Timeline speculation thread, no cars?

[ZeroGear]

I know there are a lot of worlds that are built around the idea of something happening in the timeline that changes the course of history to create different results, and I would like to talk about a something that could have influenced our timeline

What if no one had invented cars?

To be clear, I'm talking about the typical combustion engine car, not steam carriages. It is part of history that steam-driven vehicles (notably the steam engine trains) were invented long before Karl Benz ran his prototype around the track. The main question is what would have happened to history if no one had figured out how to create the internal combustion engine that make automobiles possible?

Please speculate and, if you want, pose other "what if's" of events that could have changed the timeline (just not those overly common ones like "what if Germany has won WWII or so).

EDIT:
Ok, not having someone invent them may be the wrong approach. After looking at the responses, maybe it would be more interesting to discuss what would have happened if cars hadn't caught on (they may have been invented, but maybe something happened that dissuaded people from buying them to the point where some other mode of transit filled the niche). Maybe someone invented efficient rocket packs or fuel just wasn't available?

[Altair_the_Vexed]

The invention of internal combustion engines and steam engines run hand in hand for a long time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_heat_engine_technology)

For there to be no internal combustion engine, I'd suggest that there'd need to be no oil / gas - so that there's no easily squirted fuel, which we need for internal combustion motors.

If we had no cars or trucks because we'd had to industrialise with only steam power, we'd most likely have more public transport, so more communal / community living. Our rail networks would be far more developed than our roads. We'd not have any need for tarmac / asphalt roads.
Suburbs would be more tightly clustered around rail stations, rather than spread out. There'd be less out-of-town shopping. The local high street wuold most probably be thriving.

Personal transport would probably be animal powered - horses and horse-drawn vahicles would get us around between railway stations.

We'd still be able to make very fine scale technology. Metalworking would be just as good. However, plastics are mainly derived from petrochemicals, and certainly the explosion in development of plastics coincides with the move from coal to oil fired industry - as we pumped more oil out for fuel, we found other uses for it as the base for plastics.
Even if you don't decide that there's no oil, I think it still seems seems likely that if we weren't using oil for fuel in internal combustion engines, that we'd have less by-product lying about to make into plastics.

I hope that helps!

[ZeroGear]

Wow, that is a lot to think about.
Now, assuming we looked at that model and assumed that there was a huge railroad system made because of this, what would happen if someone did discover oil/gas as a type of fuel?

The main discussion I'm looking at here is not "alternative forms of energy" or "steam power vs. gas power", I would like to talk more about it's application.
The main thing that Karl Benz did was create a single vehicle that could efficiently move people. Well, what if he had crashed on his first go around?

One of the reasons I think that cars became as popular and prolific as they did (aside from being status symbols) is that it was easier to adapt and utilize public roads than it was to build railways. Assuming no one had managed to create a personal motorized vehicle before large-scale and far-reaching railways had been constructed, one can assume that train systems and public transport would be much more developed and have a larger focus in society than it does today.

Anyone have thoughts on how this would have changed society?

[khadgar567]

I up the ante and ask what if dreaded 4th edition never exists?

[Radar]

The main thing that Karl Benz did was create a single vehicle that could efficiently move people. Well, what if he had crashed on his first go around?
That wouldn't stop anyone, since early steam engines blew up ever-so-often and weren't abandoned.

One thing worth mentioning here, is that combustion-engine-powered cars took off, was partially due to really cheap oil in USA. If it weren't for that, we might have been driving electric cars all along (or steam-powered for that matter), since even by 1900 40% cars were steam-powered, 38% electric and only 22% gasoline-powered (at least wiki links some other source claiming so).

Frankly, to properly divine, how the world would change, it is probably important to answer the question, why wouldn't anyone invent cars as we know them (gas-powered or otherwise)? The key problem here is, they weren't much of an invention - it's still the same concept as a carriage just with an artificial engine. The idea of having a personal means of transport was already firmly rooted in our culture.
What comes to my mind is lack of rubber or high shortage thereof. Lack of soft wheels would prevent any non-rail vehicle from achieving high speeds. Without high speed, there would be no real reason to resign from horses.

Aside from that, if there were no personal cars, then I think bikes would become more then a novelty toy much sooner then they did in our world. They can be built cheaply, give reasonable speeds and only lacked carrying capacity at the time, but that could be easily rectified, since cargo bikes aren't rocket science. Lack of rubber would also hit this mean of transport, but it's hard to say by how much.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not versed enough in cars or their effects on society to comment on the main discussion, but to give a second what if:

What if vacuum tubes and subsequently transistors were never invented?

To start with, logic arrays as we know them are gone, and with them modern computers. Electronic computers are possibly never developed, and even if they are they would be so big and expensive that the internet doesn't appear in many forms. In fact, there's no or little electronic minimisation, which means that most electronic circuits will be specifically designed for their task.

I'm just missing the sociological effects of this, and why they might not have been invented.

[Cealocanth]

One of the reasons I think that cars became as popular and prolific as they did (aside from being status symbols) is that it was easier to adapt and utilize public roads than it was to build railways. Assuming no one had managed to create a personal motorized vehicle before large-scale and far-reaching railways had been constructed, one can assume that train systems and public transport would be much more developed and have a larger focus in society than it does today.

Not really certain what we would have, but we can be sure that pretty much the entire 20th century would be changed. Combustion engines didn't just get put into cars. They got put into ships, tanks, airplanes, and other military vehicles. Without the combustion engine, the weapons of war we used in the World Wars and the missiles produced in the Cold War would not exist. Theoretically the world as we know it today would be a much more peaceful place. However a lack of combustion machines doesn't do much to the lead-up to WWI, so you would still have fighting and alliances and betrayals, all the things that make war, but with much less efficient ways of killing each-other and thus much worse tactics.

