Are there any mid to late 19th century inventions that could have been invented before .

mad orc

Banned
Are there any mid to late 19th century inventions that could have been invented before .Just 10 to 20(Maximum 50) years earlier .So no Roman era Trains or Alexander using telegraphs to manage his empire .

Please underline the name of the invention in your replies .

Thanks for helping ,
in advance .
 
There are a few threads like this, skimming them quickly Ive noticed a few stand out things:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...iscovery-happened-oddly-late-or-early.160434/
Numerical Control tools. "Tools that can be controlled automatically, making making many things (like gun barrels) much easier. Apparently, a Frenchman came up with the idea in the early 1800s or possibly the late 1700s, but died before he could do anything with it, then it had to wait on the post-war era." (Workable Goblin)

Personal electronic text communication, like email or texting, or fax machines. "The pantelegraph was invented in the 1860s and used by Napoleon III!" (wilcoxchar)

Chain drive bicycle, really needs inflatable tires for most purposes, but is reasonably useful in some situations (eschaton)

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/late-or-early-inventions.87907/
"TNT, Minie ball or Nessler ball for muskets, the bicycle, asphalt roads, wind powered waterpump and the water tower, alcohol as disinfectant, the importance of boiling water, the Sterling engine, the kerosene lamp." (tallwingedgoat)

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...smokeless-powder-and-the-consequences.143806/
Smokeless powder my the 1840s, assuming it is possible to refine nitric acid that much

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-smokeless-powder-was-invented-earlier.97653/
Suggests 1846ish as a possible date

My personal favourite is containerized shipping. Mostly dating to the 1950s, the tech really depended on hydraulic dock cranes. According to wiki: "The success of his hydraulic crane led Armstrong to establish the Elswick works at Newcastle, to produce his hydraulic machinery for cranes and bridges in 1847."
 
My personal favourite is containerized shipping. Mostly dating to the 1950s, the tech really depended on hydraulic dock cranes. According to wiki: "The success of his hydraulic crane led Armstrong to establish the Elswick works at Newcastle, to produce his hydraulic machinery for cranes and bridges in 1847."
The issue here is that the Penn Central Railroad patented containerized shipping in the 1930's, but the Interstate Commerce Commission outlawed it from use across state lines because it violated trade restriction laws. It gave a single railroad a competitive advantage, because until the patent ran out, other railroads would have to buy the containers from Penn Central. That's why it took so long for the method to catch on. As for maritime shipping, Pennsylvania does not have a seacoast, Lake Erie being its water access.
 

mad orc

Banned
Thanks for the help and keep helping .
The whole reason for this thread is that i plan to make an extremely believable alt history of science where the divergence is set in the age of imperialism .
 

Infinity

Banned
There are three major developments in physics relevant to the 19th century:
1. Applications of classical mechanics
2. Electricity
3. Radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_radio states Hertz considered the transmission of electromagnetic waves to be of little practical value in 1887-1890. About half a century earlier, Michael Faraday dismissed the idea of communicating without wires. As would be expected, the writings of Michael Faraday are available in the public domain. In some of his earlier writings on electricity and magnetism, there are citations going back as far back as the 18th century. The wikipedia article seems to downplay contributions from the French. I don't recall Micheal Faraday citing Hans Christian Ørsted or any other German writer for that matter. The earliest citations in Farday's essays were French, if I recall correctly. More to the point, it's clear in Faraday's work that idea of communicating without wires at least had occurred to people in the early 19th century. Actually making use of "electromagnetic induction" is another matter. Note Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction.

This is the same period in which railroads were taking off, which arguably were the most important application of classical mechanics. Physical concepts like energy, work and velocity define the earliest technological breakthroughs in physics. Considering the steam engine was invented, and improved significantly in the late 18th century, it would have been possible for the popularization of railroads to have occurred in the first decade of the 19th century instead of the 1820s. If you want to go back even earlier, iron works were key to the development of the steam engine, as they were the main purpose of coal prior to the steam engine. Suppose someone in England made a steam engine to help extract coal two centuries earlier. This could have led to other sciences such as electricity and radio being developed earlier. In which case, computers could have become viable by the 19th century.

If there's a way to increase demand for iron or increase innovations related with iron, this would likely speed up the rate of technological progress. Cast iron is one early innovation that comes to mind. If there was a greater investment in cast iron, the 16th or 17th centuries could look like the otl 19th century. Exploration of iron and coal reserves is relevant as well. Isn't it silly how much Europeans valued gold and silver? Iron has always been a far more important metal.
 
