What if steam stayed as the prominent form of energy instead of electricity? How would it have affected wars, technology, and society? Is there any plausible ways it could have come into being? How long could it have continued before being replaced?
WI: Steampunk
- Thread starter TwiliAlchemist
- Start date
*Sigh*
First of all, I would argue that it's not electricity that killed the "steam age", but rather the internal combustion engine, which was much lighter and (more critically) required far less mass of fuel and water to operate (n.b. that most electricity continues to be made by steam engines with various sources of heat). And since internal combustion engines have existed since not long after the first practical steam engines were produced...
But then, why were steam engines used, at all? As far as I can tell, it's due to two things: metallurgy (the inside of an internal combustion engine is very hot), and timing (most practical internal combustion engines involved multiple pistons and required them to have ignition initiated relatively precisely. Metallurgy is hard to stop (and better metals lead to better steam engines!), so let's somehow handwave away the precise timing.
So: no internal combustion. What does that get us? Well, sadly, the first casualties are airships, which generally cannot afford the mass necessary to lift a reasonably powerful steam engine (it's true that airships benefit massively from the square/cube law, but a reasonable steam-powered airship would need to be a true monster).
Aside from that, we honestly aren't going to see a huge effect until well into the 20th century. Cars only overtake horse carriages IOTL around 1910, and early cars aren't significantly faster or longer-legged than horse carriages (interesting point: horse carriages were used extensively in Europe in WWII to preserve petroleum fuels for other uses). We also lose airplanes. We may actually see a popularity of electric cars for the wealthy (OTL they enjoyed some popularity for a brief period around 1880-1910 before ICE took off) - but I don't think you want those.
But, in 1910-20, things look mostly the same (before the Great War, which throws a monkey-wrench into everything). Without airplanes and cars, there's probably a little less enthusiasm for technology (IOTL, developments in aviation and car racing garnered a lot of attention in the early 20th century - and steam engine races and pulling competitions are Old News by now).
The real question is: how will this butterfly the Great War, which many see as inevitable, but, I mean - Franz Ferdinand was killed while driving in a motor car, wasn't he?