Imagine WWI and WWII fought with the same sort of tactics of the American Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of people would have to be shipped overseas to compensate for the lack of advanced weaponry. Millions of soldiers would be dead due to poor tactics. Millions of families would be displaced. Following all of that horror, the world would be more peaceful, but the population would be a lot lower and a globalized economy would be an impossible dream. On the plus-side, civil rights movements would have gotten a much stronger grab with the death of a lot of male soldiers in WWI, meaning that the races and sexes would probably be much more equal today than they are. However, with no globalization, you would have no Internet, and there would probably be a lot of xenophobia still around.

Lastly, with a century of innovation lacking the combustion engine, but still having the steam engine, nuclear power (the first reactors of which were based on steam engines), would probably be a lot more prolific today. Nuclear Fusion reactors would probably appear around the turn of the 21st century and personalized uranium-powered transport may be a reality. The major uranium mines in the world would probably be as contested and heated as the major oil deposits are, and the world would probably face a significant and potentially apocalyptic Uranium Crisis in 1980s or 1990s. Cancer rates would be higher, asthma rates likely lower. The world would probably have a lot of nuclear waste to deal with, most of which would probably be buried in some third world countries or a designated 'no-man's-land'.

Anyway, just speculation. A dangerous part about alternate histories is that any reasonable interpretation is viable to argue.

[Yukitsu]

When creating speculative fiction, it is important to remember that inventions are not divergence points for good alternate history. When asked "what if no one had ever invented it?" the answer to what would happen is that inevitably, someone would invent it. That is about the only feasible answer to that question since when you take great minds and take the entire body of knowledge that predates that invention, even if it is not the same inventory that invents it, the invention itself becomes inevitable. It's why we debate as to whether or not Newton or Leibniz invented calculus when modern historians are fairly certain they both did mostly independently. The knowledge that was in place at that time lead almost inevitably to the invention of calculus. The invention of the car is essentially inevitable based on the inventions that had already come about, if people have trains, they will ask why they can't make one that doesn't require rails. Well, the answer is they can and brilliant minds that endeavor towards that will find that solution.

[Anonymouswizard]

When creating speculative fiction, it is important to remember that inventions are not divergence points for good alternate history. When asked "what if no one had ever invented it?" the answer to what would happen is that inevitably, someone would invent it. That is about the only feasible answer to that question since when you take great minds and take the entire body of knowledge that predates that invention, even if it is not the same inventory that invents it, the invention itself becomes inevitable. It's why we debate as to whether or not Newton or Leibniz invented calculus when modern historians are fairly certain they both did mostly independently. The knowledge that was in place at that time lead almost inevitably to the invention of calculus. The invention of the car is essentially inevitable based on the inventions that had already come about, if people have trains, they will ask why they can't make one that doesn't require rails. Well, the answer is they can and brilliant minds that endeavor towards that will find that solution.

It depends, a 'world without X' can be very interesting, you just have to work out a decent reason. For example, if you want a world without electronic computers, maybe Babbage's Difference Engine worked in binary before outputting (either in binary or decimal), as a way of reducing the influence of wear and tear (it is also easier to distinguish between two states than between 10). This works as a substitute for electrical computing, to the point that it may be abandoned in favour of the 'more advanced' mechanical computers.

Physical inventions are also a lot less certain than 'theoretical' inventions, due to the increased cost. To create calculus you need the background knowledge, paper, something to write and draw with, time, and maybe someone or something to help with your calculations. To create a physical invention such as a car you need the background knowledge, paper, something to write and draw with, time, raw materials, production capability (either some sort of machine or someone with the skills to shape it), space to test it, people willing to test it, and maybe someone or something to help with your calculations. The increased cost from the increased requirements (with a physical invention you are probably going to be going through several rounds of prototyping and testing, which costs money) means that a complex physical invention is not inevitable unless a) there is a definite requirement for it, b) there is nothing else that can fill that requirement, and c) there is free capital. A lot of the time you are going to get inventions anyway, but unless there is a use for them they may not catch on. As it is, the car was invented and replaced the horse and carriage, but it is in no way a 'certain' invention beyond people acknowledging 'we could do this' almost always happening if technology is invented far enough.

Also, let me propose a world where semiconductors just can't exist. We've basically completely lost the ability to miniaturise electronics (and possibly electronic memory as well, depending on what sorts of electronic logic can be created), which means the civilian and possibly military internet wouldn't exist. We can get electronic computers working, but they'll take some time to warm up and be significantly more bulky than the PC I'm typing at.

[Yukitsu]

It depends, a 'world without X' can be very interesting, you just have to work out a decent reason. For example, if you want a world without electronic computers, maybe Babbage's Difference Engine worked in binary before outputting (either in binary or decimal), as a way of reducing the influence of wear and tear (it is also easier to distinguish between two states than between 10). This works as a substitute for electrical computing, to the point that it may be abandoned in favour of the 'more advanced' mechanical computers.

Physical inventions are also a lot less certain than 'theoretical' inventions, due to the increased cost. To create calculus you need the background knowledge, paper, something to write and draw with, time, and maybe someone or something to help with your calculations. To create a physical invention such as a car you need the background knowledge, paper, something to write and draw with, time, raw materials, production capability (either some sort of machine or someone with the skills to shape it), space to test it, people willing to test it, and maybe someone or something to help with your calculations. The increased cost from the increased requirements (with a physical invention you are probably going to be going through several rounds of prototyping and testing, which costs money) means that a complex physical invention is not inevitable unless a) there is a definite requirement for it, b) there is nothing else that can fill that requirement, and c) there is free capital. A lot of the time you are going to get inventions anyway, but unless there is a use for them they may not catch on. As it is, the car was invented and replaced the horse and carriage, but it is in no way a 'certain' invention beyond people acknowledging 'we could do this' almost always happening if technology is invented far enough.


