Samuel Morey, or: 1824, with a two-stroke engine.

Hey guys. Long time viewer. First time poster.

I've recently become enamoured with an inventor by the name of Samuel Morey. In 1824, this New England inventor patented and built a two-stroke internal combustion engine. He mounted to a boat and started a ferry service to build up money for his next, larger, engine. After a few months, his wife and mother both took ill and died. Depressed, he took his boat out to the middle of a lake and sank it.

So...what if his wife and mother hadn't died? What if there had been a manufacturing center of engines starting in New England in the 1820s? I've got my own theories, like Grant using armoured vehicles to break the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, and dirigibles being used to map the rivers of the Northwestern area of America. Perhaps fixed wing aircraft over Sebastopol in the Crimean War.

I leave the floor open. Let 'er rip.

I thought I'd throw in a few of the other storylines that I've played with using this as a starting point...

A sneak attack by Japanese aircraft against the Russian naval base at Port Arthur to start the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

On the road with a force of armoured cars as they motor their way across southern Africa in Zulu War.

Commodore Dewey's launching of aircraft to hit the Spanish fleet at Manila in 1898, while across the world, the Rough Riders charge up Kettle Hill along with the rest of the airborne troops of the US Army.

The completion of the Transcontinental Highway across America, followed by the completion of the Transiberian Highway by the Tsar across Siberia.

The inauguration of oversea air transport with the North Star airship lines in 1872, from London to New York.

So, if this just makes the industrial revoltion happen a lot faster, how exactly is flight achieved? Rememeber, its quite a step from boats to zeppilins, though not that big of a flight from zeppilins to planes. Hot air baloons had been around since pre-revolutinary France, but they were not widely used.
Some of the scenarios you made do sound very cool in an HG Wells' War in the Air way. Imagine Roosevelt parachuting onto spain, and bombers and things everywhere. Now that's sort of like Crimson Skies.

How about Amerinds shooting down a low flying Zeppelin with flaming arrows?

I once read a story about Red Cloud's Flying Circus in the ACW.

As well as an IC engine wouldn't you need aluminum producable in commercial quantities for flight? The Wright Bros engine was aluminum. The Hall-Heroult process wasn't developed until 1886

MacCaulay said:

Hey guys. Long time viewer. First time poster.

I've recently become enamoured with an inventor by the name of Samuel Morey. In 1824, this New England inventor patented and built a two-stroke internal combustion engine. He mounted to a boat and started a ferry service to build up money for his next, larger, engine. After a few months, his wife and mother both took ill and died. Depressed, he took his boat out to the middle of a lake and sank it.

So...what if his wife and mother hadn't died? What if there had been a manufacturing center of engines starting in New England in the 1820s? I've got my own theories, like Grant using armoured vehicles to break the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, and dirigibles being used to map the rivers of the Northwestern area of America. Perhaps fixed wing aircraft over Sebastopol in the Crimean War.

I leave the floor open. Let 'er rip.

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I once read about these two British inventors who tried making a powered flying machine in the mid-19th century. IIRC, there main problem was a suitable powerplant. So if a suitable powerplant was found, I doubt that the airplane would have been used in the Crimean War but I could easily see it being used in the American Civil War and the Prussian wars.

On a similar note, an invention like this could easily make the ACW become like WW1. This engine's development could also lead to the development of a early repeating rifles and machine guns.

=Dynamitard]Some of the scenarios you made do sound very cool in an HG Wells' War in the Air way. Imagine Roosevelt parachuting onto spain, and bombers and things everywhere. Now that's sort of like Crimson Skies.

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Those would make for an interesting picture.

"As well as an IC engine wouldn't you need aluminum producable in commercial quantities for flight? The Wright Bros engine was aluminum. The Hall-Heroult process wasn't developed until 1886"

Good call, Nap. It's something that I've had to think about. I big problem that the Wrights had was that they were really reaching to get enough horsepower out of a small engine, and basically ended up creating a technical marvel that we would think of today as a fairly basic lawnmore motor.


"Some of the scenarios you made do sound very cool in an HG Wells' War in the Air way."

