World building question: technology

[Celine]

I have some problems with the technology level in the world I’m creating and I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out a little.

Recently I became really interested in the nineteenth century – especially in western Europe – and I want to create that kind of atmosphere in my world – or, rather in the country in which my story is set. That country is changing in many ways: scientist are doing a lot of research, knowledge in general becomes more and more important. There is some imperialism – the government is not trying to colonize other parts of the world, but the inhabitants do believe themselves to be superior in many ways.
I want the technology level in that country to be pretty much the same as the technology level in western Europe in the second part of the 19th century. However, I don‘t want to just imitate the technology of our world, but that’s exactly what I’ve done so far.

In my world, magic is just some kind of energy and can be used in technology, but I don’t want everything to work with magic.

I have already decided to use trains, typewriters, telegraphs and probably other things like that, but I have doubts about using that kind of technology in a completely different world.

My main question, however, is about the energy resources and the way the machines work. I’m not sure if they should be able to use the same resources as we do, but I can’t come up with something completely different.

Besides magic, I think I want them (they and them being the inhabitants of my world) to do research on solar energy (I know we still have problems with that, but there are some similarities between using the sun to create energy for machines and their magic system). They probably will also be able to discover how to use pneumatics and things like that.

I also thought it might be interesting to ‘talk’ about technology in a fantasy setting in general, but maybe it would be better to start a new thread for that.

Greetings,
Celine

 

[Cheehwawa]

Maybe magma-powered?

 

[Celine]

Sounds great!

I have no idea how exactly that could be done and there are no vulcano's in the country I was speaking about, but I'm very tempted to place a huge one in another country - if you don't mind me using your idea, of course.

 

[Cheehwawa]

By all means, go ahead
Just happy to help

Im not sure how cult/religion plays out in your world, but if they play a prominent role you could possibly find a way to base the cult around the country's only active volcano or something. Just tossing out ideas, I dont want to tell you how to form your world or anything

It's an interesting concept, btw, I like it

 

[Celine]

Thank you, Cheehwawa,

I really like your suggestions. Religion is a bit complicated in my world, but I will certainly think about it.

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Ok, I don't want to spam, but first I tried to edit my previous post and after that I tried to send a private message. I couldn't do the first anymore and I'm not allowed to do the second, so I finally decided to just post this.

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Edit: thank you for the explanation, Pyan.
I've read about the edit-button before, but the edit button was still there when I tried to change something. I only couldn't save the changes I had made.

 

[Pyan]

Ok, I don't want to spam, but first I tried to edit my previous post and after that I tried to send a private message. I couldn't do the first anymore and I'm not allowed to do the second, so I finally decided to just post this.

Asking a reasonable question isn't spam, Celine!

The edit function is turned off after a delay- this is to stop people changing their posts, maybe to alter a comment or viewpoint, or change their stance on a controversial subject.

Private Messaging is enabled after you've made 15 posts in "serious" threads, as part of the anti-spam protection software that we use. Posts in The Lounge, Birthdays, Playrooms, Humour and Introductions don't count. All posts in the main SF/F sections in the upper part of the main index do,as do the Discussion Boards at the bottom of the menu.
This also applies to posting links, and to your post-count.

Hope this makes it clearer...

Oh, and welcome to the Chrons!...

 

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Solar power? Maybe using gold plates to collect heat. I have no idea if it works, but it sounds great and would fit nicely into the Victorian era.

 

[chrispenycate]

Apart from non-tarnishing mirrors, gold's not much use for anything in power generation/distribution. Not a particularly high or low melting point, or thermal capacity, or conductivity, or… or anything, really.

I discovered that I still had my reply to this thread kicking around on my hard disc (do you think that means my computer was supposed to have an easy disc, for infodummies like me, and they forgot to install it.

So, if you were trying to forget this and the crash gave you the opportunity:-

The critical point is not the source of energy, but the transformation of this energy from one form to another.

The source of energy in steam power is combustion; as it is for the internal combustion engine, or diesel (and they're more than likely to have fire; that's old technology). The clever bit is converting heat energy into mechanical motion.

My dragons are quite contemptuous of steam, but actually it is likely to cause more upset in their lives than gunpowder, of which they are not at all scornful.

Without steam, there is no stimulus to move on to internal combustion or diesel, and electricity remains a signalling device, with no tendency towards power transmission. Even lighting remains gas, and theatres continue to burn down.

If we assume no-one got the inspiration for steam power, what mechanical energy do we have available. Wind power (you'd know about that), water power, both flowing rivers and tide and wave power from the sea. And mainly muscle power, both human and animal.

While overshot water wheels and belt drive systems can drive factories or lifts, squeeze fruits or run cranes, for long-range transport systems we need an energy storage system which is constant (which neither wind nor solar can offer), portable (which water power misses out on and rechargeable. (rocket cars may have military functions but are impractical for general use).

Most energy storage up to now has been done at a chemical level – batteries and things you burn. Without the steam interface, what is left to us?

Big springs, obviously or slowly falling weights, but it is difficult to see this storing enough power for any practical use.

Flywheels. There was even a municipal bus service that ran on these. With the right gear set up, you can spin the wheel up when going downhill or braking. You'd need regular charge up points, perhaps windmills that doubled as hostelries and inns, the length of the route, and the darn aristocratic horsemen would keep overtaking you, even as you passed the farm carts.