On that first point, I can agree that technology can change depending on divergences, one way or another to get to the same conclusion, one company beating out another is always possible based on things like ads, public perception or other non-qualitative elements. But the key thing to note is that you still get the same conclusion, you still end up with a computer, even if it isn't the same we use today, and the evolution of that technology is going to see its own advances and then possibly a transition to the same method we use depending on how efficient or inefficient it is.

Going back to cars, is it really feasible for us to not have some form of internal engine for a vehicle that travels along roads instead of rails? The technology was all readily in place, the use of steam to propel vehicles, even ones not on rails existed, the desire for the product was profound and the wealth was readily available. To change the world enough to make it such that cars were not inevitable, the car would be the least interesting, as you're now looking at many major divergences to the timeline.

[Anonymouswizard]

On that first point, I can agree that technology can change depending on divergences, one way or another to get to the same conclusion, one company beating out another is always possible based on things like ads, public perception or other non-qualitative elements. But the key thing to note is that you still get the same conclusion, you still end up with a computer, even if it isn't the same we use today, and the evolution of that technology is going to see its own advances and then possibly a transition to the same method we use depending on how efficient or inefficient it is.

Okay, I understand computers fairly well, and the lack of an electronic computer would have a huge influence on culture. Image a computer that relies entirely on mechanical parts. Suddenly it's (likely) bulkier, can do far less (on a modern PC I can boot up a game I've just installed, this is likely very difficult on a mechanical computer), has less storage (the density of electronic storage is insanely good, which is why it's used despite being extremely volatile), does it slower, and is more subject to wear and tear (due to how fragile miniaturised electronic components are we sometimes include a ridiculous number of redundancies, because we have the space to do so). The closest modern equivalent to such a computer would be a calculator, and maybe not even a scientific one. Depending on if electronic screens have been excepted it might output to a screen, but is more likely to output to paper or tape. I fail to see how this is the same conclusion as ending up with a smartphone.


Going back to cars, is it really feasible for us to not have some form of internal engine for a vehicle that travels along roads instead of rails? The technology was all readily in place, the use of steam to propel vehicles, even ones not on rails existed, the desire for the product was profound and the wealth was readily available. To change the world enough to make it such that cars were not inevitable, the car would be the least interesting, as you're now looking at many major divergences to the timeline.

I don't know anything about cars, which is why I concentrated on computers in my example, but to not invent the car you just need a reason to not want horseless carriages. I'd actually argue that if you've invented the canal system rail systems are superfluous unless you want to transport goods quickly (which you generally do, but in a world where nobody ages after their prime it's a bit more grey), and so I'd argue that to get rid of the car your best bet is to just remove the need for the railway (which probably requires divergences of it's own, but you get the rough idea).

I wasn't using the argument in relation to cars at all, except to say that the theory works for them (as long as you have no need to replace the horse and carriage you are basically gambling on 'it'll catch on'). I agree that due to the way it happened in the real world it was inevitable, but that was due to interest in the product and not 'we have the knowledge'.

Imagine a world where teleportation has been invented before the internal combustion engine, is there a definite desire to create the car? No, I'd argue it hovers around 50% depending on other factors.

[Yukitsu]

Okay, I understand computers fairly well, and the lack of an electronic computer would have a huge influence on culture. Image a computer that relies entirely on mechanical parts. Suddenly it's (likely) bulkier, can do far less (on a modern PC I can boot up a game I've just installed, this is likely very difficult on a mechanical computer), has less storage (the density of electronic storage is insanely good, which is why it's used despite being extremely volatile), does it slower, and is more subject to wear and tear (due to how fragile miniaturised electronic components are we sometimes include a ridiculous number of redundancies, because we have the space to do so). The closest modern equivalent to such a computer would be a calculator, and maybe not even a scientific one. Depending on if electronic screens have been excepted it might output to a screen, but is more likely to output to paper or tape. I fail to see how this is the same conclusion as ending up with a smartphone.

All I'm getting from this is you saying it is actually impossible for the mechanical parts to have won out since the costs are too high for only one very fringe advantage, meaning the market war between them is overwhelmingly favouring electronic parts. Even if there were fringe reasons for mechanical machines early on, they'd still be replaced by electric ones fairly shortly.


I don't know anything about cars, which is why I concentrated on computers in my example, but to not invent the car you just need a reason to not want horseless carriages. I'd actually argue that if you've invented the canal system rail systems are superfluous unless you want to transport goods quickly (which you generally do, but in a world where nobody ages after their prime it's a bit more grey), and so I'd argue that to get rid of the car your best bet is to just remove the need for the railway (which probably requires divergences of it's own, but you get the rough idea).

I wasn't using the argument in relation to cars at all, except to say that the theory works for them (as long as you have no need to replace the horse and carriage you are basically gambling on 'it'll catch on'). I agree that due to the way it happened in the real world it was inevitable, but that was due to interest in the product and not 'we have the knowledge'.

Imagine a world where teleportation has been invented before the internal combustion engine, is there a definite desire to create the car? No, I'd argue it hovers around 50% depending on other factors.

A lot of inventions are invented before they are needed and then brought back when they are. That's a peculiarity of invention, the actual inventing is actually close to inevitable so long as knowledge is wide spread enough, whether or not it catches on is a question of whether or not it provides an advantage at the time, or if it will later. When the car itself was invented, it wasn't needed and there wasn't really a market for it. They were owned by the rich and the powerful as toys more than anything else to show how hip and urban they were at a time where most people had carriages with horses rather than ones that run on the newest scientific invention, but they certainly were not needed. But they were invented anyway, and once they were, car manufacturers began to carve out a niche for themselves, make themselves more available and to advertise themselves as more prestigious than the carriage.

Unfortunately, something like the railway was almost inevitable. There were increasing agricultural surpluses that needed to be moved from the countryside to the increasingly urbanized and dense cities. New machine produced goods needed to be moved rapidly from the factories to the country and coal and other fuels needed to be brought from the mines to the cities and harbours. These are all so critically interlinked that to remove the desire for the rail, you'd need to change a massive cascade of events, and even if you eliminated the need for the rail, it would have been invented.

