It would be interesting to see more detail on the big manufacturing companies of the Commonwealth: aerospace, automobiles, computers, electronics that would be spread right across the member states rather than just being simply British. I'm hoping that ITTL, companies like ICI are still around, as well as all those amazing names from the aerospace industry (Bristol, De Havilland, Hawker, Avro), the motor industry (Triumph, Rover, Austin/Morris, Leyland, Rootes, BSA, Bristol) and consumer electronics (Sinclair, Amstrad, Ferguson, Servis, GEC). I assume that the service and financial sectors are still huge but I'd also be interested to see if there was a Commonwealth equivalent of TTL's American big tech companies like Amazon or Google.
The Anglo-Saxon Social Model - The Expanded Universe
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
Uncut Gems was amazing and all other opinions are incorrect, I'm afraid
Slight boob on my part in my initial post - Mandarin dropped off but should have been listed as one of the Official Regional Languages. The list should be fixed now.
Anyway, the East Indies has three Official Regional Languages (Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) alongside English. Which one of those three is more prevalent will obviously depend on which community is more demographically dominant. The ethnic demographics of the East Indies as a whole is roughly 60% Chinese, 20% Malay, 10% Indian (mostly Tamil but also Pakistani expats), 7% Other Commonwealth (this basically means the UK, Canada, Australia etc. - Pakistanis and other non-white Commonwealth people tend to get subsumed into other categories) and 3% other and rest of the world.
Mandarin and Cantonese are the only Chinese languages with the status of Official Regional Languages. Other dialects of Chinese may receive official protection and support but that would be at the East Indies/Sarawak level rather than the Commonwealth one. As for whether this occurs, I have no firm opinions on the matter and I image it fluctuates with the political and cultural weather within the East Indies/Sarawak (and the other member states where this kind of thing is relevant, of course). The idea behind the list of Official Regional Languages is that there is a kind of 'reasonableness' standard that is applied, as well as a practical requirement about the number of available translators and so forth (for these reasons, for example, Gilbertese hasn't been accepted). Of course, this is very unfair to those languages that aren't included in the list but the Commonwealth's language teaching does kind of make up for this. in theory, all children are meant to be taught three languages at school: the Official National Language (i.e. English); one Official Regional Language; and one other. Obviously, in many member states that third language could be from another country, like Russian or German, but in local schools in Sarawak, for example, that could involve teaching Hokkien.
Again, that's a boob on my part - Newfoundland should've been listed as one of the places where Gaelige is from. The Famine isn't butterflied away, I'm afraid: the original TTL is the successful assassination of Queen Victoria in 1872 and the subsequent success of the Irish Home Rule movement.
As for the number of speakers of Gaelic, I think the 1.9million speakers is one of those that's slightly inflated by TTL's data collectors. Certainly it is taught in schools in Ireland and Newfoundland and most adults could probably order a meal in the language. But how many people could conduct a full conversation or use is regularly in their daily life? Outside of western Ireland, probably not all that many.
That I can do. I have some ideas for the financial services and tech industries (TTL's internet is a very different place) and those other companies you mention are definitely around and (mostly) thriving.
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As a bit of an architecture nerd, and a resident of London, what exactly is the state of the city and the practice in general?
Reasoning i'm asking is because I read, in the other thread, that German bombing of the UK was still prevalent. Combined with the immensely different political and economic climate, the skyscrapers i'm currently looking at through my window may not be even there, or could be even taller, which might be exciting.
Reasoning i'm asking is because I read, in the other thread, that German bombing of the UK was still prevalent. Combined with the immensely different political and economic climate, the skyscrapers i'm currently looking at through my window may not be even there, or could be even taller, which might be exciting.
Great Men: Alan Turing
Alan Turing, OBE FRS (23 June 1912 - 7 June 2004) was a British mathematician, computer scientist, cryptanalyst, philosopher and businessman. Turing was highly influential in the development of both theoretical and practical computer science, providing a formalisation for the concepts of the algorithm and computation through his Turing machine (which is considered a model of a general-purpose computer). Working for Colossus Computers, he was one of the important architects behind several versions of the “Manchester” range. Turing later founded his own company, Apple Computers, which would make a number of important advances in the fields of software design and artificial intelligence.
During the World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre that produced “Ultra” intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German cyphers and played a crucial role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in many crucial engagements. After the War, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the Automatic Computing Engine, which was one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948, he joined Tommy Flowers and Tom Kilburn’s new company, Colossus Computers, which had been founded partly via a loan from the United Kingdom’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). While working at Colossus, Turing was a key architect of the Manchester Marks 1, 2 and 3, the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of commercial and scientific applications.
While the commercial success of the Manchester Computers, in particular the Mark 3, brought great professional and material benefits, Turing found himself dissatisfied with the direction of the company and he left in 1954, following a dispute with Flowers and Kilburn. He founded his own company, Apple Computers, also thanks to a loan from the SWF. The Apple I and Apple II computers, launched in 1956 and 1959 respectively, were important steps forward in graphical-user interfaces. However, Apple often found its products out-competed by the more utilitarian products produced by Colossus and foreign competitors such as the American IBM and the Soviet ES EVM. Following the poor commercial performance of the Apple Desk Computer (the first microcomputer designed for mass commercial use) in 1964, the company transitioned entirely to making software. During this time, Apple’s products were used mainly by specialists - in particular Commonwealth governments and the Five Eyes Agency - and it was an obscure name to the general public.
