What revolutionary technologies did OTL miss?

What real-world tech did our collective human civilization or species miss out on until too late, preventing us from experiencing an era based in it?

An example could be the potentially highly efficient heat engine, the Stirling engine, which shows up in its namesake S.M. Stirling’s The Peshawar Lancers as an alternative to the internal combustion engine.


What if had arrived earlier and beaten the steam engine?

I suppose the Difference Engine is the canonical genre example of a technology that we have now but we didn’t arrive at earlier at the appropriate time for which to spark a revolution.

Actually Heron’s steam engine is a better example, but it’s a little exotic and interesting compared to alternative tech that never made it big.
 
Lithography. Don’t really need movable type to make economic books or woodcut and etchings for illustrations. Just need a flat rock and grease.

Steel bronze, using compression to improve the hardness of bronze in rifled cannons. Could’ve been used before steel. It was an alternative to steel guns as late as WWI.

Open hearth furnace. It’s an easier steel making method to industrialize compared to the Bessemer process. An African version of this was among the first known ways to make steel ever invented.

Cotton gin. A basic version had been in use for many centuries in India before Eli Whitney’s invention.

Arkwright’s water frame. Centuries earlier the Chinese had a water powered device that spun hemp instead of cotton. It is claimed the ancient Egyptians also had something similar.

Distilling kerosene from petroleum was invented in Medieval Persia. It was not industrialized for lamp use until much later. Before that they used whale oil. The world could’ve had street lamps and smoke free home lighting for a thousand years.
 
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What if had arrived earlier and beaten the steam engine?

Wouldn't matter. Stirling engines are inefficient compared to both steam and internal combustion engines at lower temperatures, and at higher temperatures the materials available at the time caused the engines to break down constantly. An engine that regularly works is always going to beat one that's theoretically better, but that breaks four times a year and had to have major components replaced. You might theoretically have a larger cooling system, but that just increases the size of the engine even more and makes widespread use even less practical.

IC is 100% superior in every way at the time.
 
I just wanted an example of a technology that would have taken civilization all development along an alternative path besides cliche Babbage machines. Or OOPArts like the Baghdad batteries.
 
Concentrated Solar Heat technologies were developed in the 19th century. As coal was cheap and abundant in Europe, there was little interest on developing it further.

However, those devices could have dramatically changed the way energy is generated. Just the capability of making heat without fuels would have changed the way in which colonization occurs.

My current TL is all about a solar revolution in the 19th century.
 
Railways. Not steam-powered railways mind you- just the technology/ social organization to use rails (presumably stone plateways rather then iron rails) to make animal-drawn carts significantly more efficient. Of course, this may have been done occasionally on a very limited scale in antiquity- the Diolkos is the classic example- but there was clearly an opportunity to deploy considerably more plateways to make land transport significantly more efficient. (Not to mention the benefits in terms of smoothing out the ride for any passengers on such systems- it's not a coincidence that most early public transit systems used horse-drawn trams.)
 
Hydraulics. The hydraulic press is something that could've been invented in as early as Hellenistic times assuming someone had access to good quality seals and metals. Ctesibius in Ptolemaic Alexandria did a lot of investigation into fluid mechanics (among other things). Now I think this is a little early for that tech, but I think an invention in the Medieval Islamic world or certainly Renaissance Europe is very plausible. I think the main problem is that the cost of the materials makes it inefficient compared to the traditional mechanical presses that were in use at the time.

It's probably really pushing it, but I wonder if you could start having serious explorations into tidal power (outside of traditional tide mills) in the late 19th century (like the 1890s). Maybe as a Canadian government scheme for development in the Maritimes? This would get you a large tidal project on the Bay of Fundy like the Passamaquoddy Project by the 1920s (when it was first proposed) which would lead to further refinement of the concept. Tidal power engineers claim the main problem today is that the technology has to compete with cheaper renewables, which would not be a problem if the technology was fairly mature by the 1950s.
Concentrated Solar Heat technologies were developed in the 19th century. As coal was cheap and abundant in Europe, there was little interest on developing it further.

However, those devices could have dramatically changed the way energy is generated. Just the capability of making heat without fuels would have changed the way in which colonization occurs.

My current TL is all about a solar revolution in the 19th century.
Considering it was first deployed in British Egypt, it does seem like a TL with a continued "Islamic golden age" or otherwise the Islamic world modernising and developing alongside Europe in the 15th-19th centuries could have an invention like that earlier and larger deployment of it.
 
I dunno if it counts as a technology, but buildings large enough can have their own atmosphere
It's even rumoured that the megastructure Hitler wanted to build in his capital would have rained inside because of how many people would be breathing there

I'm not sure if that could have had a impact before, considering how difficult it is to build something that large, but I cant help but imagine the potential of something like a pyramid producing an artificial river/lake where there's no fresh water
 
I dunno if it counts as a technology, but buildings large enough can have their own atmosphere
It's even rumoured that the megastructure Hitler wanted to build in his capital would have rained inside because of how many people would be breathing there

I'm not sure if that could have had a impact before, considering how difficult it is to build something that large, but I cant help but imagine the potential of something like a pyramid producing an artificial river/lake where there's no fresh water
That's heavily dependent on building technologies though. I suppose if there was never a second World War and some version of the Volkshall was built somewhere where it wouldn't sink into the ground that unintended side effect would become suddenly obvious. This would destroy the prospects of such buildings being widespread in Europe but the construction of buildings capable of condensing fresh water out of the air when they're full if people could be an interesting architectural investment in areas with a tendency to droughts 🤔 An early sustained investment into the process could see the evolution of honest to God arcologies in the 20th century!
 