[Anonymouswizard]

All I'm getting from this is you saying it is actually impossible for the mechanical parts to have won out since the costs are too high for only one very fringe advantage, meaning the market war between them is overwhelmingly favouring electronic parts. Even if there were fringe reasons for mechanical machines early on, they'd still be replaced by electric ones fairly shortly.

The mechanical computer in the real world had over 100 years of a headstart on the electronic computer, and it mainly failed because the prototypes a) had problems (partially coming from the use of base 10) and b) weren't much better than a person with a sheet of paper. Without the problems of a) it is theoretically possible for mechanical computers to outperform humans by 1900, and by the time we were developing electronic computers (late 1940s) mechanical computers are more accurate and easier to read than the electronic prototypes, and possibly equal in speed (I'm not educated enough about them to say for definite) that interest in electronic computing might be fairly though, as why poor money into building something that gives no improvement, it's just a fancy computer less reliable than your current one, and as we are a university/government department/whatever and not rich people, we care more about what works than what's cool.

The key thing here is that for the basics of computing, there's not much between electronic and mechanical machines, it's only when you get to the advanced levels that electronic computers win out.

[ZeroGear]

Another way of looking at this is also where people decided to apply the technology to.
It's pretty easy to imagine someone applying the combustion engine to a railway vehicle rather than a carriage (in fact, I think that diesel-powered trains did exist).
Many times it comes down to the infrastructure of the society at the time. Horses and carriages were around and quite widely used before the train came along (and a good amount of time after that). Well, what if there was some reason why people would prefer riding in a train as opposed to a carriage?

Fact of the matter is that carriages were easy to defend since there were no beasts about that would want to tear one to bits (any more than bandits would). It stands to reason that people could have wanted heavily armored vehicles (like trains) if there has been some kind of big, dangerous creature about (such as something bigger than a bear, or something prone to attach horses and humans). In cases like that, it is often more feasible to put all your eggs on one basket, then fortify said basket at much as possible to prevent said eggs from being damaged.

In terms of computers, advanced electronic computers only won out because no one wanted to develop mechanical ones fur that than they did. It is likely that mechanical computers could have won out if someone had applied the decimal system instead of the base 10 one. I could picture a set of computers that work like typewriters, calculating everything with miniaturized gears spinning inside them. Maybe with a mercury-valve system instead of vacuum tubes. Granted, this would lead to a lot more cases of mercury poisoning, but you get my point.
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One of the other impacts a focus on railways could produce is the way cities are laid out. Sure, trains can go around bends, but they tend to do a lot better on straightways. This could mean that cities would be built in linear grids much more than around twisty roads, possibly having more underground stations later on.
It would be a reasonable idea to look at the european train systems, then extrapolate much of that onto each of the states in the US, connecting several state railway systems via interstate lines. This could, to an extent, replace the interstate highways with train tracks.

Another influence this might have is how people go to work. Rather than getting up and driving, individuals would have to get up to the nearest station on time or else risk missing the train. Punctuality would have a bigger meaning,as one would have to set their watch/clock in accordance to arrival and departure times. On the bright side, it might be a little safer, given that traffic jams and traffic accidents would be either reduced or nearly eliminated (it's safer to get home drunk if you take mass transit than if you tried to drive).

On the other hand, private physicians or home visit doctors could be much more common. Mass transit has the down side of creating an ideal location to spread germs. It is reasonable to assume that sick people would not be wanted on train cars, or they might have their own designated sections on trains. Therefore it is more likely that a doctor would come to the patients home rather than the sick person going to the praxis. Hospitals might even have their private cars or trains for transpiring especially sick individuals.

[veti]

One of the reasons I think that cars became as popular and prolific as they did (aside from being status symbols) is that it was easier to adapt and utilize public roads than it was to build railways. Assuming no one had managed to create a personal motorized vehicle before large-scale and far-reaching railways had been constructed, one can assume that train systems and public transport would be much more developed and have a larger focus in society than it does today.

Well, Britain (for one) had "large-scale and far-reaching" railways long before personal motorised vehicles became a thing, but as soon as cars did appear, they had no difficulty taking over the country. If the invention of the car had come 100 years later, I suspect the story would've worked out much the same

Railways had more influence on the geography of Britain than any other invention before or since. They enabled a great concentration of population in cities (because it became feasible to transport large quantities of food into the city), even while there was no reason to widen and upgrade roads, which is why so many cities today have narrow, cramped, twisty roads. In the 1840s, the conurbation now called "London" was still a great sprawling collection of more-or-less separate communities, each with its own little patch of farmland providing fresh milk and eggs to the local community; by the 1870s, those green spaces had been crowded out, converted to purely recreational parks (if they were lucky) or, more likely, housing, and "London" had become a single, solid, densely-built city.

You'd see more mixed city zoning - particularly mixing 'commercial' with 'residential'. Shops, and less-polluting industry, would want to be as near as possible to their customers and workers. More-polluting industry would congregate around certain stations, so that they could transport their workers in (and their product out). There'd be an advantage to much greater vertical integration in the labour supply chain: by which I mean, the same entrepreneur who owns the factories clustered around Station A, can profit by building railway from A to the commuter stations B and C, and by constructing street after street of terraced housing to fit as many families as possible within the walking radius of B and C.

And "shopping centres", as we know them, wouldn't exist at all.

In fact, I think a more interesting alternate might be "what if railways had never been invented, and we'd gone straight from ox-carts to private cars?" Europe in particular would look very different.

Are there aircraft, in this alternate timeline of yours?