That's the way some of the stories are slanting. It's a series of short stories set in this continuum, but the farther I go from the 1824, the more...outlandish the stories get.

And I do suppose that I'm operating on the assumption that problems with weight and whatnot would be solved simply because they had to. I'm also giving a lot more time for development than in OTL. In this timeline, assuming that the Spanish-American War is the first use of airborne troops, that it took this world around...(doing math)...twenty or thirty years longer to get there.
I'm also assuming that some people who were very big supporters of that technology in OTL would also support it in this one. Imagine Samuel Langley growing up in a world where flight was, at least, a serious pursuit.
In this timeline, for those who are wondering, I'm thinking the first flight would take place sometime in the late-1850s, then explode during the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War.

Thanks for the back and forth. I'm always game for some constructive criticism and back and forth of ideas. Any other ideas, folks?

"I once read a story about Red Cloud's Flying Circus in the ACW."
Nap, it was a great story entitled 'Custer's Last Jump.' The departure there is that the internal combustion engine was invented by Benjamin Franklin. It's a story that follows General George Armstrong Custer and his unit, the 101st Balloon Infantry.

IIRC in the early 1800's there was a lot of intreast in developing a Stearable Balloon [ie Blimp] This would allow them by the Crimea/ACW, then HTA would develop in the 1880's/1890's

Some 30~40 years of Airships pre HTA, may allow them to survive, in competition

Welcome aboard, MacCauley.

Your POD's an interesting one. Interestingly, I suggested a WI based on a similar premise, Pistonpunk, except the prototype in question was an even earlier one; French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, who in OTL went down in history as the inventor of photography, had patented an internal combustion engine in 1807, but didn't develop it commercially.

There is a Weapon I read about once, with a rotating Disk, then flings Ball bearing at very high speed. Used in WW1 with a Electric motor, It was bypassed by the superior Machine Gun. But a Gas motor could have made one possible by the 1840's for the Mexican war.

Thanks for the interest, guys. I will admit that the idea seems to spin out of control after the 20th century dawns. And I'm even slowing down the timeline quite a bit. But I am very interested in the idea of forward thinking individuals like Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman, who were very interested in the advances of technology in their day, being able to grab ahold of this plan.

DuQuense: I'd never even thought about the Mexican War...it would logically be the first major war the US would get into after the ICE's invention.

My other problem is the fact that I'm having trouble thinking of non-war related storylines. The passenger liner idea, as well as the Transcontintenal Highway. I was also kind of interested in what JEB Stuart, or even Custer, would have done in the American Civil War with access to an early automobile or trucks.

My other idea, though, was that after the Civil War, Reconstruction would basically be the New Deal about sixty years early, with paved roads and powerplants. Any thoughts on the feasibility of that?

New story idea...and tell me if this is stupid or not...1905...shortly after making work of the Russian forces in the Pacific and capturing Port Arthur, they draw the United States into a corner by demanding control of the Southern Resource Area, including the Philippines. The United States responds by posting the USS Abraham Lincoln, it's first aeroplane carrier, in the islands, starting the Pacific War.

What I'm looking at here is a conflict with...1920s-era technology. The Lincoln would be the equivalent of the USS Langley OTL.

MacCaulay said:

In this timeline, for those who are wondering, I'm thinking the first flight would take place sometime in the late-1850s, then explode during the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War.

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I like the idea...and fear for the planet.

hmm....I wonder if anyone would try marrying the engine with some Civil War-era rockets (the Hunt, I think, with the three semi-circles to keep it spinning on course)....that *might* be a way to get planes of a sort...maybe.

I wonder if the nation of origin (US?) would try to keep a monopoly on this sort of device for as long as possible. it would certainly give a tactical edge.
(but the more the edge gets used, the more opportunities there are for it to be seen & speculated upon...if not captured)

just some thoughts.

I had this picture of a Paddle Wheel Carrier, from WW2. [http://www.combinedfleet.com/furashita/sable_f.htm ]

I posed a challange for it to be headed to Cuba for the Spainish American War but just couldn't get it to work.

Viola 3 years later here is the answer. AH.com works in mysterious ways.

Everybody is forgetting one little thing: what would you use for fuel in these John Quincy Adams era internal combustion engines?

