Alternate Technology

Chrispi · Jul 2, 2004

No, I'm not talking about ASBs here. What if certain machine components don't get invented? Then the whole machine fails, and something else takes its place.

In the development of alternate history too little focus is given to the development of technology, perhaps because of its sheer complexity (after all, who would have thought that the Diesel engine would be dependent on perfecting a perfume bottle?)

What sorts of technologies would emerge and be submerged? For instance, if the French Revolution were either avoided or muted, would we be driving Cugnots rather than Mercedes-Benzes? Would the Stirling engine be more powerful and widely used? Or would we use electric cars solely?

Would the Babbage Difference Engine usher in an earlier information age? What if cheap air travel never took off and we travelled by maglev trains instead?

Is it plausible?

Grey Wolf · Jul 3, 2004

Yes, sure it is

For one thing a lot of today's successes, either companies or design standards are there by a combination of luck, ruthlessness and opportunity

For example, the VHS video cassette was inferior to the Betamax video cassette but became the standard

Also, didn't the oil companies buy the railways in LA and then close them all, thus giving a boost to the automobile and its infrastructure, and thus their own interests ?

Grey Wolf

Guilherme Loureiro · Jul 3, 2004

VHS became standard for home use. Professionals used(and still use) Betamax. IIRC, VHS became standard because it was cheaper.

About that railway deal, I had heard it automobile companies were the guilty party.

Chrispi · Jul 4, 2004

Another reason why tech AHs are unpopular is because they deal with "the little people." History tends to oversimplify invention by attributing too much to lone genius. James Watt did not invent the industrial steam engine, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone.

DuQuense · Jul 4, 2004

IIRC, VHS became standard because it was cheaper.

IIRC the real reason was that the Beta people refused to licence their product to the XXX industry.

DuQuense · Jul 4, 2004

Some of the more popular AHs have Tesla get his finaceing.

And I have that Crimia War Aircraft Carrier Thread, that got the dread [Ignored to death], but i"m working on it.

Straha · Jul 4, 2004

zepplins are a staple for AHs

Tetsu · Jul 5, 2004

Straha said:
zepplins are a staple for AHs

That is true. Of course, I don't really care for zeppelins so I try to avoid them mostly in my TLs. (for example, in my Central Powers USA TL [which of course is a different WW1 in which the USA sides with Germany.], it seems like zeppelins should come into mainstream service, but I kinda purposely avoid them and develop aircraft carriers like OTL.)

Another big one is Tesla weapons, which I never fully understood. (I'm trying to do some research on them now.) They seem interesting, but TLs on them seem kinda overdone, so they don't catch my interest for being a good original AH.

Some alternate technologies I could think of would be perhaps hovercraft tanks coming into use (kind of like lightly armoured assault vehicles, with capabilities over land and water.) Imagine Normandy, with big tanks flying over the water, firing away, and blowing through the beachheads. Maybe having them that early is a bit implausible, but the potential is good.

Strange things can always happen. Zeppelin travel kinda failed because of initial disasters like the Hindenburg. What if the first few commercial airliners experienced disaster, and the airline industry never took off (no pun intended.

)? We might be jetting around on superfast mag-lev trains that line the country like highways.

Fiji · Jul 5, 2004

chrispi said:
Another reason why tech AHs are unpopular is because they deal with "the little people." History tends to oversimplify invention by attributing too much to lone genius. James Watt did not invent the industrial steam engine, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone.

Actually, Jarred Diamond adresses this in his book Guns, Germs and Steel.
His theory is that hadn't Watt perfected the industrial steam engine, hadn't Edison perfected the lightbulb ... someone would have come along to do it in their place. (as chrispi pointed out, several other people were already working on it) And in all likelyness, this someone would still have been western and probably even Brittish/American.
Simply because the deck was stacked heavily in favour of these regions/countries.

I personally beleive this "someone would have done it" approach breaks down in our present time.
Simply because there is so much we CAN invent.
Was it inevitable that the post-it would be invented? or velcro?
as for what could have been invented ... ???

DuQuense · Jul 5, 2004

Some alternate technologies I could think of would be perhaps hovercraft tanks coming into use (kind of like lightly armoured assault vehicles, with capabilities over land and water.) Imagine Normandy, with big tanks flying over the water, firing away, and blowing through the beachheads. Maybe having them that early is a bit implausible, but the potential is good.