[ZeroGear]

Be my guest to speculate on that.
This thread is more of an open-ended discussion on repercussions a single change could affect upon society as a whole. I never indented to create any singe timeline or story setting out of this (but please, if this inspires you feel free to grab the ball and run with it).
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As far as aircrafts are concerned, I somehow think that (without combustion engines) they would lean a lot more towards balloon-type vehicles. It's more likely that a dirigible would be the main means of air transit, possibly segwaying into the fantasy airships every steampunk lover adores.
On the other hand, if diesel engines had been applied to trains rather than carriages, aircrafts as we know them may possibly have developed. The main change I would imagine is that they would use a sort of rail system as a guided takeoff ramp.

Same basic principle with boats. Steamers developed because (I'm guessing) someone applied the concept of a steam engine to a boat. It is possible that if a diesel engine had been applied to trains on a large scale, then it would have eventually made it to boats too, and we would have seen a good number of diesel-powered clippers, since liquid fuel is more combustable and easier to store than the same energy value of coal or lumber (in fact, I think that's what happened in the real world).

Now, on a more personal side, imagine someone living in a town full of intersecting railway tracks; kids are bound to come up with ways to use them for their own entertainment. Try to picture someone coming up with a vehicle similar to a bike or motorcycle that runs on rails rather than roads. Or maybe a rail-mounted skateboard or skates. There's a lot to think about.

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Sorry for my rage focus on trains and railways, but I've always found a strange appeal of the great machines form ages past. There is some kind of strange aesthetic quality that gear and steam driven machinations have that you just can't find in modern vehicles (not that modern vehicles don't have their own charm, they just lack the aged elegance and romanticism steam engines carry).

[goto124]

What happens to ambulance and police cars?

On the bright side, no drunk driving or speeding!

[fusilier]

Steam power cars not only existed, but became quite sophisticated. In fact, there's a good chance that steam powered automobiles may have "won out" (over gas and electric) if it hadn't been for some particular circumstances. By the 1920s some steam cars could be started cold, and driven off within 40 seconds! -- but by then it was too late. Similarly electric cars were popular, but they couldn't compete with the other two for range.

Likewise, some of the early successful computers were electro-mechanical, like the Havard Mark I and the Zuse computers. Of course the miniaturization process that electronic solutions like transistors allowed would probably mean we wouldn't have things like laptops, but, technically speaking we could have turing-complete computers.

--EDIT--
As for storage, magnetic drum storage was a popular early storage form (dating to the 1930s), and old-fashioned magnetic tape still has a very high density -- although terrible read times. In fact, I'm not sure if there are too many storage devices that are built around transistor technology (although the controllers for such devices can make use of that technology). Although we are still talking about electric devices.

[Anonymouswizard]

In terms of computers, advanced electronic computers only won out because no one wanted to develop mechanical ones fur that than they did. It is likely that mechanical computers could have won out if someone had applied the decimal system instead of the base 10 one. I could picture a set of computers that work like typewriters, calculating everything with miniaturized gears spinning inside them. Maybe with a mercury-valve system instead of vacuum tubes. Granted, this would lead to a lot more cases of mercury poisoning, but you get my point.

This gives me an interesting idea for a world where computers can do nothing but compute, but they can do so really well. I just plan to stay away from steampunk 'magic tech' as much as possible, but yes, such a computer is definitely feasible, possibly for home use if you have a spare room or house. Also, Base 10=decimal. Did you mean Binary?


Likewise, some of the early successful computers were electro-mechanical, like the Havard Mark I and the Zuse computers. Of course the miniaturization process that electronic solutions like transistors allowed would probably mean we wouldn't have things like laptops, but, technically speaking we could have turing-complete computers.

Yep, this is why I propose that a world without semiconductors would be interesting even if electronic computers existed.


--EDIT--
As for storage, magnetic drum storage was a popular early storage form (dating to the 1930s), and old-fashioned magnetic tape still has a very high density -- although terrible read times. In fact, I'm not sure if there are too many storage devices that are built around transistor technology (although the controllers for such devices can make use of that technology). Although we are still talking about electric devices.

Electronic computer memory is made out of logic gates, which are made out of transistors.

[Radar]

Electronic computer memory is made out of logic gates, which are made out of transistors.
But we do have other options (http://iopscience.iop.org/1882-0786/7/12/125201/pdf/1882-0786_7_12_125201.pdf). Besides, fusilier was not talking about RAM, but the stable data storage methods, which don't rely on semiconductors.

Aside from that, another very fascinating avenue of computers are the analog ones, which were immensly successful as highly specialised machines (for example sophisticated targeting computers). Without semiconductors it might have been reasonable, to mix analog and digital computers in order to achieve better performance, since quite a lot of calculations, which would be cumbersome on binary machines are rather trivial to perform on analog machines.

[Yukitsu]

I think what I'm concluding from this tech talk is, if you want to do alt history about technology, it makes more sense to start at a crucial tech, say cars, and then work backward from there to try and find what kind of history we would need to have ended up without cars.

[veti]

Now, on a more personal side, imagine someone living in a town full of intersecting railway tracks; kids are bound to come up with ways to use them for their own entertainment. Try to picture someone coming up with a vehicle similar to a bike or motorcycle that runs on rails rather than roads. Or maybe a rail-mounted skateboard or skates. There's a lot to think about.

Do a Google Image search for 'hand powered rail vehicle'. There are quite a lot of designs in our world.

Not sure that railway tracks would be a great place for kids to play... In my experience, they tend to be quite well hidden/fenced off against exactly that possibility. Of course you can get onto them if you try, but it's not like you're just stumbling over them at every turn. At one time I used to walk along a (disused) railway line to get home from school; we had to clamber up a bank to get onto the track at the school end, and I think the only reason there wasn't a honking great chain-link fence in the way is because the line had been retired ten years ago, even the rails and sleepers had gone. At the 'home' end we came out in what had formerly been the station. In between those points, there was just no very plausible-looking way to get on or off the track.

