Alt-Hist: Alternate Encyclopedias
What would you see if you were able to read excerpts from an encyclopedia written in another "world-line"? No doubt, there would be some details that one might recognize; but much of it might seem rather strange.
As an illustration of sorts, I am including a few excerpts from an encyclopedia found in a "world-line" where two or three extra British soldiers from the Crimean War survived and went on to have normal life-spans. [Yes, Florence Nightingale may have had some impact on soldier survival rates, but many modern commentators have questioned how much that impact was.] I have also included links (to our version of Wikipedia) to help illustrate some of the differences that resulted.
This particular set of extracts was inspired by a post done by dalecoz many moons ago, which talked about what it would be like if electricity were exploited earlier. Since I disagreed with some of the details, I decided to see if I could re-do parts of it. Having a copy of Charles Dunbar's book Buses, Trolleys and Trams from 1967 also helped to some degree.
UPDATE (9th June): I have added a few entries (for Alfred R Osbourne, Albert Dudley and Oliver Heaviside), as well as corrected some phrases elsewhere. [As to what may have happened to Alfred Osbourne, consider the first syllable of his surname. :-) ]
Extracts from Encyclopedia Americana (1955), obtained by unspecified means
Barnsworth, Adam (1828-1897). Said to be the illegitimate son of a baronet, he obtained an officer's rank in the British Marines in the late 1840s and served in the Crimean War, rising to the rank of Captain. Wounded in the late stages of the war, he left the military and settled in the West Midlands, where he made a profit as a merchant and trader. Prior to 1860, he became interested in electricity and joined a coterie investigating electrical phenomenon, which included other investigators such as Nathaniel Watson (a fellow survivor of the Crimean War) [q.v.] and Henry Wilde. He married Philomena Markwell in 1859, but the union was childless; they remained married until her death from consumption in 1889. He also died of consumption in March 1897 and was buried near Walsall.
Watson, Nathaniel (1824-1892). Third son of a well-known preacher named Jeremiah, he fought in the Crimean War and obtained a battlefield commission. In 1857, he left the military and met Adam Barnsworth [q.v.]; the two became close friends, both subsequently joining a club that investigated odd phenomena. Prior to 1860, he and Barnsworth joined a coterie interested in electricity and its applications. Married to Philippa Sandalwood Jones in 1845, he had four children: Roger (1846-1903), Katharine (1848-1922), Daniel (1850-1852) and Sally (1852). He was a partner in Barnsworth's trading enterprises and helped bring them to fruition. He died of unknown causes in November 1892 and was buried near Walsall; his wife lived on until her death sometime in 1905.
Walsall coterie. Famous for investigating electricity and its possible applications after 1860. Barnsworth and Watson were early notable members, as were Wilde and Andrew Swann [q.v.], the inventor of the first reliable lightbulb in 1862. Barnsworth, Wilde and Watson together made several improvements to the electric generator or "dynamo" as it was then known, improving its generating ability considerably. It was Barnsworth who reportedly was the first to realize that an electric generator can be turned into a DC motor fairly easily.
Dudley, Albert (1840-1907). Son of a collier who lived near Walsall, Dudley was soon noted as someone with a true gift for working with complex machinery; this is the most reasonable explanation for his becoming foreman of a locomotive factory near Birmingham at the age of 19. He first found out about the Walsall coterie [q.v.] in 1863 and became involved with it a few years later. He used his influence to obtain Roger Watson [q.v.] a job at his locomotive factory in 1867; though Watson did not stay long, the techniques he learned proved invaluable when he, Dudley and Ronald Osbourne [q.v] assembled the first reliable electric locomotive the following year and when opening the electric line near Westminster in 1870. Though he was less active in the coterie after that line closed in 1872, he undoubtedly played a role in designing and constructing the first successful tram line in Nottingham in 1876. He joined Knight, Watson & Associates when the company was formed in 1879 and became its Technical Director, a post he held for many years. Married to Roger Watson's sister Katharine in 1871, he had two children: Oliver (1873-1946) and Alison (1874-1952). Though he was not knighted when Watson and Knight were in 1899, he apparently was under consideration for one when he suddenly died of a heart attack in Sept. 1907; his wife lived on for another fifteen years.
Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925). Though at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, Oliver Heaviside changed the face of mathematics and science for many years afterward. He was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and magnetic forces and energy flux, and independently co-formulated vector analysis. He also was the first to advocate in favor of using alternating current for long-distance transmission of electric power and assisted in the construction of the first long-distance electric-transmission line in 1879-80. With the encouragement of his uncle Sir Charles Wheatstone, Heaviside left school at age 16 to study telegraphy and electromagnetism; he continued full-time study at home for another two years. In 1868, he took a job as a telegraph operator with the Great Northern Telegraph Company working first in Denmark and then in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was soon made a chief operator. Heaviside continued to study while working, and at age 21 and 22 he published some research related to electric circuits and telegraphy. He became involved in the Walsall coterie [q.v.] as early as 1872 and, against his uncle's wishes, moved to Walsall the following year to assist in some of their projects. This assistance proved important to Horace Knight & Ronald Osbourne [qq.v.] when they designed and constructed the Nottingham tram line in 1875-6. His most important task was the development of the first reliable alternating current generator in 1878 and demonstrating long-distance transmission of electricity across distances of up to 50 km -- when previous attempts to transmit power more than 4 km had been failures -- less than two years later. In 1881, he returned to Camden Town (near London) where his parents lived. His major reputation is based on the papers he wrote after 1881 on mathematical, physical and electrical subjects; his reformulation of Maxwell's equations in terms of vector calculus was among the most famous of these articles. He remained single for his entire life; he finally died at Torquay in 1925, and is buried in Paignton cemetery. Though he also laid the theoretical groundwork for the alternating current motor, it was Nikola Tesla who finally solved the remaining engineering challenges and produced the first such motor in the late 1890s.
Knight, Horace (1841-1912). Friend of Roger Watson [q.v.], he became involved in the Walsall coterie in the early 1860s and studied physics and electromagnetism in London; he also became a close friend of Andrew Swann [q.v.]. He assisted Roger Watson's work from 1866 onward and carried on after Watson temporarily withdrew due to the death of his wife in 1874. Together with Watson and Ronald Osbourne [q.v.], he founded the firm of Knight, Watson & Associates in 1879, which became famous for the manufacture of trams and other equipment. Knight married Angela Preston in 1865; they had four children: James (1867-1938), Drew (1869-1941), John (1870-1936) and Peter (1872-1939). He was knighted (along with Roger Watson) in 1899 and died of cancer in 1912.
Osbourne, Ronald G (1845-1904). Friend of Albert Dudley and Roger Watson [qq.v.], he was second son of the Earl of Leicester and trained as an engineer and mechanic. He assisted Watson and Dudley when they assembled an electric locomotive in 1868 and in opening the world's first electric line in June 1870. After Watson withdrew in 1874, Osbourne formed a partnership with Horace Knight [q.v.] and entered into negotiations with several city councils in an attempt to build another electric line. At least one such city council, Nottingham, was willing to grant a concession under the recently-adopted Tramways Act of 1870. The concession allowed for electric motive power, but forbade the developers from using the running rails to carry electric power (due to electrolysis issues). After more than a year of experimentation and testing, Osbourne's team, with the assistance of Knight and Anthony Reckenzaun [q.v.], came up with the solution in the form of twin "pole collectors" to bring in the current; an alternative approach using "carriage collectors" was abandoned after repeated issues with the carriages falling off the wires. Construction of the new Nottingham line started in March 1876; the first tram, equipped with twin pole collectors, started operation in October that year. Osbourne was instrumental not only in developing the pole collector but in mounting the motors in a way that kept them and the road wheels geared together. After his elder brother died (when he was thrown from his horse) in 1878 and his father died of a train accident in 1881, Osbourne became the new Earl and largely withdrew from the partnership, though he continued to back them financially. Married in 1866 to Sharon Ogg, he had three children: Elizabeth (1867-1944?), Kenneth (1869-1938) and Sharon (1870-1947). As Earl of Leicester, his career in the House of Lords was undistinguished, but he apparently had a role when the Irish Home Rule Bill reached the House of Lords; he voted in favor of it and may have assisted in getting it passed, though not without enormous opposition from the northern part of Ireland (which caused the "Partition Crisis" less than five years later). Though Elizabeth was the eldest, she refused the title and entered a convent in France in 1898; Kenneth succeeded as Earl when Ronald died of a heart attack in Dec. 1904.
