Challenge: Texas biggest US state by 2010

I like this thread, especially the parts with those Johnson men. :D How does LBJ become Governor, Buzz? His main goal in life was to become President, so I don't see how or why he would want to become a Governor, since they don't become President from FDR until Carter. Lyndon doesn't have the patience to wait that long. :p (Assuming he doesn't die first, of course. :( )
 
I know it's before 1900, but have Sam Houston accept Lincoln's offer for 50,000 Union Troops to keep Texas in the Union. Texas becomes a place for escaped slaves and Union troops during war. The Union helps build up industry and tail lines to take the fight to Louisiana.

After the war, all the blacks that went North go to Texas. They could discover oil earlier and allow more Mexicans to come and work in the oil fields.

During the Dust Bowl, everyone goes to Texas not California. Have Hollywood and the Film industry come to Texas not California.

Avoid race problems, maybe have Lyndon Johnson be governor. More people move to Texas to avoid problems and bring their businesses with them.

Disney builds a theme park in Texas. Later the Internet tech boom is in Texas.

What do y'all think?

Sounds great. I never thought of that. The most implausible part is the one regarding the Civil War. In my mind I must have thought that Spindletop was a fixed point in time :p.
 
I like this thread, especially the parts with those Johnson men. :D How does LBJ become Governor, Buzz? His main goal in life was to become President, so I don't see how or why he would want to become a Governor, since they don't become President from FDR until Carter. Lyndon doesn't have the patience to wait that long. :p (Assuming he doesn't die first, of course. :( )

If Lowden wins in 1920 and serves the normal 2 terms in TTL, you'd have 3 of the last 4 presidents (Wilson, Lowden, FDR) as governors, so he'd notice a trend if he ran early enough, say in 1940.. And, while he'd be pretty young, if his dad has already been governor he might seem to have a good track toward it. Even one termw ould help a lot in this scenario to get him to the Senate. (Maybe it's the one off year where there isn't a Senate election in Texas he runs for Governor.)
 
Would splitting California into California and Jefferson leave California with less people than Texas?

No, The parts of California in even the largest proposed Jefferson are less than 2 million people. Jefferson does *not* include the SFO or Sacramento areas.
 
Getting back to air conditioning: an AC unit is fundamentally a refrigerator for a living space. In (let's say) 1915, nearly all mechanical refrigeration was ammonia-based and was therefore industrial in nature (ice plants; ice cream manufacture). A few other gases such as sulfur dioxide would come into play in time (SO₂ was the refrigerant in the early "monitor" refrigerators), but until the advent of the various artificial, fluorinated organic refrigerants, one had to deal with a gas that is outright poisonous (ammonia), very noxious and hazardous (sulfur dioxide) or extremely flammable (propane). None of those are anything the average homeowner would really want around too much.

Then there's the concept of ductwork: remember that most heating systems in that day were low pressure steam as opposed to hot air--and any hot air systems were gravity-based (that is, natural convection) as opposed to forced, which is necessary for efficient AC.

All in all, the technology wasn't really there until the 1930s or so. Recall, if you will, that movie theaters advertised their air conditioning in those days as a come-on for summer attendance. And the first automobile to be air-conditioned was a one-off, somewhat jerry-rigged sedan modified by a Houston (where else?) doctor, I believe, in 1930. That unit needed its own small lawnmower-sized gasoline engine, and effectively eliminated his trunk space. Automotive AC wouldn't become more or less commonplace until the late 1940s--and even then was confined largely to Packards and Cadillacs sold in the Gulf Coast states and the southwest.
 
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