[VoxRationis]

I would argue that the Internet, or something like it, would likely show up whether internal combustion engines existed or not—phones and telegraphs both spread rapidly before cars were really a thing, because the ability to communicate quickly over long distances is always valuable for any society more distributed than a self-sufficient band. Now, the implementation of it might not be as it was in our history, depending on a number of different factors.

I'd argue that the world would be a lot bloodier by the 21st century. A lack of internal combustion did nothing to prevent the carnage of the American Civil War, and the technology's application to WWI was fairly not-in-keeping with what really formed the meat grinder of trench warfare—machine guns, artillery, and poison gas. But what prevented the great powers of the 20th century from going at it after WWII was mutually assured destruction, which is dependent upon the ability to deliver nuclear weapons swiftly to the enemy. If the Flying Fortress (and its Soviet equivalent) had never been invented, the powers of the world would be convinced that well-made defensive lines could defend themselves adequately from nuclear threats to their heartlands, at least until people started making nuclear missiles. Freed from the fear of nuclear hellfire raining down upon their capitals in retribution for any direct assaults upon their hated enemies, the Americans and Russians would likely have felt a lot freer to back up their words with steel and fire (and possibly fission).

[veti]

I'd argue that the world would be a lot bloodier by the 21st century. A lack of internal combustion did nothing to prevent the carnage of the American Civil War, and the technology's application to WWI was fairly not-in-keeping with what really formed the meat grinder of trench warfare—machine guns, artillery, and poison gas. But what prevented the great powers of the 20th century from going at it after WWII was mutually assured destruction, which is dependent upon the ability to deliver nuclear weapons swiftly to the enemy. If the Flying Fortress (and its Soviet equivalent) had never been invented, the powers of the world would be convinced that well-made defensive lines could defend themselves adequately from nuclear threats to their heartlands, at least until people started making nuclear missiles. Freed from the fear of nuclear hellfire raining down upon their capitals in retribution for any direct assaults upon their hated enemies, the Americans and Russians would likely have felt a lot freer to back up their words with steel and fire (and possibly fission).

The historical record shows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll) that body count is not dependent on technology. Meat-grinder warfare specifically depends on logistics - the ability to deliver large amounts of food, ammunition and troops to the front on a continuous basis - which is certainly facilitated by road transport. Automobiles are a two-edged wossname in this context. On the one hand, they enable the logistics that make trench warfare possible; on the other hand, they also provide the mobility and protection needed to break that sort of stalemate.

I very much doubt that the model of nuclear deterrence would be significantly changed by losing internal combustion. Bombs can be delivered by airship, or planted by saboteurs (or 'terrorists', as we call them nowadays). After World War One - when Britain was bombed by Zeppelins - it became conventional wisdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bomber_will_always_get_through) that there simply was no reliable way to stop bombers. It seems to me that you wouldn't need a Flying Fortress or equivalent, if the other side didn't have combustion-powered fighters to attack incoming bombers.

[VoxRationis]

But it becomes a lot easier to detect and intercept incoming enemies if they're moving slowly. Even if your forces move at a similar slow pace, as the defender, you have multiple points from which to launch defending forces, making interception easier, and you are less likely to be surprised by an attack simply by virtue of having more time in which to spot an opponent.

In any case, incendiary rounds are effective against airships, and can be used from other airships. And while London might be difficult to defend from Germany, sorties between Moscow and Washington have to cross a lot of territory—successfully moving through it against the wishes of a defending party would be far more difficult if airplanes were not available, so the US and USSR would be justified in viewing themselves "safer" from each other in such circumstances.

[fusilier]

But we do have other options (http://iopscience.iop.org/1882-0786/7/12/125201/pdf/1882-0786_7_12_125201.pdf). Besides, fusilier was not talking about RAM, but the stable data storage methods, which don't rely on semiconductors.

Yeah, thanks. For RAM, magnetic-core-memory was popular into the 1970s -- there were other solutions too. My general point was that at *sometime* there was usually a successful solution to these problems, although not all those solutions were present in the same machine.


Aside from that, another very fascinating avenue of computers are the analog ones, which were immensly successful as highly specialised machines (for example sophisticated targeting computers). Without semiconductors it might have been reasonable, to mix analog and digital computers in order to achieve better performance, since quite a lot of calculations, which would be cumbersome on binary machines are rather trivial to perform on analog machines.

I find analog computers fascinating, and wish I had studied them more in college (although they were long out of fashion then). The manner in which they solve problems is just so different, and I find it kind of sad that they are passé now. Some of the advances in neural networks are in some ways similar to analog computing, although not quite the same.

[Segev]

Let's examine this from another angle: what would have caused cars to cease to be prominent, and what would have replaced them?

One of the things that is very often done to show an "alternate timeline" is in effect is to have a modern-esq world, highly recognizable as sharing our technology and most of our cultural traits, but with dirigibles prominently visible in the skies (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld). Whether the tvtropes article linked is 100% accurate or not in its claim as to the cause, it is right that lighter-than-air ships were very popular right up until WWII. The credited cause for their sudden drop in popularity is the Hindenburg disaster, combined with the fact that it was caught on film at a time when nobody was used to seeing disasters that dramatic.

If we approach this from a slightly unusual perspective, and consider our own Earth to be the "alternate world" at which somebody is looking, that somebody will see our world as a possible answer to, "Timeline speculation thread, no dirigibles?"

The history of the lighter-than-air ship is a bit more complex than one seminal disaster. They were actually a struggling industry when WWII was going on because the most well-known ones were the Zeppelins, which were German-built. They were, much like Detroit automobiles would come to be for the USA during the mid-1900s, a huge symbol of German pride and engineering.

