technology

With a POD where the vacuum tube was invented in 1870s-early 1880s or earlier, what would the impact of the phonograph be if electrical recording was the first commerical process introduced in 1888 instead of acoustical recording? Acoustical phonographs would still be made, but recording studios...

This is something that I have been thinking about a lot recently. Since the Ancient Egyptians knew about electric shocks from eels, the Ancient Greeks knew about amber and static, and the Baghdad Battery was clearly made, what civilization or culture could have both discovered electricity and...

I was thinking about the industrial revolution and the technologies that resulted, and I was wondering: Would it be possible to have a civilization invent electricity generation before they invented a steam engine? If so, how far could they advance? Would it be possible to generate electicity...

Something that I have wanted to ask for a long time is: could Mesoamerica have invented stuff that would ensure more enhanced technological and scientific advancement? I know that Mesoamerican societies were very advanced, but is there any way Mesoamerican civilizations could be far more...

This is my other Native American seafaring POD (might do another), as Native American seafaring is something deeply fascinating to me, and I personally think that the South Americans were the most advanced, due to both their sail use and their potential contact with Polynesians. And yet, I...

this timeline is a reboot of my first ever timeline called What if Nintendo Stayed in the Arcades (V1) and a return to form for my projects. which i kept making and trying to get bigger and bigger until i went into a project so large that i quit and reflected on what project i should do; and...

What exactly would happen if the Tlingit, or some other Pacific Northwest Native American people, invented the outrigger canoe independently? I know the Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska already had a impressive record of seafaring with their canoes, and already traded...

The question is in the title really. We live in an era of fast change, where exponential growth is the norm, where each new day brings massive new discoveries and advancements in science and industry. As I understand it, this is because of the industrial and scientific revolutions right? This...

Basically the title question. We don't have a room-temperature seni-conductor now. I am curious though if it is one of those technologies that is possible and how early in our tech development would such a thing be possible and appliable? The implicatons would be huge. We could build long range...

I'm currently working on a large and complex alt-history project. I recently had a rather weird idea for the project that I'd like to impliment and that idea is giving the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s different aesthetics than what they had in reality. This includes alternate car designs, fashion...

As a genre, Alternate-History tends to deal with subjects like "What if ( insert-country-here ) won ( insert-war-here )", "What if ( insert-person-here ) became leader of ( insert-country-here ) instead of ( insert-person here )" and "What if ( insert-event-here ) never happened" among other...

Humans went from flying the first airplane in December 1903, to landing on the moon in July 1969, which is an absolutely insane change in such a short period of time. Naturally, advances in aviation, medicine, computer electronics and consumer goods slowed down, but what if it didn't? What would...

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new adventure. While we wait for my next large scale project, Horizon, I began to wonder about a new project, and a new story - one that takes us not to space (Right away, at least), but the bottom of the ocean. Scorpion’s Tale is a story of Cold War...

Recently, I came across a 2016 NYMag Article titled "8 (Completely Plausible) Alternate Histories of the Internet". Just in case the article is paywalled for anyone or causes your computer to run slowly, I'll just paste the articles list here. The Internet Is CB Radio 1991: The early internet...

Including countries that changed sides like Italy, Romania and Bulgaria. If the main participants (USSR,USA,UK and France) defeat Germany and Japan in any month of 1944 and in the minuscle chance they be willing to share what leftovers are available, what would they have at their disposal ? I am...

Few vehicles in WWII are more instantly recognisable than the ones aforementioned in the title. I am focusing on those specific aircrafts and cars as I feel that they were litterally used for anything and everything, the Jeep obviously chief among them. But what if the Jeep never got to become...

Bartolomeu de Gusmão was a Luso-Brazilian priest who, among other things, made the first serious attempt to create a hot air balloon in 1709, more than seventy years before the Montgolfier brothers' successful experiments. Unfortunately, not only did his demonstrations fail to impress the...

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to butterfly away the development of Personal Computers and the Internet, so they don't exist by 2022 or at least are still in development. Computers may exist, but only closet-sized ones in research. POD no earlier than 1960. What societal...

[Revised 2022-04-17. Formerly titled "A Longer Night, a Brighter Sunrise"] Here are some ideas for a proposed timeline that addresses the most commonly criticized aspects of Japanese society, making it more reconciled with its neighbors and a more attractive place to live in (it doesn't have to...

Your challenge is to make the infamous Tsar Tank viable as a weapon of war.