Whe have the Wright Brothers running a Bicycle Shop. They are playing around with the Air hose one day. Several years later whe have the first Hovercrafts.

JLCook · Jul 5, 2004

50 years ago

Guilherme Loureiro said:
VHS became standard for home use. Professionals used(and still use) Betamax. IIRC, VHS became standard because it was cheaper.

About that railway deal, I had heard it automobile companies were the guilty party.

The smallish (~30,000pop) city in SE Iowa where I live had a perfectly functioning light rail sytem of streetcars! In the early 1950's, it is my understanding that General Motors bought the system, scrapped it, and substituted smelly, General Motors built buses instead!

I very much believe the part about automobile companies shutting down public transit systems.

The part about the OIL companies, that I believe, is that OIL COMPANIES are actively discouragine any sort of competition for the gasoline or diesel burning engines, and that no sort of replacement technology will EVER appear, until such time as there is no oil left for them to sell, and they have in place, a replacement power system which THEY will continue to control the monopoly fuel supply for whatever new system is eventually introduced!

DuQuense · Jul 5, 2004

IIRC The court case named various Oil-Auto-& Tire Companies as involved in the consprisasy.

Guilherme Loureiro · Jul 5, 2004

JLCook said:
The part about the OIL companies, that I believe, is that OIL COMPANIES are actively discouragine any sort of competition for the gasoline or diesel burning engines, and that no sort of replacement technology will EVER appear, until such time as there is no oil left for them to sell, and they have in place, a replacement power system which THEY will continue to control the monopoly fuel supply for whatever new system is eventually introduced!

Right now oil is too cheap(relatively) to be replaced by other fuel sources. I agree with you the oil industry does a lot of research on alternative sources of fuel to keep in business the day oil runs out.

Bulgaroktonos · Jul 5, 2004

If we were going to have hovertanks, they would have to shoot recoiless rifles or machine-guns. Otherwise they will be knocked about by the recoil of a main cannon, as they have nothing with which to ground themselves....

Random Unicorn · Jul 6, 2004

Gasoline too cheap.

JLCook said:
The part about the OIL companies, that I believe, is that OIL COMPANIES are actively discouragine any sort of competition for the gasoline or diesel burning engines, and that no sort of replacement technology will EVER appear, until such time as there is no oil left for them to sell, and they have in place, a replacement power system which THEY will continue to control the monopoly fuel supply for whatever new system is eventually introduced!

I think that to use absolutes like that is a little paranoid

I would not be surprised that some efforts are made by the oil companies to keep certain research low. Beyond this I have seen nothing significant on that end. Please enlighten me if you know of anything along this line that shows a conspiracy.

We all ready have several replacements both in the works and in use. Most notably amongst them is Alcohol. This is a fuel that the oil companies would be hard pressed to control. Not unless they keep the prices so low as to not make it worthwhile for others to compete, but then who cares.

If the Oil Compaies are NEVER going to allow other fuel sources they seem to be doing a pretty poor job. Brazil is all ready over 50% Ethanol Powered and I doubt they are the only ones.

Remember that the reason gasoline is so popular isn't because there are no other alternatives. It's because it is the cheapest one out there, Especially when you consider the cost of building the infrastructure.

If Gasoline increased in price another $1-$2 a gallon you would see a large segment of the U.S. start to shift to other fuels very quickly. It's just that right now who wants to pay more to use an alternative fuel .

Random Unicorn

Grey Wolf · Jul 6, 2004

Bulgaroktonos said:
If we were going to have hovertanks, they would have to shoot recoiless rifles or machine-guns. Otherwise they will be knocked about by the recoil of a main cannon, as they have nothing with which to ground themselves....

I suppose you could build some type of gun that whilst firing one way also blasts out an equal force in the opposite direction ? Would be quite funny if it breaks down, and the hover tank goes flying backwards when it fires...well, not funny if you were in it but it would look amusing if caught on film

Grey Wolf

Random Unicorn · Jul 6, 2004

chrispi said:
History tends to oversimplify invention by attributing too much to lone genius. James Watt did not invent the industrial steam engine, Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone.

fiji said:
I personally beleive this "someone would have done it" approach breaks down in our present time.
Simply because there is so much we CAN invent.
Was it inevitable that the post-it would be invented? or velcro?
as for what could have been invented ... ???

Many inventions are almost inevitable unless you change physics or another major point in history. Chrispi quite correctly pointed out that others also worked on these inventions.