Another fun thing I just remembered is that the mythbusters tested the story of Archimedes using mirrors to burn roman ships by request of Obama
The conclusion was that while the light reflected by mirrors themselves didnt generate enough heat to set a ship on fire, it was hot enough to hurt a person and the light was so intense that it was hard to see, possible even blinding a person looking directly at it, which would be more than enough to cause the ship's own tripulation to accidentaly burn their own vessel
Now imagine if that was massively adopted, be the civilisations that predated Archimedes(most likely the greek themselves) or the romans after seeing it in action thinking the greeks had a ship-burning super weapon
You could have weaponized mirrors on ports, shores and warships at worse hurting the enemies's sight & skin and at best causing them to accidentaly sink themselves, go blind and be left with severe burns

Edit: One thing I like to imagine is this being discovered by the time of the corinthian war with Thrasybulus pulling a Alexander the Great and going on his merry way with a invincible shining fleet.
 
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I'm not sure if that could have had a impact before, considering how difficult it is to build something that large, but I cant help but imagine the potential of something like a pyramid producing an artificial river/lake where there's no fresh water
You'd have to reinforce the ceiling of the pyramid to have a pyramid with that much internal volume full of air. I'm not sure if ancient structural materials are capable of producing a building with that much volume, although it may be for lack of anyone trying.
Another fun thing I just remembered is that the mythbusters tested the story of Archimedes using mirrors to burn roman ships by request of Obama
The conclusion was that while the light reflected by mirrors themselves didnt generate enough heat to set a ship on fire, it was hot enough to hurt a person and the light was so intense that it was hard to see, possible even blinding a person looking directly at it, which would be more than enough to cause the ship's own tripulation to accidentaly burn their own vessel
Now imagine if that was massively adopted, be the civilisations that predated Archimedes(most likely the greek themselves) or the romans after seeing it in action thinking the greeks had a ship-burning super weapon
You could have weaponized mirrors on ports, shores and warships at worse hurting the enemies's sight & skin and at best causing them to accidentaly sink themselves, go blind and be left with severe burns
The biggest problem would be the cost of mirrors. Why waste so much money on mirrors to go for the "non-lethal" approach when you could hire some mercenaries or build better coastal defenses instead?

That said, the Archimedes mirror does have utility in being a very early form of concentrated solar polar that could be used for desalinating seawater. It's still probably too expensive to deploy on a large scale other than for rich noblemen in Alexandria or wherever being able to boast how their gardens are watered by the sea.
 
That said, the Archimedes mirror does have utility in being a very early form of concentrated solar polar that could be used for desalinating seawater.
You're telling me that Caligula could win against Poseidon this time around? :eek:
Imagine mirrors replacing U-boats on the Sealion threads! The horror!
"Why cross the english channel when we can evaporate the english channel?"
-Napoleon Shining-Apart
 
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Another suggestion - these big bois:


They work less like a freezer and more like a fridge/air-conditioner tho
It's a persian tech that could easily have been more widespread
 
I wonder if the lack of investigation (historically) into technologies that work well in deserts such as solar greenhouses or fog collection is a product of the fact that modern technology and science emerged in European civilisation which has no need for it, hence why if modern technology and science emerged in the Middle East we'd have more research. Solar stills and fog nets are not particularly complex and improved versions of them could've been made centuries earlier alongside innovations like concentrated solar power.

The air well is a related water-collection technology which seems like could've been important in cultures the world over. The smaller low-mass form doesn't look particularly complex but a field of them could harvest a decent amount of condensation and dew, while the larger high-mass form looks like it could've been a fixture in architecture despite the rather low yield of water. Even if it's only an extra few liters of water a day or so, a larger air well could provide the drinking water for a household or perhaps be built into a barn (obviously keeping the moist area separate from the hay) to provide water for animals. Culturally, the idea the king/nobles are drawing their water directly from the air around them instead of drinking from the same rivers and springs the commoners do is a powerful motif. It's very strange the modern idea wasn't devised until the early 20th century, or that pre-modern reports of it are very sporadic indicating it was likely never widely used.
 
You could have weaponized mirrors on ports, shores and warships at worse hurting the enemies's sight & skin and at best causing them to accidentaly sink themselves, go blind and be left with severe burns
Attackers would use cloudy days evening or night attacks.
 
Actually Heron’s steam engine is a better example
Just remembered a fun one
If I'm not mistaken it was he who tried to create a vacuum to prove that vacuums can indeed exist contrary to the "nature abhror void" belief
Had he succeeded in his experiment, been able to reproduce it and perhaps experimented a bit more with it - let's say he puts food inside the vacuum and accidentaly finds out it doesnt rot - it could be revolutionary
In fact his engine might actually been more used if it served as a way to create/sustain that, like some kind of ancient vacuum cleaner

Tldr: house cleaning item> steam power & gunpowder
 
So he’d be able to vacuum seal food? And probably other vacuum-derived enhancements as well?

Someone with a scientific/engineering background needs develop a full blown Heron timeline.
 
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