unnamed hills to ensure line of sight - it was also the property of the Orleans family anyway.
Now, everything is ready except for the darkness. There wasn't much for everyone to do at this point, so they got together and discussed various scientific issues. Monge and Laplace got together to discuss the potential function formulation of the gravitational component of a space object to any mass outside it. Napoleon also came alongside to listen, but only to listen. Unlike Joseph, he was able to interject a few words now and then.
That's when the Orleans family came to invite everyone to dinner. Since the experiment was about to take place, the dinner was actually a kind of buffet, not at all sumptuous by the standards of the Orleans family. But even then, much of it was the first time Joseph and Napoleon had ever eaten. Things like slices of truffle sandwiched between bread smeared with foie gras and other things that Joseph doesn't even know what they are even when he eats them in his mouth.
Once the meal was over, everyone got back into the carriage and headed for the castle not far away. The carriage coiled up the curving road, and in a short time, it reached the castle below.
Everyone got out of the wagon, and by this time, the sun was approaching the horizon in the west and was growing larger and redder.
The servants lit the horse lamps and led those of the Academy into the old castle.
Buildings like castles generally have very thick stone walls for defense and very small, usually inward-facing windows. So the ventilation and light of this type of building will be very poor, not to mention that it is already in the evening. Even at midday, the inside of the castle is so dark that it needs to be lit up with lamps. Therefore, the nobles are still less willing to live in the castle, except in times of war. To this day, because of the advancement of artillery, these old castles no longer have military significance, and the nobles naturally live here even less, even to the point of refusing to pay for the expense of continuing to take care of them. Hence, these old castles are naturally in a general state of disrepair. The eerie, old castles that need to be illuminated even in the daytime combined with the fact that they are dilapidated and unoccupied, these castles become the stage for ghost stories one after another. Now they enter the old castle, which also has the legend of the "ghost of the castle".
Joseph, with Napoleon in tow, followed an attendant carrying a horse lamp up the stone-coiled steps, and the attendant made a point of reminding him as he shone his horse lamp on the steps: "Sir, it's damp in the castle, and these stone steps are mossy and slippery, so be careful as you go up."
"Thanks, we'll keep an eye out." Joseph replied, keeping his head down and staring at the stone steps beneath his feet.
Soon, they arrived at the topmost watchtower of the castle. It was a small platform about twenty meters long. At one end of this small platform, there was a woodpile with wood doused in whale oil. As soon as this fire pit is lit, it gives off a brighter fire relative to a normal flame. In dark conditions, the light of this fire could be clearly seen even from nine lieue or more. At the other end of the platform, a set of eight mirrors that could be rotated were set up.
There was also a telescope set up on the platform, and looking through it. One could see that a set of reflectors had been mounted on the top of the hill over there.
"Are these reflectors tuned?" Joseph asked.
"It's all tuned up. It can accurately reflect light onto the other side of the eight-sided mirror." Monge replied in a low voice.
The sun got lower and lower and finally sank below the horizon. Only a little lavender afterglow remained in the western sky. Star after star became visible in the darkening sky, and the sky was filled with jewel-like stars.
Seeing that it was dark enough around them, Lavoisier said, "Well, it should be ready to go."
One of the attendants lit a large fire with a torch in his hand, and then a firework rose from the top of yonder hill. It indicated to them that the fire on this side could be clearly seen from the top of the hill.
After this response, everyone then focused on the other side of the eight-sided mirror. According to the experimental setup, the firelight shoots from one side on a rotating eight-sided mirror to a reflector on the other hill and then reflects back. If the eight-sided mirror is rotated by exactly one mirror angle during this time, then the light reflected back can be seen on the other side of the eight-sided mirror.
There's nothing reflecting in that direction. The eight-sided mirror turned faster, but no fire was visible.
"And faster, faster." Joseph said as he stared into the spinning eight-sided mirror.
The speed at which the eight mirrors rotated continued to increase, and finally, the flickering fire began to flicker on the side everyone was staring at.
"Steady, steady speed, okay, okay! Quick, record the speed of the rotation!" Monge shouted.
An assistant hurriedly recorded the speed of rotation.
Joseph, Laplace, and Monge immediately gathered around as soon as the data came out. By the light of the fire, calculations were made. Laplace came up with the answer first, then Monge worked it out, and as for Joseph, when they all did, Joseph was only about two-thirds of the way through his calculations.
"Haha, Joseph, your calculation skills aren't good enough to be this slow." Monge laughed out loud.
Napoleon was also full of gloating smiles. Looking at his eyes, Joseph knew that this guy was thinking, 'O my foolish brother, you have times when you want to be despised by others.'
'Complex arithmetic like this was solved by hitting an enter back in my last life, so who's going to do it manually? I can have this speed, it's already very impressive. It is not good that if someone else, this moment may not even be half of my finished.'Joseph thought so, while smiling bitterly, he replied, "My calculations, however, are not considered good, I can never go fast enough, and if I speed up a little, I will make a mistake. I can't help it."
The people next to him then laughed together.
In the midst of laughter, Joseph finished his calculations as well. The three men checked their calculations against each other, and they were essentially the same. Joseph silently converted the number to kilometers and concluded that it was close enough to the speed of light as measured by future generations.
"It's actually that fast?" Laplace murmured, "If light is indeed a wave, what strange properties should the Ether possess ah. It's unimaginable! But if light is a particle, what about double-slit interference and the Bonaparte Light Spot ..."
"Let's put a little more boldness into it, what if the medium in which light travels is not some kind of matter, as we usually think of it, but space itself?" Napoleon, off to the side, suddenly spoke up.
"Space itself? Light is actually a fluctuation of space?" Condorcet spoke up immediately upon hearing this, "Ah, Napoleon, you have a talent for philosophy. But this idea, when taken as a conjecture on the scientific side, obviously lacks sufficient evidence. Science requires evidence, like that conjecture of your brother's, backed up by at least one set of mathematical models. This view, though, is really ... Unfortunately, we don't have any usable research methods for space itself."
And Napoleon's remark startled Joseph. He knew that while Ether and all that didn't exist, the light wasn't a space fluctuation. Space can indeed fluctuate, but the fluctuations are not light. They are gravitational waves.
'This guy, this guy has quite a bit of imagination. With some serious nurturing, could he be groomed to be distorted and eventually become the Emperor of Physics?' Joseph couldn't help but think so.