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Point is, nobody in the 1800s was going to observe a world ending meteor and then alter the outcome. Altering the outcome isn't a given in any case.
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Any event that would cause us to forget astronomy and optics and cause mass amnesia would put us farther back than the 1800s.
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Scaling back the economy without unduly impacting innovation is very tricky.
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Bucky was saying we would surrender the decisions to computers in the 1970s.
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It took exactly everything that has transpired in the past to arrive where we are today. If things could have been any different, they would have.
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Two words: Streetcar Conspiracy
That last post was long on light bulbs. Have a look at the landing page here:
Tartaria: English Version I could never get into Steampunk even with the airships, but Antiquitech with it's electrostatically resonant antennas in old photographs is another matter. The American 1800s from a Russian perspective:
Logistical theory of civilization. Part 4 "Chicago Massacre"
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...the essential activity in the formation of the city, which most deserves detailed description, is the famous slaughterhouse of Chicago because its technological equipment was a miracle of the 19th century and its activities would give rise to a colossal structure of associated companies.
Well, the volume of wild meat running on the great American plains was so considerable that, by early 1865, Chicago had built a complex, unique for this time, with slaughterhouses, office buildings, stations and railroads that allowed the transportation of the cattle directly for the corrals designated
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The assembly line was introduced into the slaughterhouse long before Henry Ford. The work was organized in such a way that each worker knew only one stage of the operation.
[big snip]
We are forced to describe each element separately but, in fact, everything happened simultaneously. In just 30 years, from 1840 to 1870, the population of Chicago increased from 4 to 300 thousand people. Chicago has become the second largest city in the United States, thanks exclusively to access to valuable resources and good transportation lines to New York Harbor.
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Pagodas, being electrostatic resonators, predate the 19th century. Then there're the fireplaces:
http://www.tart-aria.info/en/history...rgy-fireplace/
These apparently had metal-lined flues with no smoke shelf. The back plate was a radiant heater.