Faster or Slower Technology
- Thread starter tom
- Start date
Grey Wolf
Donor
The usual answer to such questions is 'more war' as if developments, discoveries and invention did not happen in peace time. Perhaps also because people like wars for their simplistic nature whereas longer-term development with peace-time competition is both more complex and harder to follow
Grey Wolf
Grey Wolf
War is often cited as spurring technological growth, but my perception is that this sort of technology is often limited to that of the military. For instance, while rocketry was develped for WWII, it was a long time before science, and then the general population, reaped tangible benefits from it (Tang, anyone?)
However, there are plenty of singular inventions that could have been adopted far sooner, or came about by accident and would have otherwise been a while in the making:
- The modern typewriter (for some reason, the typewriter proposed in the early 1800's didn't catch on until almost 60 years later, and has remained more or less unchanged since then; we even use the QUERTY keyboard out of habit when there are several others that are far more efficient)
- The computer (Babbage's proposed Difference Engine was essentially a fully mechanical ENIAC; give him some more financial support, or more ability to say enough was enough and produce a prototype rather than tinkering with the designs for decades, or BOTH, and we have vaccuum tube machines by 1900, or 1920 at the latest, and microchips by the 30's)
- The Ford-style assembly line, easily one of the most far-reaching innovations of the past 120 years, could have been implimented far earlier in Europe than in the US, where the Industrial Revolution was at the time fifty years behind Germany and England
- The Internet (its initial incarnation, built on military and college servers, all but died out in the 70's; what if it hadn't, and had instead spurred a home PC revolution, rather than the other way around as in OTL? Is that even possible?)
Various medicines (especially anaesthetics, penicillin, and vaccines for such plague-like diseases as polio, smallpox, influenza)
Any of these innovations, if adopted earlier than in OTL, could have led to a faster adaptation of subsequent technologies. Especially the computer or the assembly line. Likewise, their delay could set us back a long time. Without the infection-battling penicillin, which was developed completely by accident, modern surgery is all but impossible, and most of the medical gains we have made since the 40's would be more or less wiped out. For the very haphazard story behind this miracle drug, which was actually discovered in 1928, click here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm28pe.html
The medicine one feels like a cheat, and of course it essentially is: it's easy to say that without the smallpox vaccine, Ford might have died as a child, or with it fifty years earlier, someone who died in OTL might have grown up to invent the assembly line while Ford was still in diapers. But if you want a quick and dirty timeline, that's one way to do it.
However, there are plenty of singular inventions that could have been adopted far sooner, or came about by accident and would have otherwise been a while in the making:
- The modern typewriter (for some reason, the typewriter proposed in the early 1800's didn't catch on until almost 60 years later, and has remained more or less unchanged since then; we even use the QUERTY keyboard out of habit when there are several others that are far more efficient)
- The computer (Babbage's proposed Difference Engine was essentially a fully mechanical ENIAC; give him some more financial support, or more ability to say enough was enough and produce a prototype rather than tinkering with the designs for decades, or BOTH, and we have vaccuum tube machines by 1900, or 1920 at the latest, and microchips by the 30's)
- The Ford-style assembly line, easily one of the most far-reaching innovations of the past 120 years, could have been implimented far earlier in Europe than in the US, where the Industrial Revolution was at the time fifty years behind Germany and England
- The Internet (its initial incarnation, built on military and college servers, all but died out in the 70's; what if it hadn't, and had instead spurred a home PC revolution, rather than the other way around as in OTL? Is that even possible?)
Various medicines (especially anaesthetics, penicillin, and vaccines for such plague-like diseases as polio, smallpox, influenza)
Any of these innovations, if adopted earlier than in OTL, could have led to a faster adaptation of subsequent technologies. Especially the computer or the assembly line. Likewise, their delay could set us back a long time. Without the infection-battling penicillin, which was developed completely by accident, modern surgery is all but impossible, and most of the medical gains we have made since the 40's would be more or less wiped out. For the very haphazard story behind this miracle drug, which was actually discovered in 1928, click here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm28pe.html
The medicine one feels like a cheat, and of course it essentially is: it's easy to say that without the smallpox vaccine, Ford might have died as a child, or with it fifty years earlier, someone who died in OTL might have grown up to invent the assembly line while Ford was still in diapers. But if you want a quick and dirty timeline, that's one way to do it.