
A restless fourteen‑year‑old named Anton finds himself tangled in a puzzling situation at a bustling factory. An electrical telegram addressed to “engineer Penttilä” lands on his desk, yet no one at the plant knows anyone by that name. Driven by curiosity, Anton offers to finance the investigation, only to discover that the note contains far less than the answers he hoped for, leaving both him and the enigmatic Aapeli Penttilä uneasy.
Penttilä, a quiet man with a reputation for odd jobs, has spent years nurturing a secret invention: a dry electric accumulator. After finally securing patents across Europe and the United States, he receives an unexpected summons from the foreign ministry, hinting that his creation might finally attract the attention it deserves. Yet the path from patent to production is riddled with financial hurdles and skeptical financiers.
The story follows Anton’s growing fascination with Penttilä’s world and the inventor’s relentless struggle to turn a groundbreaking idea into reality, all set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing industrial Finland.
Language
fi
Duration
~5 hours (300K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Tapio Riikonen
Release date
2012-12-31
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects
1888–1931
A Finnish novelist from the early 20th century, remembered especially for the 1922 novel Keksijän voitto. His work captures a period of industrial change and invention with a strong sense of time and place.
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