There're a few theories out there that ancient societies had some knowledge of electricity. So, what if it got developed further? What kind of technology would we have if electricity predated combustion engines by a large margin?
Earlier electricity
- Thread starter DominusNovus
- Start date
There were definitely ancients with simple batteries, the sort which can be made with a couple pieces of different metals and a couple of different solutions. The problem is that these don't generate enough current to be useful. To actually arrive at a usable source of electricity requires either a very considerable knowledge of chemistry, to create viable chemical batteries, or enough knowledge of magnetism to make a mill-powered generator. Either probably requires the scientific method, or a whole lot of experimentation.
AC/DC
Okay, IIRC, once you get beyond 'Lodestone' strength magnets, you need self-exciting dynamos & motors... Just needs more copper and a shrug for efficiency.
Until a 'Tesla' thinks of AC+transformers, probably limited to local generation with water-wheels, modest mill-stream stuff.
Still, probably get lead/acid batteries, 'Morse' telegraphy, DC Arc lighting.
Dunno if make / break arc generation leads to crude wireless transmission... Could happen if you have loops of roughly twisted wire lying around
But, having DC about could give electro-chemical extraction of elements etc a lot sooner. Gives a new meaning to Alchemy...
Also, 'Hypochlorite', from mixed-electrolysis of brine, is a cheap & cheerful disinfectant...
Okay, IIRC, once you get beyond 'Lodestone' strength magnets, you need self-exciting dynamos & motors... Just needs more copper and a shrug for efficiency.
Until a 'Tesla' thinks of AC+transformers, probably limited to local generation with water-wheels, modest mill-stream stuff.
Still, probably get lead/acid batteries, 'Morse' telegraphy, DC Arc lighting.
Dunno if make / break arc generation leads to crude wireless transmission... Could happen if you have loops of roughly twisted wire lying around
But, having DC about could give electro-chemical extraction of elements etc a lot sooner. Gives a new meaning to Alchemy...
Also, 'Hypochlorite', from mixed-electrolysis of brine, is a cheap & cheerful disinfectant...
Distilled grain alcohol is an even cheaper disinfectant, one which has a large variety of other uses. It's also much easier to develop distillation than to figure out electrochemistry; at least half of the things you suggested require a working model of electrical theory, not simply experimentation.
Classical Greece and Rome OTL knew about electric shock well enough - when fishermen handled or trod on electric ray fish.
NapoleonXIV
Banned
I'm no metallurgist so I don't see how electromagnetic engines necessarily lead to high strength alloys. Especially in commercial quantities. That seems to require, first of all, the Bessemer processs or some other way to make large amounts of steel. And that predates large scale electricity by about 40 years.
Then again, I've never been able to figure why the electrical revolution had to wait for Tesla in the first place. Faraday developed the dynamo and the electric motor in the 1840's but it remained a laboratory curiousity, why didn't it take off then?
Then again, I've never been able to figure why the electrical revolution had to wait for Tesla in the first place. Faraday developed the dynamo and the electric motor in the 1840's but it remained a laboratory curiousity, why didn't it take off then?
A lot of the applications of electricity, I suppose, must be surprisingly unintuitive to someone in the 1840's scientific mindset (whatever that might be). Radio, for example.
Until Tesla invented the AC Generator it was unecconomical to send a constant high voltage (110v/240v) over a long distance. It's all due to heat loss.
Why didn't Faraday figure AC out, probably because it was unnatural, in nature all electrical charges are DC. eg: lightning, static electricity, electric eels.
So while you could make a DC motor that would do the work of a steam engine of similar size or weight you would still need to have that steam engine relatively close by attached to the generator. (Three pieces of equipment versus one) This was why steam ships were the first major users of electric lights the engine had to be running and it was a simple matter to connect up a dynamo and run cables around the confines of a vessel.
Why didn't Faraday figure AC out, probably because it was unnatural, in nature all electrical charges are DC. eg: lightning, static electricity, electric eels.
So while you could make a DC motor that would do the work of a steam engine of similar size or weight you would still need to have that steam engine relatively close by attached to the generator. (Three pieces of equipment versus one) This was why steam ships were the first major users of electric lights the engine had to be running and it was a simple matter to connect up a dynamo and run cables around the confines of a vessel.