Would steam cars count, even though they were first invented in the 1700s? The technology was there to have them be much more available and widely used than the late 19th century, just a variety of reasons like political interference from railroads and carriage manufacturers prevented them being in wide use until the end of the 19th century. Given the poor state of roads outside cities, they would be limited to urban usage only, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem for the time. I could see some sort of "horseless carriage" becoming common, where a driver sits in the actual vehicle (which would be hot and uncomfortable) and pulls a carriage where other passengers sit. That might be popular as a sort of bus or smaller ones might be popular as vehicles for the wealthy.

Now what would be interesting is if you could mate this earlier steam engine to earlier invention of the continuous track. Maybe you could then get more/better steam tractors, be able to use them for intercity travel across bad roads, or use them for military logistics. Probably not an early tank (or if so, maybe a decade or two earlier than the OTL tank), since it would be difficult to armour the vehicles to any reasonable level and still make them useful.
 
There's an English inventor whose name I forget who nearly invented flight. Unfortunately it was pre combustion engine and his gunpowder version didn't work right. I think his frames came in handy for bicycle technology though.
 
Percy Pilcher could have done the first heavier than air flight before the Wright Brothers had he not died when he did.

A plane made to his design was built in 2003 (I remember watching the Horizon programme it was featured on) and worked. It flew for nearly thirty seconds longer than the Wright Flier did.
 

Jerry Kraus

Banned
Let's look at it this way. The industrial revolution was, presumably, the basis, directly and indirectly, for nineteenth century inventions such as the light bulb, the phonograph and the motion picture. This provided the wealth and technological basis for them. And, the industrial revolution was largely the product of steam power, and the steam engine. Now, the steam engine was actually invented in the 2nd century A.D., during the height of the Roman Empire, by Hero of Alexandria. So, in a way, we could see the question as, "Why weren't nineteenth century inventions all invented during the Roman Empire, since the Steam Engine was?"

Now, while the steam engine was invented in the 2nd century A.D., it was never applied to any practical purpose. Why? Basically, effective construction of full-size, effective steam engines requires precision machining, which really requires cast iron and steel. And, these weren't developed until after the Middle Ages, because they require Coke, which is a byproduct of the use of Coal in blast furnaces. Coal only became widely employed, first in England, with the massive depletion of forests for cooking, and heating purposes. That's why England led the way in the Industrial Revolution, she was the first to need, and widely employ coal for cooking and heating, because she ran out of wood from the forests.

Now, in principle, there's really no reason at all that the Romans couldn't have used coal -- it had been known as the "stone that burns" since the dawn of history -- instead of wood, and that they couldn't have develop blast furnaces, discovered the Coke by products and used them to forge cast iron and steel, developed precision machining, and used that to develop steam power, and had a Roman Imperial Industrial Revolution. But, bear in mind, the Romans didn't even invent or employ simpler Medieval inventions like the Horse Collar, the Wind Mill or the Water Mill. Why? They didn't want them! The Romans liked slave labor, and employed it with great effect -- they made the Sahara desert bloom and fertile as it hadn't been for thousands of years, and has never been since, simply by having huge numbers of slaves irrigate it. So, from a Roman point of view, new inventions were merely toys for the rich, they had no real interest in practical change and development, they like things the way they were.

In other words, the reason the great nineteenth century inventions weren't invented earlier, is simply that the rich and powerful people didn't want them earlier, they preferred power and personal wealth to social progress! Sound familiar at all?
 
That's why it took so long for the method to catch on. As for maritime shipping, Pennsylvania does not have a seacoast, Lake Erie being its water access.


Well that's just plain wrong. The Delaware river flows past Philadelphia, which opens into the Delaware bay which connects to the Atlantic. The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was once a major builder and home for the US Navy and was a location for part of the mothball fleet. Currently still has a Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility while most of the former naval base is now an industrial park and private shipyard.
 

Infinity

Banned
There could be an alternate theory of evolution timeline. Buffon, Lamarck, and Mendel were largely overlooked. Had they reached the acclaim of Darwin, there could have been faster progress in biology.

Another alternative are English or German translations of Agostino Bassi's theory that microbes cause disease. Which could lead to a wider circulation of germ theory pre-Pasteur. Considering "animalcules" had already been discovered a couple centuries earlier thanks to Dutch microscopes, germ theory could have occurred much earlier than otl.
 
The mechanized harvester. The romans had several but it was never really practical due to nit puttong wores coming from the blade to hold the grain in place while cut. That was the real genius of obed hussey and cyrus mccormick
 

Coal isn't strictly necessary; for the majority of the industrial revolution charcoal is roughly equivalent and could be a substitute. Later on they got better at using coal and it surpassed charcoal in a significant way.

I got a book on ancient engineering that does the number cruching, though I'd have to dig it out of storage
 

Lusitania

Donor
There needs to be clarification of what you mean by 19th century. That is suppose to be 1800-1899. Most of what people have been suggesting are stuff that came into existence after 1900.

So is your question what inventions from 1850-1899 could of been developed earlier in the 19th century or even in 18th century?
 
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