Technology that develops without electricity?

[President Benedict Arnold]

I didn't not find this outlandish enough to put in ASB but others might disagree.

Lets say that all events regarding electricity in ancient times happen but everybody from William Gilbert to Michael Faraday, who would later inspire Andre-Marie Ampere, Georg Ohm, and James Watt never happen.

Electricity is essentially a lost technology like cement was for a time and Damascus Steel still seems to be and it is never manipulated or understood by humanity. What technological discoveries would be made in its place?

I don't really expect timelines of ideas to develop from this, but if you want to then by all means.

I will go first:

Without the rise of computing technology or even a hint of its possibility, eventually military logicians are able to dig up the blueprints of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical Engine. While this is incredibly useful in the incredibly accurate counting and planning of military logic and, post-war, is used for stock market trading, it is not suitable for any sort of inter-connectivity so nothing like the Internet can ever spring from it and few outside of corporate or military circles ever find any use for it.

 

[Nik]

IIRC, the 'optical telegraph' was eventually well-developed. Sunny side up, a heliograph could relay from Himalayan heights to the plain or Raj hill-stations to the coast rather rapidly. Napoleonic French had a real-neat system which worked day or night in conditions that permitted line-of-sight between their 'looked like wonky windmill' semaphore towers. The Roman Limes' watch-towers would have recognised the tech...

( I cheerfully lifted these for my 'Solutrea' tale {STILL WIP} where fleeing 'Joanne Lavender' raids a semaphore tower, steals the code-books at gun-point and sets a fire to 'break the chain'. Then, until all the region's *military* code-books were replaced, she used her binoculars to 'eavesdrop' on her route's towers and evade pursuit... )

The wary English matched the Napoleonic system. During subsequent peace, the West Coast chain could relay merchant ship sightings and messages from Holyhead around North Wales coast to Liverpool at disconcerting speed. IIRC, 'Coast' did a special on it. Weather permitting, coded messages could be forwarded at texting speeds...

IIRC, the 'vacuum tube' system now gracing super-marts and hospitals was well developed in several English city centres, scooting stuff within and between big offices etc. Think voice-pipes on ships...

Um, 'tidal prediction' was purely analogue 'clockwork' until remarkably recently. Babbage's related 'general arithmetic' machine would have done very nicely for astronomical calculations. Never mind slide-rules, I remember *mechanical* sum-adders, augmented with a shift-system to do Math, and a truly remarkable German 'scientific' calculator which looked like a wind-up coffee-grinder. Remember 'Computers' used to be clever young ladies armed with mechanical desk calculators...

IIRC, gun-forts and warships used a mechanical analogue predictor system until the electronic tech became shock-resistant...

At first, the 'thermionic valve' 'differential amplifier' was the direct equivalent of the mechanical version. Digital stuff came much later...

One unlikely 'wild card'-- Fluidics. In your TL, this could have developed from 'player-piano' and 'player-organ' tech, as big organs ran on compressed air, remote controlled from the 'keyboard'...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics
IIRC, this tech was developed for use where Germanium electronics were too wimpy due heat, radiation etc. Then Silicon, SOS etc came along. IIRC, it has been revived for 'disposable' medical diagnostic devices that play 'lab-bench on a stick'...

 

[President Benedict Arnold]

<snip>

These are absolutely fascinating.

It's rather surprising how much of what electricity replaced pretty early in its existence.

I'll try to come up with more and I will post them when I do.

 

[Analytical Engine]

Any elements that requires electricity to extract are now either not discovered, or essentially useless. Flying machines are basically all airships.

Steam-powered everything! (Or pneumatically- or gass-powered, anyway.) Gas lighting remains commonplace.

Diesel power could still be used, though, as the fuel is ignited by compression rather than a spark.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Yeah you have steam, you have gas, you have mechanical technology, and you have the "lost technology" of high pressure air systems, maybe hydraulics

 

[Grey Wolf]

I've forgotten the word I would need to search, my brain is a bit like that these days. But London I know had high-pressure air as the additional utility, and the redundant pipes were later reused for fibre-optic cables. I remember reading the same about Paris.

There was in the postal system, something using this too - you popped a cylinder into an outlet and it whizzed off to be delivered

 

[ddtim]

I've forgotten the word I would need to search, my brain is a bit like that these days. But London I know had high-pressure air as the additional utility, and the redundant pipes were later reused for fibre-optic cables. I remember reading the same about Paris.