Last edited:
Steel and iron is weakened by sulfur and phosphorous. Electrolytic production of iron beats that. Then you heat it by DC or induction and alloy it with carbon in a more controlled way. That's high strength steel even without alloys. Electrolytic production of alloys would also give you steel, but why bother with the extra expense for a large use of steel like a ship?
Thande
Donor
Electrolysis is the single most expensive way to extract a metal from its ore, but it's also the most effective and is thus used in situations such as extracting aluminium or titanium, because there are few metals more reactive than Al or Ti that you could use to displace the ore counter-ions with (as is the case for iron, etc.)
Basically you melt your aluminium ore in a tank with cryolite, then run a circuit so the tank is one electrode and a big carbon terminal suspended in it is the other. The positively charged aluminium ions congregate at the negative electrode whereas the negatively charged counter-ions congregate at the positive one. Result: extremely pure metal but hideously expensive due to the heating, electricity, replacing the continuously deteriorating carbon electrodes and safety concerns.
Basically you melt your aluminium ore in a tank with cryolite, then run a circuit so the tank is one electrode and a big carbon terminal suspended in it is the other. The positively charged aluminium ions congregate at the negative electrode whereas the negatively charged counter-ions congregate at the positive one. Result: extremely pure metal but hideously expensive due to the heating, electricity, replacing the continuously deteriorating carbon electrodes and safety concerns.
Iron has elemental taints like sulfur, phosporous, etc. They are dissolved in the iron and crap up the strength of the steel. Iron also has inclusions from the silica in the ore, the magnesia in the firebrick, etc. They physically weaken the ore.
But if you electrolytically deposit the iron you only have hydrogen deposited with the iron and crapping it up. Then you can induction or resistance heat the iron and let the hydrogen diffuse out, or vacuum outgas out, or argon blow out, or whatever.
Then you can alloy the iron with the right amount of charcoal (after you've leached out the charcoal ash with bases and acids) and then cool it quickly or slowly to make steel. You can also forge or roll it to align the steel crystals. That is a more sophisticated technology.
But if you electrolytically deposit the iron you only have hydrogen deposited with the iron and crapping it up. Then you can induction or resistance heat the iron and let the hydrogen diffuse out, or vacuum outgas out, or argon blow out, or whatever.
Then you can alloy the iron with the right amount of charcoal (after you've leached out the charcoal ash with bases and acids) and then cool it quickly or slowly to make steel. You can also forge or roll it to align the steel crystals. That is a more sophisticated technology.
I know a little more about metallurgy than you do. A real metallugist would do a much better job of explaining failure modes for iron alloys. I did read a book a few months ago that said that whether an element is a strengthening or weakening element for iron/steel depends on whether the atom (strictly speaking, it's electron cloud) is prolate or oblate. Prolate atoms stick out and stop cracks, while oblate atoms don't.Thande said:
That was something I read in one book, but I don't know more than that, and I don't trust anything that I read in one book. I prefer books written as college textbooks for background knowledge.
I do know why you should electrolyse metals in water by cycling the dc power every millisecond. The iron or other metal (if the metal is inactive enough to be electrolysable) forms dendrites because the random motion of the metal atoms in the water tends to end at the tip of the dendrite because the metal dendrite is a better conductor than the water. So you switch the voltage on high to move the metal ions towards the metal surface, then switch it on low in reverse so the dendrite loses it's tips and shrinks, repeat. Then the dendrites don't grow and interlace and enclose water inclusions, which is what makes the hydrogen that craps up your iron and steel.
Now how much of this could be done in antiquity? Say, from Alexander to the fall of Rome (in the west).
DominusNovus said:
None. Aside the fact that it would require advanced knowledge of metallurgy (and by advanced, I mean that they would need a new system of philosophy in order to support the new system of chemistry that would allow the theories to permit this knowledge), the described process would require both heat and voltage impossible to produce with that level of technology.
One of my British North America ATLs has Karl Gauss come up with the mathematics that would allow for the discovery of all Maxwell's laws sometime in the 1810s (rather than in the 1860s,) which accelerates the development of electrical power. The main outcome will be to have the electric car developed faster than gas engines. Because electric cars don't have much range, they are limited to cities and small towns; rural people must make do with horses until the Stirling-electric hybrid is invented in the 1940s...