Newcomen's engine is equivalent to OTL Watt's engine

If Newcomen's engine had been equivalent of the OTL Watt's engine, what does having the greater efficiency over 50 years earlier do?
 
Well, that's one hell of a tech jump, I have to say! Considering Watt based his engine on Newcomen's, only incorporating a couple major improvements (like the seperate condensor), it's conceivable Newcomen could have had some parallel inspiration a few years after introducing his "first" engine.

The ramifications are smaller than you might think, though. It's still decades before most of the textile technologies will permit industialized textile manufacturing, so no "factory" revolution. Blast furnaces are not yet there. No full-on "Industrial Revolution" of the OTL sort yet. That may only see a couple decades' advancement at best.

However, you now have an efficient power source. This could certainly bump up steam transport several decades, which could have serious butterflies if you have workable steam ships within 50 years (very doable if the speed proceeds at roughly OTL). Assuming you have even simple steam-paddlers crossing the Atlantic that'll have serious ramifications in the *ARW (in terms of fast logistics transport, mainly...not really ready for ironclads or even steam warships yet).
 
If there's steamships in the ARW, then there might be railroads relatively common in Europe by the Napoleonic Wars.

Or, if, ITTL, this type of technology doesn't get the same huge government and private business support that it got IOTL, we could see alternate (relatively) high-tech developments. Remember, steam engines ≠ mass production, so anyone working on these things is essentially still in craftsman/artisan territory. My understanding is that while tools and parts could be precisely made at this point, they couldn't be standardized as easily. And of course it would be harder to make them out of steel or harder metals. But the basics were already there with clockwork.

I guess what I'm saying is that while there will be steam engines, they won't be standardized at all. They'll be much more like industrial pipe organs, with half of fixing the old ones being spent in research learning its unique design. You'll have inventors and their workshops jockeying for reputation, from the local pipefitters and clockers all the way up to the contemporary "Stradivari of Steam," a particularly famous manufacturer of steam *cars and *motorcycles outside of Modena.

There would still be some use of the power supply in the various mills and such that already existed at the time. There were some "factories" before the steam engine, but not in a widespread way. But I'd have to spend more time thinking about the economic effects of this.

I kind of want to turn this into a TL, actually. So a higher-tech 19th century, but without industrialization. Craftsman wank. Since they'll have all the steam engines and machine guns, TTL's Luddites will do a bit better. Obviously it might not be the most rigorously plausible TL in the world.
 
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