However, the source for the preferred lift gas, helium, was (and still is) the USA. We have mines full of the stuff. (Yes, I know how weird it seems that Helium is mined, but it is.) When WWII started, we wouldn't sell it to Germany anymore. While other nations built blimps and dirigibles, they didn't have nearly the existing infrastructure for them and they had more pressing things to which to turn their manufacturies during that time. The Hindenburg disaster was in no small part due to the use of hydrogen as its lift gas; this wouldn't have happened if the USA hadn't been embargoing Germany due to German actions against US allies such as Britain. i.e., it was due to the war.

So while the disaster was doubtless influential, I suspect it was more a final nail that shattered an already shakey edifice.

So, given that we can see in our own speculative fiction an idea of "what if we had stayed en route for lighter-than-air ships being our air travel of choice?" this thread becomes more a question of inverting that change.

In our world, airplanes and other heavier-than-air craft replaced the dirigible. Even in some areas where we actually want the slow, drifting, somewhat stationary item, we've developed heavier-than-air technologies to achieve it (helicopters, VTOL aircraft). These are, in many cases, more expensive and more hazardous. They are, however, smaller, and faster when they ARE moving. There are reasons why, even with both technologies matured, one would choose helicopters over dirigibles...and still reasons why a blimp might, in some cases, be superior to a helicopter if we had the facilities to work with them.

So, what caused cars to not be a thing? Rather than "nobody invented it," I would suggest we look for reasons why they never "caught on." Perhaps, at the height of the American industrial boom, when Detroit was making hundreds of thousands (if not tens of millions) of cars a year, the gas shortages of the Carter administration struck, and not only were there long lines at the gas pumps, but an "economic advisory" board with governmental powers pushed major new production lines of cars which used a cheaper, more volatile fuel. Pushed them against the recommendation of the Detroit engineers who designed them (and said they were unsafe).

Days after this new line hit the streets, and people were rejoicing over the new abundance of fuel for these cheaper cars, a chain reaction of explosions from one 30-car pileup in Detroit itself resulted in the Great Detroit Fire. Protesters against the new engines and fuels sabotaged some of the fueling stations, leading to further explosions.

Cars were discredited as a horribly unsafe and uneconomical transportation method. The few "cars" left are akin to the real-world Goodyear Blimp during the late 1900s: showpieces and fun-but-odd tech that by now few quite remember WHY they aren't in use, just that they're not practical due to lack of supporting infrastructure.


Smaller, electric and even old-style gas powered vehicles might survive. Motorcycles don't LOOK like cars, and, if safety were a focus rather than "style," could be decent personal transport. Sidecars would thus be a definite thing, including "baby sidecar seats." Evolving from that might even be more stable motortrikes and motorquads (evolving, ultimately, into mini one-man cars), and small trailers that are effectively old-style carriages for transporting one's family.

Public transport in major cities would be a thing, especially streetcars. Subways would likely be private industries in competition with each other, where feasible, and I could see elevated public transit being a major thing, as well. Train stations that are on the third or fourth floors of buildings as the elevated rail rolls right up to them. Trolleys and streetcars at ground level, possibly with hitching points to tie your family carriage to them for a roll across town, relying on hired "taxi bikes" as a sort of tugboat service to get you from the main lines to final destinations.

Suburbs are a result of cars - personal transportation that can get you from place to place rapidly, enabling commuting. "satelite cites" would be more the norm with a mass transit-enabled commuting. Dense (but not as dense) clusters of residential areas and light commercial presence, maybe built around a super-center like Wal*Mart or CostCo in walking or biking distance, while major commuting is by rail (again, possibly, with carriages as "bring your own traincar" type conveyances).

The key, I think, to consider is, what existing technologies can serve the same purpose as cars, in some combination, and how would they be expanded in a world where people, for a decade at least, refused to buy/drive cars, until the infrastructure to support these alternatives was so emplaced that cars are no longer viable as a mass transportation mechanism?

How might trains have been adapted and evolved to make them nearly as convenient, and in combination with what other mechanisms and social constructs?


I'm, personally, really liking the idea of the modernized carriage with an industry of "taxi bikes" that are hired drivers to pick them up and pull them to rail lines, where they're hooked into a streetcar grid or hitched into a train as one's own personal train car. It's rather impractical until you build some extensive infrastructure around it, and even then has drawbacks compared to personal cars, but it could be made to work, runs on different sources of fuel (though the tug-bikes would actually burn through MORE than normal and just have to refuel more often, but that would be "off screen" to most users of the system), and would lead to an alien-enough looking modern world that you could FEEL the difference, while retaining most of our same modern technologies and cultural designs.

[Radar]

How might trains have been adapted and evolved to make them nearly as convenient, and in combination with what other mechanisms and social constructs?
1. Trams.
2. Mass transit would be combined with bikes for example. See, how it works in Kopenhagen for example and work from there. There is a possibility of either everyone having their own bike instead of a car, or using public bikes available near every big station - a variation on park-and-ride.
3. There would be more incentive to live near the place you work, so I guess the specialised districts (strictly commercial, strictly residential and so on) would be either less pronounced or simply smaller and mixed with each other.

[ZeroGear]

Motorcycles could also be a way to explain how Police work in a world like that.
Since bikes are easier to get around in, and they already exist in the would we live in, police squads would most likely have officers going around with sidecar bikes in teams of two. If they come across individuals they have to arrest, they call in backup, (hopefully) take the criminals down, then stuff them into a sanctioned "police caboose" at the nearest trains station to be hauled off to the main hub for processing.
Similarly, trams could be used to explain fire departments. If tram tracks go everywhere, it would be easy to imagine a big red tram with a bunch of pumps and hoses that goes to any nearby fire area, with fire-cycles used as first response vehicles to slow the blazes. Since trams are monitored from a central terminal, a fire call would come in and request the "freezing" of active lines from point A to point B, routing any active trams to bypasses until the Fire-Tram has passed.

