Alternate tech development without the USA

If the USA doesn't exist and is a Dominion of some super sized BritishWank Empire what happens to some the greatest inventors and scientist of all time who happend to be Americans? How would this affect technological development? My example is this...Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish via Canada. So I would presume he would still exist and invent the telephone
in my super British Empire world. This might give the telecommunications industry to the UK since there would be no AT&T, Bell Labs or Western Electric.
Now then...what about Thomas Edison or Westinghouse or the Wright Brothers would they be butterflied away because the USA doesn't exist? Are there other loyal subjects of the crown that could replace these men in an alternate BritishWank Empire world? How does this affect the world?
Is more industrial capacity and development locked into Great Britain? And does this increase in tech development keep the Empire the only super-power in the world?
Please discuss!!!
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Well, there were more inventors than just the wright brothers working on the Airplane. The Royal Aeronautical Society was founded in 1866, and with more people to be in that society from the Americas we might see airplanes developed faster. I don't know the names of any OTL people who could rival the inventors, bu I'm sure anyone making a TL can invent someone who could fit.
 
A much larger issue than individual inventzors is the role of the USA as a rapidly growing economy with cheap raw materials, scarce labour and perpetual building projects ready to accomodate the latest technologies. If you invented someting in 1870s Europe, you could find financing and start a company and had a decent chance of making money from it in time. The same invention in 1870s America could become huge in no time at all, integrated into the fabric of the cities that were being built or rebuilt. That means your main question is: does British North America give you a similar setting? If so, it is likely to fill a similar niche. If not, things are likely to go differently. Look at the path that inventions took OTL: the German telephone, the Brazilian-French aeroplane, the Rhine steam barge, all earlier than Fulton, Bell and Wright, respectively, all not (or at least not much) inferior technologically to their first product, all commercially insignificant.
 
You could have a Fulton/Bell/Wright analog working in Great Britain with the idea that the colonies, especially the future Dominions (British North America) would make perfect captive markets for telephones, phonographs and electric lights.
This might have two affects. Firstly the lure of Dominion markets might force GB to tie the Empire to itself much more strongly. Maybe free trade would go out the window and be replaced by an earlier "imperial preference" economy. The Britsh indistrialists would not want the Dominion markets captive to their exports. Secongly this might have a cultural effect. If all these wonderful new gadgets are seen as coming from an Anglo-Saxon culture maybe a more pronounced sense a superiority is born. A feeling that only the best and most high tech stuff comes from GB and is only shared with Britannia's children.
 
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