Turing stepped down as chairman and CEO of Apple in 1969 but remained chief software designer. In the 1970s the company’s fortunes were revived by a mixture of new marketing strategies and a number of technical innovations in the area of digital home appliances. The most notable of these were the Apple Phone and the Apple Notepad. However, over the years Turing’s interest in the more esoteric applications of his work turned the public against him. In 1979 Apple launched the Apple Assistant, a virtual AI capable of responding to human speech commands, automating the work of other Apple-configured intelligent devices and cataloging several thousand hours of human conversation. The potential privacy implications of the device, along with several high-profile safety disasters, meant that it sold poorly. A year after its launch, reporting by the “Sunday Times” showed that the Apple Assistant was also cataloging its owners’ activities (including at times when its owners had set it to “off”) and relaying the data back to Apple. The subsequent scandal caused major damage to the company, which almost went bankrupt, and was a major impetus behind the Caracas Accords, which set out international standards for the regulation of technological companies.
Turing, who had been closely associated with the Apple Assistant and continued to publicly defend the product after the company had scrapped the program, was eased out of his remaining positions of authority and formally left the company in 1987. Although he mostly led a quiet retirement, persistent rumours of his further experiments with AI did occasionally return him to the spotlight. In 1992 he was briefly taken in for questioning by police following allegations of violating the Caracas Accords but he was subsequently released without charge. A year later, he was questioned under caution again, this time in relation to his investments in InGen Corporation following the Isla Nublar disaster. Once again, no charges were brought.
In 1997 it was announced that Turing had been diagnosed with senile dementure. He died of complications related to the disease in 2004.
Although a controversial figure towards the end of his life, since his death Turing’s reputation has recovered due to his vast contributions to computer science and artificial intelligence. In October 2009, the Bank of England announced that Turing would be depicted on the Commonwealth’s new £50 note.
Great Men: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison (February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931) was an American industrialist and politician. His political ambitions, including an aspiration to become President, were frustrated at an early stage by bad timing but his energies were instead diverted into industry. He is most famous for his 24-year long tenure at the head of the General Electric Bureau from 1885 to 1909. A prolific inventor and engineer as well as administrator, Edison was one of the first people to apply the principles of teamwork to invention, establishing the world’s first industrial research laboratory and making substantial progress towards the electrification of most of the urban United States.
Edison was born in Ohio but was brought up in Michigan. He received little formal schooling and worked from an early age, mostly in journalism. Then a Liberal, he moved to Philadelphia in 1880 where he became interested in European alternating current electrical systems. When the federal government set up the General Electric Bureau (known as the American Electric Bureau until 1892), Edison, who had distinguished himself with his own research contributions in the field of telegraphy and electricity, was chosen to be its head. Under Edison, the GEB established a full-time research and development laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey. At this facility numerous advances were made in the fields of electrification, phonography and synthetic rubber, amongst other things. GEB employees at this time included Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse and William Hammer.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, Edison found himself increasingly out of step with the populist instincts of many in the Liberal Party. He had a particular distaste for William Jennings Bryan and, when Bryan won the presidency in 1904, Edison seriously considered resigning. Nevertheless, he was selected to chair a committee on industrial safety in 1906 but his 1909 Edison Report was quietly shelved when he championed self-regulation by employers. As a result, Edison resigned from GEB.
Following his resignation, Edison served as chairman of Dow Chemical from 1908 to 1919 and was a member of the board of the Bank of the United States from 1913-1919. He formed and chaired the Military Consulting Board during the Great War, with the aim of streamlining the provision of advice and research to the US military. In addition to his varied activities with the GEB, Edison also made wide-ranging investments in industries such as motion pictures, mining and x-rays. His time at Dow is often credited as being a key cause of the chemical industry's growth in the United States in the first three decades of the twentieth century.
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Star Trek was always the SF series I could never quite fall in love with (although I did quite like Voyager growing up) but I do have a couple of half-formed ideas. It's on the docket for a while down the road.
I like the idea of Alan Turing's company being called 'Turing' rather than Apple - would give the great man a little more compensation ITTL! Perhaps also allowing 'Apple Music' to stay completely associated with the Beatles. And in recognition of the city of Manchester's role in the early days of computing, perhaps 'Turing' would eventually produce the iManc? Sorry, I'll get my coat...
You've made league the norm! You sicko!
I knew all the pro-Arsenal content would have a sting in the tail...
(P.S loved this TL and really enjoying all the EU stuff so far!)
So is this basically a sport tl now?
Yeah, sounds like a British Utopia.
Yeah, sounds like a British Utopia.
@Rattigan If you are still doing requests for entries then I would not mind knowing more about the Great Liners, and shipping in general please?
Do we get std containers in the 20/30's?
Welding over riveting?
Did Cunard and White Star merge or did both survive?
What happened to the Yards like Swan Hunter or Harland and Wolff?
Shipbuilding in Commonwealth?
Cruising
Etc...
Do we get std containers in the 20/30's?
Welding over riveting?
Did Cunard and White Star merge or did both survive?
What happened to the Yards like Swan Hunter or Harland and Wolff?
Shipbuilding in Commonwealth?
Cruising
Etc...
hmm and what of the lionesses in this timeline (and no i didn't mean Milllwall Ladies FC)