[Anonymouswizard]

Motorcycles could also be a way to explain how Police work in a world like that.
Since bikes are easier to get around in, and they already exist in the would we live in, police squads would most likely have officers going around with sidecar bikes in teams of two. If they come across individuals they have to arrest, they call in backup, (hopefully) take the criminals down, then stuff them into a sanctioned "police caboose" at the nearest trains station to be hauled off to the main hub for processing.
Similarly, trams could be used to explain fire departments. If tram tracks go everywhere, it would be easy to imagine a big red tram with a bunch of pumps and hoses that goes to any nearby fire area, with fire-cycles used as first response vehicles to slow the blazes. Since trams are monitored from a central terminal, a fire call would come in and request the "freezing" of active lines from point A to point B, routing any active trams to bypasses until the Fire-Tram has passed.

Why ate we assuming trains, trams, and motorbikes exist (from least to most annoying to me). Especially the motorbikes, if we had them and sidecars why not make the 'side'-car motorised with a steering bar?

[Jay R]

If nobody had invented cars, somebody would invent cars. When it's time for an invention to appear, somebody will think of it.

[ZeroGear]

For the sake of speculation, let's say that cars had been invented, but failed to become as popular as they are for whatever reason (lack of fuel, horrendous accident that left a stigma, strange creatures that rendered passage less safe, something more efficient appearing), what could have filled the niche that cars have right now, and how would it have changed society?

We've already discussed trains (and trams by extension), but how else could the world have changed?

If no one likes this train of though (excuse the pun), feel free to ponder and post another divination in history (like, what would the would be like if the Romans hand't converted before their fall or what if Napoleon hadn't lost at Waterloo).

[GungHo]

For the sake of speculation, let's say that cars had been invented, but failed to become as popular as they are for whatever reason (lack of fuel, horrendous accident that left a stigma, strange creatures that rendered passage less safe, something more efficient appearing), what could have filled the niche that cars have right now, and how would it have changed society?
Vacuum tubes. Like at the bank.

Otherwise you're going to end up with something that's just like a car that isn't a car. Like hovercars or hoverboards. The idea of putting an engine of some type into a carriage and moving it along is simply too easy and too obvious, even in an alt history where something like internal combustion on fossil fuels isn't feasible because fossil fuel extraction didn't work right, which also gets you away from coal-fired steam, etc. While the modern car works as an amalgamation of a lot of different types of technology, the removal of any one of them doesn't really get you away from the concept nor does it get away from the obvious convenience of being able to go from point a to point b without having to worry about it pooping everywhere or deciding to walk off. You can take away iron/aluminum, but not only can you make a car body out of wood (and originally it was all wood except for the engine, exhaust, and bracing), taking away forged iron messes up a lot of things, obviously. Aluminum messes up fewer, but you're also getting away from more advanced airplanes.

[Lorsa]

If no one likes this train of though (excuse the pun), feel free to ponder and post another divination in history (like, what would the would be like if the Romans hand't converted before their fall or what if Napoleon hadn't lost at Waterloo).

Those sort of questions are much more interesting to discuss, as inventions are almost impossible to remove as a discrete entity.

[Segev]

The concept of "put an engine on a carraige" is pretty straight-forward, yes, which is why one of the suggested "replacements" I had was to instead to step it back to unpowered carriages, but pulled by powered devices rather than animals. i.e. tug-bikes. There's a variant on this in the modern-day rikshaws that exist in some East Asian cities (most prominently, in fictional representations, Hong Kong): bicicles pulling, effectively, carriages.

Electrically-powered personal carriages which tap into a streetcar-like grid would also be feasible, though more likely the evolution would have streetcar-like "main pullers" that pull trains of personal carriages hooked in at train stations and dragged there by tug-bikes or even simple man-power. (Get the whole family pumping bike-pedals?)

The key here is that the aversion was to "cars," so people maybe went back initially to horse-drawn buggies and personal bikes, while motorbikes were "safer" because they could afford to use the less-dangerous but more-expensive fuel (gasoline) or even be fully electrically powered. Given shorter drag-distances (to and from streetcar lines), the difficulties which have made electric vehicles in our own world wouldn't be quite so harsh. Frequent need to recharge/refuel would happen between jaunts. But the crucial visible and cultural difference is that the power for the vehicle comes from an externally-hitched puller device, the way horses once pulled carriages.

[Yukitsu]

What would happen is that after a long enough time, they would catch on in a different country that didn't have that aversion to the product. The case where blimps became unpopular doesn't really work here as a counter example since they were already struggling to remain competitive with air planes by then, and weren't popular in very many countries. Cars were fairly popular in Britain, Germany and America and if something happened to make them impractical in one country, I think Britain would be the most likely alt history target for that to happen, Detroit would still continue to pump out Ford cars by the appropriate time and the Germans would still be founding car companies like Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagon. Something happens in Britain, America and Germany? Even Japan had a motor industry by then. There as well? Now we're writing a conspiracy theory to suppress the advancement of technology from some world ruling cabal fiction instead of alt history.

[Segev]

You can obviously write the story to re-assert cars. That's defeating the point of the exercise, though, which is to a) speculate on what would replace them and b) come up with what caused them to need replacement such that they aren't just "invented elsewhere instead."

If public transit was given enough room to take over while cars were on the outs with the public, eventually it would be the 400-lb gorilla against which those still-not-quite-trusted "cars" would have to compete for a come-back.

Why are lighter-than-air craft not resurging? Because they require different infrastructure than exists to support their competition, at least in part.

Cars are similar.

Rural and wild areas, where all-terrain trucks and the like are in use today, would have just kept seeing horses and other live transport items. There might well be a few vehicles of the sorts that see use in those areas today that made the recovery; in fact, that could be the one place they're even remotely common. They'll be more pricey, due to less demand, and they'll be much more specialized for off-road, since roads are clogged with streetcars and bikes.

The infrastructure for main transportation favors trains and bikes; cars just don't have places to DRIVE in this world that aren't rural.