Osbourne, Alfred R (1853-1881?). A distant relative of the Earl of Leicester (his grandfather was the then-Earl's younger brother), he was born in rural Pennsylvania in 1853, but moved to New York City with his parents before the age of five. He grew up in New York and studied several subjects, including electricity and engineering. Sometime in 1875, he met Anthony Reckenzaun's brother Frederick for the first time; the latter introduced him through his correspondence to the Walsall coterie and its interests. In 1876, he formed a company with some friends and sought permission to open a tram line similar to the new one in Nottingham; the city of Albany (NY) granted such permission in late 1877 and construction started the following year. Due to difficulties with electrical equipment then available in the US and with obtaining electric power, the first tramcar did not operate in Albany until Nov. 1878, but the line proved a success and extensions were added a few years later. He was, however, cheated out of any profits when one of his partners played the stock market and effectively stripped Osbourne of all his shares in the company. In 1880, he moved to Kansas City (MO) and subsequently joined a circus to showcase some of his stunts (some involving electricity, others involving ascents in a balloon). On June 4, 1881, he and the circus were at Topeka (KS) and he was on such an ascent -- despite threatening weather -- when a tornado formed. The tornado demolished the circus and several buildings in the town also were damaged, but no trace of either he or his balloon ever were found.
Swann, Andrew (1838-1909). He was a teenager when the Crimean War began and enlisted in 1855. He served in the War well, but did not advance in rank beyond Sergeant. He apparently met Adam Barnsworth and Nathaniel Watson [qq.v.] shortly after the war was over and became interested in various chemical "curiosities" in the late 1850s. It was he who apparently persuaded both Barnsworth and Watson to look into electrical phenomena by 1860, though he did not move to the Walsall area where they resided. Aided by a number of others, he improved available vacuum pumps, then used the improved equipment to successfully design a reliable "carbon-arc" lightbulb in 1862. However, he was unable to continue his work due to the lack of reliable electric generators at the time. Consequently, he successfully urged both Barnsworth and Wilde towards improving the electrical generators of the day. Married in 1859 to Dorothea Edgerton, he had two children: Sally (1861-1939) and Roger (1864-1935). He died in Sept. 1909 and is buried near Morden; his wife pre-deceased him in 1907.
Watson, Roger (1846-1903). Son of Nathaniel Watson [q.v.], he was interested in electricity from an early age. He entered into a long-distance correspondence with the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell as early as 1861, and was the most knowledgeable in the Walsall coterie [q.v.] about electromagnetic theory at the time. Becoming involved with them in the early 1860s, he also was involved in railway work and, with the assistance of Albert Dudley [q.v.], he briefly worked in a locomotive works in 1867. In the same year, he demonstrated an experiment (first tried by Barnsworth) converting muscle power into electricity, then re-converting it to motion from an electric motor at a distance of about 1.2 km (almost a mile) away. In the summer of 1868, he, Knight, Dudley and Ronald Osbourne [q.v.] assembled the first reliable electric locomotive and tested it on a section of abandoned track near Birmingham. Two years later, after considerable negotiation, he managed to persuade authorities to open the first electric railway (using the running rails to supply power) in June 1870 near Westminster, London. Repeated difficulties with the line, including "short circuits" and complaints that it was causing electrolysis of buried pipes, brought an end to service after intermittent operation in late 1872; a major stock market crisis in 1873, followed by the death of Watson's wife due to a plague the following year, caused Watson to withdraw from research and other activities temporarily. He married Sally Eastman in 1867 but the couple had no children prior to her death from the plague in 1874. His second marriage to Janice Amberton in 1877 produced two children: Sharon Anne (1879-1958) and George Adam (1881-1950). Roger Watson was knighted in 1899 (along with Horace Knight) and died in March 1903 of a heart attack.