Until the 1850s, petroleum was almost literally a cottage industry: it seeped to the surface on its own and was skimmed off bodies of water (e.g., Oil Creek in northwestern PA). Refining was still very much a seat-of-the-pants operation conducted at sub-industrial levels and in any case was aimed at the production of kerosene for illumination, rather than motor fuels.

To have this timeline successful, you'd have to posit an earlier equivalent of Edwin Drake, along with earlier development of refining technology.

Coal could be used. Kerosene could be refined earlier (in OTL, it was first refined in 1846) and then petroleum could also be discovered earlier.

I agree with Michael. Oil and coal wouldn't have been exploited if there wasn't demand. It's simple market economics. If the demand is there, someone will do it. And even if they don't run on gasoline, whatever they settle on will be exploited.

And my idea about the control of flight would be that it would take place first in America, with subsequent flights by independent inventors taking place shortly after in Europe and Russia.

I'm also envisioning the first large-scale use of aircraft as being in the Franco-Prussian War, when Prussian bombers (still biplanes) soften up Paris and other French strongpoints.

This has big effects on the development of the industrial revoloution, and on colonialism.

Having trucks and (particularly) planes greatly increases the military disparity between European and non-European powers.

The real winners from this will probably be the British, as they are the best placed to take advantage of the new developments.

Good call on that, Alratan.

And now I shall commence...arguing with myself.

I said in an earlier post that the Franco-Prussian War would be the first large scale use of aircraft. In the stories that I already have written, the battle between heavier than air and lighter than air craft is fought, literally, in the skies over Boston, Washington, Richmond, and finally over Atlanta.

The storyline has the heavier-than-air disciples staying with the Union and building a primitive air arm to counter the airships of the Confederacy, finally resulting in the downing of every Confederate airship over Atlanta during Sherman's March to the Sea, which would also be the first use of blitzkrieg-style warfare.

Thoughts?

You're missing the point: an internal combustion engine, whether a two-cycle or four-cycle engine, requires a volatile or gaseous fuel.

I suppose such an engine used as a stationary power source (e.g., to drive a machine shop) could have run on town gas, which was manufactured from coal, using the water shift reaction. But in so doing, such an engine would have been tied down to a source of such gas; that is, a pipe from a central plant or a local generating source--and in either case, you're worse off thermodynamically than you would be simply burning the coal to generate steam and using that to drive a steam engine.

And compressing town gas won't get you anywhere: compressor technology didn't exist then, and as evinced by today's vehicles that run on compressed natural gas, one needs to achieve a significant pressure to get sufficient fuel on board to make a gas-fueled vehicle practical. Oh, one other thing: pressure vessel technology (and attendant relief valve technology) was also in its infancy. If you're not careful in designing a pressure vessel (no mean feat if the vessel is riveted, like the locomotive boilers of the day), it'll go bang and mess up your day big time.

But to be truly mobile, a volatile liquid fuel is required, like gasoline. Kerosene is not nearly as volatile as gasoline: gasoline is classified as a FLAMMABLE liquid by the NFPA because of its high vapor pressure at ambient temperature and its low ignition point; kerosene, on the other hand, is classified as a COMBUSTIBLE liquid by the same organization because it is not nearly as volatile and because of its higher ignition point. Vaporizing gasoline is easy; vaporizing kerosene is noticeably more difficult.

A possible alternative might be methanol, made from the destructive distillation of wood--but again, that demands that industrial-scale chemical technology be in place. The same could be said of turpentine, or a similar fluid, made from softwood. The science of chemistry simply wasn't that well developed in the 1820s, and wouldn't be until (very roughly) the 1850s. A lot of basic discoveries still had yet to be made then.

Short version: an internal combustion engine would likely have been viable as a stationary source in the 1820s, but not as a source of transportation.

Alratan said:

This has big effects on the development of the industrial revoloution, and on colonialism.

Having trucks and (particularly) planes greatly increases the military disparity between European and non-European powers.

The real winners from this will probably be the British, as they are the best placed to take advantage of the new developments.

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True and true.

Those British often seem 'best placed' for these pods, eh?