Compressed air? In my youth (yes, despite evidence I was young once) I was involved with an undersea house project, and we used combined wave and tide power to compress air and pump it down to us (them, really; I spent very little time down below) The idea, obviously, was to breath it, but it turned out to be quite a good power source, down where combustion was not a viable alternative, Power tools, torpedo motors, even a little crane,

Harrods used to power their delivery vans with it.
Need some materials technology to build cylinders solid enough to take the pressure, and not too heavy, but they can be structural in the construction of the vehicle, chassis as well as power supply.

Solar power? Essentially arrives as heat energy, and if we can convert that to forward motion we can do so with several other sources of heat, including burning things. Nowadays, it would be more efficient if, instead of using photocells to convert solar energy into electricity at low efficiency, store the electricity in heavy, medium efficiency batteries, transfer it through a medium efficiency control system to high efficiency electric motors, we focussed the heat on a stream cylinder and ran the mechanical energy direct to the wheels, but no-one even considers doing it like this. Why? Because the moment the sun went in you'd only have the tiny little bit of energy stored in the steam boiler, so you couldn't drive at night, or i the rain.

Storage of the energy is critical; and, unlike Gulliver's travels, we can't store sunbeams in cucumbers.

I don't know your magic system, so I don't know if it can provide forward motion, or be stored in anything of reasonable weight (typically amulets and enchanted weapons) If so, using a magic transducer might be as natural (and unconsidered) as using the chemical energy in a battery, continuously recharged. No-one would ever think of it as magic, just as nobody thinks of an electric car as chemical.

Apart from the last, most of these alternatives would leave muscle power as the principal transport alternative and this, in turn, means that road freight is less interesting than water. Canal networks, with towpaths and locks, develop wherever the land is flat enough that the price isn't exorbitant. Factories are built along them, so heavy goods can be moved efficiently. Market towns have mooring docks, army logistics follow waterways (including seacoasts) and diverting flow from streams becomes a respected way of stranding an enemy army.

Perhaps we'd better not ignore muscle power; if they specialise in biotechnology, there might be a specialised transport beast. Perhaps bred from a pig, omnivorous, but with the extra efficiency of a camel's digestive tract, and capable of travelling at a steady fifty kilometres an hour while pulling a load, with their cousins in treadmills aboard ships, or in factories, or pumping and ventilating mines…

They'd need to sleep and eat, and maybe even rest from time to time, and they would eat things that could otherwise nourish humans (and the dung problem for an omnivore would be horrendous – perhaps breed them intelligent enough to know where to excrete)

All right. Now let's assume that, instead of thinking of pumps, pistons and cylinders, our steam inventor thought of turning, spinning like a waterwheel. Our first use of steam might be a steam turbine, and from here, all the sliding moving bits look heavy and crude.

Electricity generation at high power is possible, trains and trolley-busses can be powered by that.
Gear boxes become cutting edge technology, because of the turbine's optimum performance at fixed speed. We get our age of steam, but without the immense torque at low speeds, trains develop late, and there is more tendency toward private automobiles for the rich. The natural evolution of the gas turbine means we might get aircraft engines before a decent workhorse power supply for trucks.

Without the railways (at least until electricity gets there) ordinary people travel less, and local concerns are more slowly subjugated to national ones. With sail still dominating the oceans, there is less of a tendency towards the immense battleships and transoceanic liners, more towards smaller, more manoeuvrable vessels.

In short, then (what, me say something short?) it is not the source of energy that changes things – steam trains have burnt logs and even mummies in place of coal, and, had somebody decided not to become dependent on foreign imports and run internal combustion engines on alcohol or coal oil, horseless carriages would have gone through more or less the same evolution as they did, though probably more expensive and fewer in number – it is the means of converting disorganised thermal molecular energy into purposeful forward motion.

 

[ctg]

Dear me, what my eyes see. Gold is one the best conductors you can get. Let me lend something from the WIKI:

Electronics. The concentration of free electrons in gold metal is 5.90×1022 cm-3. Gold is highly conductive to electricity, and has been used for electrical wiring in some high energy applications (silver is even more conductive per volume, but gold has the advantage of corrosion resistance). For example, gold electrical wires were used during some of the Manhattan Project's atomic experiments, but large high current silver wires were used in the calutron isotope separator magnets in the project.

 

[ChrisBfla]

This is an interesting concept. Of course the main power sources in the 1860s were steam power and water power. An easy way to use solar would be to construct huge parabolic mirriors to boil water into steam. Such a device would also be useful as a weapon, to focus sunlight on enemy ships or armies. Also you might want to consider the use of airships. They would fit into such a technology. Also, don't forget the fist true submarine, the Hunnley, was used in the American Civil War by the South to sink a Union ship.

Chris Berman

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

IT seems to me that although you are trying to be as realistic as possible with your technology you are definitely missing a trick here. And I mean a monster trick.

Everything (gold apart) Chris said has solid validity if you were trying to set your world in Victorian England but wait. Your not. Who's to say what will happen (just as it did in Victorian times when electricity and mechanics were combined to make the electric motor) when mechanics is combined with magic you are free to invent anything you like. I'm not aware of anyone who could take you to task about the magiocrompter or mechinagics in general. Your the one to decide. So we can't use wind power because it's not constant - well abracadabra it is now cause I've just called up my magic north wind.

Electromagism could be the application of magic to create super conducting 'gold' wires. Having this ability would allow old Wizard Gropian (the father of the eternal motor) to develop what ever he liked because unlike us he wasn't constrained by the physical realities of this planet.

OK so some of that was over the top. Tone it down a bit. It's still your world you have whatever you want, if you feel the need describe how it works. If not so what let the M word provide the answer.

 

[Navonod]

you coul say the technologys run very much like humans on water, air, and with blood going through us. Using any of those to power such things as typewriters or trains would be very intresting indeed.