Reckenzaun, Anthony (1850-1894). Born and grew up in Austria, Reckenzaun emigrated to England in 1872 and worked initially as a draughtsman for a firm that built steam engines. Through Andrew Swann [q.v.], he became involved with the Walsall coterie as early as 1874, though his contribution to the Nottingham tram line was not very extensive. He also worked with experimenters local to London, such as Magnus Volk and Moritz Immisch. In early 1876, he moved to Birmingham to assist the coterie's experiments and also entered into correspondence at about that time with the German industrialist Werner von Siemens. Developing an idle idea the latter apparently mentioned in a letter, he created the first "bow collector", which was subsequently tested on the new Birmingham-to-Walsall line in 1880. Its success, and the general success of using the running rails for the current return, caused an accelerated uptake of electric traction from 1881 onward. He returned to London in 1881 and carried on a correspondence with his brother Frederick, who resided in New York City. His brother apparently played an important role in supporting tram developments in the US after 1880 and helped to set up several US-based factories. Anthony Reckenzaun died in London of consumption in Aug. 1894. While often credited to Reckenzaun, it was Moritz Immisch who first experimented with "conduit collectors" for trams as well as "multiple-unit" operation.
Tram. A tram [also known as a tramcar] is a rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. Trams powered by electricity were and are the most common such type, but the term also was applied to horsecar railways which were widely used in urban areas -- especially in parts of North America -- before electrification, as well as to experimental vehicles such as "steam cars." The terms tram and tramway are derived from the Scots word "tram", referring respectively to a type of truck used in coal mines, and the tracks upon which they ran. That word probably derived from Middle Flemish "tram" ("beam, handle of a barrow, bar, rung"), a North Sea Germanic word of unknown origin meaning the beam or shaft of a barrow or sledge, also the barrow itself. "Tram-car" is attested as early as 1872 in Britain, though it also became popular in North America and Australia. Although the terms "tram" and "tramway" have been adopted by many other languages, they originally were not used universally in English; North Americans preferred the terms "streetcar" or "horsecar" prior to electrification. The terms "streetcar" and "horsecar" were first recorded in about 1840 in the US; both words originally referred to vehicles drawn by draft horses. When electrification came, many of the first engineers designing the electrical systems were of British origin or trained in Britain; they imported British terminology to North America and elsewhere. Other related terms, including "pole collector", "bow collector", "carriage collector" (referred to as a "troller" in parts of North America, a word of uncertain origin) and "conduit collector" (referred to as a "plow" in parts of North America, a term apparently traceable to US experimenters), also originated in the British Isles. The move to electrification was greatly accelerated when an outbreak of a disease specific to horses, the "Great Epizootic", from 1882 onward had a major impact on European and North American economies. This trend changed by 1900 as more engineers graduated and went to work outside of Great Britain; thus the British term "pole-bus" is seldom heard in the US, usually being replaced by "electrobus." The term "pantograph", however, originated with its design in Germany after 1890; tramcars in the English-speaking world did not start using pantographs until after 1900.
As well as accelerating the development of electrical appliances and equipment by a decade or more, this probably would draw interest and innovators from other lines of work, including the development of petroleum refining and the exploitation of internal combustion engines. While such items probably would have been invented shortly after 1900, their role would have been considerably reduced, especially if someone had figured out how to power an electric tractor or combine. [Note: as diesel-electric locomotives demonstrate, the catch is *not* how strong the motor can be; the catch is that batteries will not provide enough power and supplying power with sufficient voltage to the machine, especially as the machine will be traveling over rough and unprepared ground, is therefore rather awkward.] Other experimental methods of transport, such as cable cars, would be far less prominent in this time-line, as economic concerns probably discouraged their development until after 1880, by which time electrified service was reliably available and rather cheaper.
What do others think? As always, this inquiring mind would like to know.