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The properties of compressed air have been well established for something approaching two centuries. The machinery certainly existed in the earlier half of the 19th century to produce compressed air in bulk, as did pressure vessel technology and piping technology. Thus: could compressed air have become a public utility for such applications as household motors beginning (let's say) about the time of the US Civil War? And would we still have utility compressed air today, or would it have been supplanted decades ago by electricity (with a few older homes, mostly in eastern seaboard US cities, still having the now-disconnected compressed air piping and connection points still in place)?
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