Explore "Nordenholt's Million" by J.J. Connington on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Although Barclay's work furnished us with the means of tapping the stores of energy which lie imprisoned within the atoms of elementary matter, it did not place us immediately in a position to utilise these immense forces for practical purposes. To tell the truth, we were in much the same position as a savage to whom a dynamite cartridge has been given, ready fitted with a detonator. We could liberate the energy, but at first we could not bring it under control.
The next few weeks were spent in planning and building machine after machine. All the best talent of Nordenholt's group of engineers was brought to bear on the problem; but time after time we had to admit failure. Either the engines were too fragile for the power which they employed or there was some radical defect in their construction which could only be detected on trial. Thus the days passed in a series of disappointments, until it seemed almost as though hope of success was fading before our eyes.