AHC: Steampunk Colonial Era

With a POD of 1700, get the world of 1900 AD in a realistic steampunk scenario. Things I'm looking for:

  • Entirely or majorly steam-based technology by 1900
  • Automatic weapons by the mid 1800s and clockwork/steam based "basic" robotics by the late 1800s
  • Airships and various steam-based vehicles by the late 1800s
  • Austria-Hungary or the Austrian Empire still coming into being and roughly similar borders
  • Slightly better German colonialism (At least a few more colonies)
  • Surviving Kingdom of France (butterfly the revolution)
  • Keep the Thirteen Colonies under British rule
  • Keep Louisiana French and make it more successful

Good luck!!
 
Steam did build the OTL colonial world (then oil). Clockwork robots are fiction.

I know steam was the predecessor to oil but I'm not sure I can make it more clear what I'm asking for in the OP...

How can one get the closest thing to Steampunk in a still realistic setting? I'm not bothered if it's a little odd as long as it is possible.
 
I know steam was the predecessor to oil but I'm not sure I can make it more clear what I'm asking for in the OP...

Steam is not the predecessor to oil. External Combustion engines, typically utilizing steam, are the predecessors to Internal Combustion engines, typically utilizing vaporized fuel and air. In either case, a variety of fuels can be used, with external combustion being a bit more flexible (you can't really vaporize wood, for example).

The problem with your scenario is you're looking for a bunch of artistic flourishes that are just that: artistic.
 
Steam is not the predecessor to oil. External Combustion engines, typically utilizing steam, are the predecessors to Internal Combustion engines, typically utilizing vaporized fuel and air. In either case, a variety of fuels can be used, with external combustion being a bit more flexible (you can't really vaporize wood, for example).

The problem with your scenario is you're looking for a bunch of artistic flourishes that are just that: artistic.

So what about:


Automatic weapons by the mid 1800s and clockwork/steam based "basic" robotics by the late 1800s
Airships and various steam-based vehicles by the late 1800s
Austria-Hungary or the Austrian Empire still coming into being and roughly similar borders
Slightly better German colonialism (At least a few more colonies)
Surviving Kingdom of France (butterfly the revolution)
Keep the Thirteen Colonies under British rule
Keep Louisiana French and make it more successful
 

mowque

Banned
So what about:


Automatic weapons by the mid 1800s and clockwork/steam based "basic" robotics by the late 1800s

The technology just isn't there. You can get some Gatling gun type things without too much work but that has nothing to do with steam. Robots have to wait sadly.


Airships and various steam-based vehicles by the late 1800s

Steam really isn't the best tools for those jobs. Except for trains of course, which can hardly be enhanced in any TL compared to ours. We were/are train crazy!

Austria-Hungary or the Austrian Empire still coming into being and roughly similar borders

Ok, not hard.

Slightly better German colonialism (At least a few more colonies)

Not hard to imagine.


Surviving Kingdom of France (butterfly the revolution)

This one is tough because it comes before Germany and stuff. If I mess with France it'll alter Germany, probably beyond your recognition.

Keep the Thirteen Colonies under British rule


Keep Louisiana French and make it more successful

You are going even farther back which alters more and more things. If you don't mind that, well then yeah. A French victory in the Seven years War could do the last two for you. But'll change everything else.
 
The last 5 have nothing really to do with steampunk per se, and there's plenty of different threads floating around that discusses each in kind.

As for automatic weapons, I find it unlikely, but I'm no weapons expert.

Robotics, if you mean just assembly-line, well, they'll have to be hydraulic to be any use beyond the pre-existing factory machinery (otherwise, you're asking industrialists to ignore the advantages of hydraulic machinery because clockworks looks fascinating). You are, however, lucky regarding programming them, as punchcards could be used to program simpler robots without too much trouble (apparently, this did happen historically). However, you run into an unintended consequence: if these industrial robots are any good, they'll advanced manufacturing to such a point that the steampunk era will end as technology passes it by.

If you meant anything other than industrial robots, then, just a flat out no.

Airships, well, its alternate history, so airships are always loved. As for steam vehicles, you've got locomotives, of course. If you're talking cars, then, again, you're in a small amount of luck: there were steam powered cars. However, by the time steam technology was advanced enough to power a car, internal combustion technology was advanced enough to power a car better.
 