Take the light bulb. It is almost inconceivable (I do not think that word means what you think it means

) that within a world such as ours that light bulbs would not have been used/invented when they were, give or take 10 years.

Given the world up to that pointâ€¦

#1 Mankind wanted light. Mankind was willing to pay good money for light. The lighting of the time (Gas) had serious problems.

#2 The concept of putting electricity through a wire to cause light is impossible to not discover if you have electricity and wire.

Combine these two, 1) Lots of money to be made if successful, and 2) evidence that it can be done if only a few problems can be worked out and you have it pretty much inevitable.

The airplane is similar in nature (Substitute mans desire to conquered the skies for â€œLots of Moneyâ€)

Other ideas are not quite so inevitable in my opinion. Velcro is one possible example, Teflon (I think that was the fluke accident invention found in a cylinder) could be another.

A quick test to it's inevitability is probably to ask "How many others were also working on it and near success."

Now bare in mind I am not saying that these things can't be stopped. Just that I find it very difficult to stop them in a world such as ours. You can however have this if you change it to a world where Technology is shunned, "What if the Mennonites ruled the world". If youâ€™re a Mennonite who has taken offence at this I appologise.

Random Unicorn

tom · Jul 6, 2004

Random Unicorn:
My favorite is the guy who tried to patent the telephone the same day A. G. Bell did (his name was Elisha Gray or Grey...I always forget which).

Chef Kyle · Jul 6, 2004

Have a world where calculus doesn't work so well. I don't mean, alter actual physics, just have it organised badly. Then we get more mechanics and very little electrics.

This isn't such a stretch, really. Just consider that the western world staggered along for about 1,700 years with roman numerals. It wasn't until 1300 or so, in northern Italy, that Arabic numerals (1,2,3 etc) came into Europe.

Why is that so important? Well, with Arabic numerals you can have double-entry book-keeping. You can have quickly-done multiplication of numbers of any size, and long division of others, still. You can do fractions. It simply makes all these operations a thousand times easier.

All this leads to calculus. But it wasn't preordained that calculus would be expressed clearly by Leibniz and Newton. Just compare Newton's clumsy expression with Leibniz's relatively elegant method that we still use today.

Let's suppose that an even clumsier expression of calculus came about, we'll call it Kalculus. Let's say that what roman numerals are to arabic numerals, Kalculus is to calculus.

What this means is that calculations are more difficult. This slows development of steam engines, cannon and other machinery. But it absolutely kicks in the guts electrics. Maxwell's use of calculus to derive the relation of electricity and magnetism lead to the prediction of the existence of radio waves. Yes, without Maxwell, no wireless.

Calculus is very useful for machinery, but absolutely essential to invent electrics, and thus, electronics.

So, if you want a "steampunk" world, have Kalculus. Now, whether the Babbage Machine would have worked, I've no idea. But I do know that many technologies were never made fully efficient, since better technologies came along too quickly. So for example the best sailing boats were built after steamboats appeared. How much better might steam engines have got if electricity hadn't come along? And other steam machinery? No-one's ever bothered building a Babbage Machine because we've got something we know we will work better. But if we never had that...

We could have quite an advanced society with Kalculus, but it'd be rather different. A lot smokier, for one.

Redbeard · Jul 6, 2004

Interesting post Kyle, but would Roman numerals have prevented a workable steam-engine? Wouldn't some good skilled blacksmiths, a basic understanding of mechanics and strong central power be more important?

I guess this has been up many times before, but is it ASB to have the Romans develop steamengines and next steamboats and primitive railway? A Roman empire that could quickly deploy Legions by steamboat or railway would be practically invincible. Next imagine the Romans discovering America in 174 BC and in a few years establish a regular steamboat connection to the growing colonies there!

A more recent and more detailed PoD could be the French manufacturing in 1939 a man held recoilless or rocketpowered anti-tank weapon - no fun to be in a panzer then.

The little ignition cap replacing the unreliable flintlocks on muzzleloaders should also have been possible centuries before (or the Minie bullet). It would of course be easy to copy, but the first power deploying it would sweep the battlefields.

Gliders with a glide factor of say 1:20 should also be technically possible as soon as woodworking and fabric is developed. Imagine huge clockworks winching up gliders which stay up for hours using termic winds. Next imagine some brave guy getting the idea that a big bunch of firework rockets might be used to propel the damned thing...

Regards

Steffen Redbeard