There was in the postal system, something using this too - you popped a cylinder into an outlet and it whizzed off to be delivered

I don't know about pneumatics, but the London Hydraulic Power Company was a thing; there were similar such companies in cities in Europe as well, IIRC.

 

[Jürgen]

I really can't see how you can develop the metallurgy necessary to build steam engine without discovering electricity.

 

[Analytical Engine]

I really can't see how you can develop the metallurgy necessary to build steam engine without discovering electricity.

Steam engines (ones that are in any way efficient enough to do anything useful, anyway) are largely made of steel and brass, which have been worked with for centuries. Electricity is not required to build a steam engine. Early steam engine (most of them basically toys, made between the Classical Era and Renaissance) were made by people who didn't even understand what electricity was.

Electricity is required to build a jet engine, however, as it requires materials with a really high melting point and are tightly bound within their ores.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Well this is the pneumatic post

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#Pneumatic_post

 

[Analytical Engine]

Well this is the pneumatic post

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#Pneumatic_post

I'm reminded of the film The Shadow.

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

Here's an interesting blog-magazine I read that focus on mostly Victorian Age mechanical and technical solutions that were replaced by internal combustion and electricity http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/

Some of the mechanical solutions to problems are absolutely incredible at the peak of the pre-electric technology post-1900.

 

[Jürgen]

Steam engines (ones that are in any way efficient enough to do anything useful, anyway) are largely made of steel and brass, which have been worked with for centuries. Electricity is not required to build a steam engine. Early steam engine (most of them basically toys, made between the Classical Era and Renaissance) were made by people who didn't even understand what electricity was.

Electricity is required to build a jet engine, however, as it requires materials with a really high melting point and are tightly bound within their ores.

I can see people building steam engine without electricity, what I can't see is that electricity isn't discovered when you have the necessary metallurgy to build it. Electricity is pretty simple to generate, especially when you have big spinning things made of metal.

 

[Analytical Engine]

I can see people building steam engine without electricity, what I can't see is that electricity isn't discovered when you have the necessary metallurgy to build it. Electricity is pretty simple to generate, especially when you have big spinning things made of metal.

Actually, all you need is amber and some cloth/fur, but your point still stands.

 

[Jürgen]

Actually, all you need is amber and some cloth/fur, but your point still stands.

So the better question would be, how could you develop a technology, which didn't lend itself to discovering electricity? The sci-fi answer would be biotechnology, but I don't really think or know whether that's possible.

 

[GeneralBoomstick]

I don't really see how electricity could be avoided, but it could certainly be slowed down. Just have people like Nikolai Tesla not be a thing. He is absolutely instrumental in the advancement in electricity and its associated technologies.

 

[Nik]

You could allow *static* electricity, as a fun toy, like that Alexandrian steam turbine.
& see...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper

Even the Voltaic pile is nothing more than a curiosity without Faraday to pursue electromagnetism...

{ Power going as I*I*R, static can't do much unless you 'call the lightning' !! }

 

[Just a Rube]

I don't really see how electricity could be avoided, but it could certainly be slowed down. Just have people like Nikolai Tesla not be a thing. He is absolutely instrumental in the advancement in electricity and its associated technologies.

By the time Tesla is on the scene, most of the key scientific breakthroughs have been made; you're left with engineering problems, which can be solved with time; AC isn't that difficult to figure out once you have the theory working.

Fluidics has pretty significant limits (especially if you don't allow electronics to help keep it working, note that things like the MONIAC OTL used quite a few electronic components); among other things your speed is capped way lower than even with primitive electronics, and below a certain size, electric charge becomes so important that if you have the theory to make things work, you automatically have enough theoretical knowledge to make vastly more efficient electronic devices. That's also going to be a significant limiter on chemistry; since the bonds between atoms are largely derived from the electromagnetic force, you fairly quickly run into problems doing theoretical chemistry (as opposed to "mix-and-match and see what happens") without at least some theoretical understanding of electricity.

 

[Grey Wolf]

I know there were incredible clockwork models in the 18th century, so that's a technological route that might develop, even if it later comes into focus as an alternative to steam, kind of like how you had wind-up grammar phones, and even the clockwork radio (not that that would work since its charging a battery)

I was discussing the general question with a friend and we agreed that as long as things DEVELOP you could get a high level of civilisation without electricity, what we did not agree with was the idea you could delete electricity from a modern society and try to rebuild everything using other technologies. Most of it would be possible technologically, but not possible societally. But if no electricity had always been the rule, then things would be much more of a logical progression and you would indeed have the precision tools, machine tools, and everything already set up and working.