With a POD of 1700, get the world of 1900 AD in a realistic steampunk scenario. Things I'm looking for:

  • Entirely or majorly steam-based technology by 1900
  • Automatic weapons by the mid 1800s and clockwork/steam based "basic" robotics by the late 1800s
  • Airships and various steam-based vehicles by the late 1800s
  • Austria-Hungary or the Austrian Empire still coming into being and roughly similar borders
  • Slightly better German colonialism (At least a few more colonies)
  • Surviving Kingdom of France (butterfly the revolution)
  • Keep the Thirteen Colonies under British rule
  • Keep Louisiana French and make it more successful
Good luck!!

I don't know enough to do the technology ones, but the last three could possibly be done with one butterfly. One way would be to keep Louisiana in French hands after the Seven Years' War: with a continued French presence on the continent the American colonists would be less bolshie about paying their taxes, meaning no US War of Independence. This in turn means that the French government doesn't bankrupt itself supporting the rebels, so no need to call the Assembly and hence no French Revolution.
 
I think that steam-powered dirigibles would be pretty impractical, as would steam-powered airplanes or anything crazy like that; but steam-powered buses were almost a thing IOTL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_bus But I do think that steam cars could come around a bit earlier than they did OTL without being unreasonable. I believe the first motorcycle was steam-powered.

However buses and cars would never be able to replace trains for mass industrial use. But maybe in the colonies and in places with less infrastructure, large steam-powered offroad buses could be used by the military.

Bouncing off of the earlier post about hydraulic industrial systems, what if air rifles of increasing quality and complexity were part of this setting? Could you make an automatic air rifle? I really have no idea. But it seems like if people were investing more heavily in hydraulic technology in general, they would at least look into the possibility of building a better air rifle.

There is also the possibility of hydraulically-powered vehicles, but that is getting really far outside steampunk.

The first visual telegraph systems were designed by the French during the Napoleonic Wars, as were obviously a lot of other revolutionary new technologies of various types. Perhaps having the French be less overpoweringly successful in the short-term would lead to a longer, colder series of Napoleonic Wars with the revolutionaries more successful in the long-term and actually outliving Napoleon himself. France makes many powerful alliances in this period to resist the English-Russian-Prussian alliance that is resisting them; and which, after centralizing Germany into a Prussian-led empire, is eventually successful against the revolutionaries, eventually reinstalling an unstable French monarchy which is, in effect, dominated by the Germans.
 
As for automatic weapons, I find it unlikely, but I'm no weapons expert.

Steam-powered automatic weapons are definetly possible, although there are probably logistical issues, not to mention the fact once you see the smoke artillery is going to start shelling them and they're not very mobile.

Here. Watch.
 
Steam-powered automatic weapons are definetly possible, although there are probably logistical issues, not to mention the fact once you see the smoke artillery is going to start shelling them and they're not very mobile.
>
>
>
There are many smoke sources on a battlefield and steam powered weapons can be made as mobile as anything else in their weight class. The early catapiller tractors were steam powered, for example.
 

katchen

Banned
We can come pretty close to steampunk in the 19th Century if we accelerate the development of the steamboat by Denis Papin managing to smuggle his steam engine powered boat (which was destroyed by boatmen fearing for their jobs ITTL) to England and work more intensely on it with Thomas Newcomen, coming up with a working steamboat by 1736 and commercial service on a British river shortly thereafter. How different would the settlement of North America and the late 18th Century wars and revolutions be if the British had steamboats by the late 18th Century and were trying hard to develop steel mills that were better than crucibles for steel manufacture. It;'s a T:L that nobody to my mind that nobody has develop yet.
 
>
>
>
There are many smoke sources on a battlefield and steam powered weapons can be made as mobile as anything else in their weight class. The early catapiller tractors were steam powered, for example.

The problem is that the weight of a steam engine capable of moving anything adds to the weight involved (not a big deal for tractors, but darn relevant on the battlefield), so their weight class is heavier - significantly - than if they weren't steam powered.
 
The problem with the automatic weapons is that the metallurgy to create them did not exist until at least the 1870s. There is a reason that the gatling gun had multiple barrels and the maxim gun was watercooled. They did not have good enough metallurgy for aircooled barrels until after ww1.
 
Top