alternate technology

So rubber vulcanization was done by some people in the Yucatan long before Goodyear. Suppose this technology was brought back to Europe; could this have affected technological development in the Spanish/Hapsburg Empire and around the world? Were there any early machines that would have benefited...

Eternal National Glory Kein Ende in Sicht für den Nationalstaat Guójiā róngyù yǒng wú zhǐjìng - 国家荣誉永无止境 Kokka no meiyo wa kesshite owaru koto wanai – 国家の名誉は決して終わることはない Великая нация продолжает свой долговременный путь For as long as man has been on this earth, change has been a constant...

"Well, they'd probably be more quiet, Petike." some of you might say. :p More seriously, I've been wondering about this question for an aeronautic-themed story I've been writing. Its setting is a largelly realistic alternate world with pre-WWI and early WWI style aviation. For the sake of...

I know that alternate technology is extremely common in alternate history works, mostly just because even with the smallest changes it's virtually impossible to have all the same technologies. So what I want to know is, what would actually be plausible? Be it an invention that never run took...

IOTL, first operational SAM was Nike Ajax produced in 1953, after 8 years of development. Important harbingers of SAM were late WWII radar proximity fuses, photodiode-triggered guns of German interceptors, early unguided rockets, radio-guided glide bombs, and acoustic-homing torpedoes. Could...

Context: When cars were first put on the road, most roads were a mix of trollies, carages, and people. Drivers tended to accidentally run over people a lot, since there was no difference between walking spaces and driving spaces. In response, some cities were considering limiting the vehicle to...

While we generally associate revolvers with the mid-19th Century or later, there were attempts at revolving guns going back to the 1500s. The immediate predecessor of the famed Colt Paterson in the 1830s was the Collier Revolver invented about 15 to 20 years earlier: These weapons had an...

From the bombing of Hiroshima throughout the 50's there was considerable interesting in the development of various nuclear powered vehicles. Ranging from trains, plains and even cars with even Ford building a concept car called the Ford Nucleon, that was planned to use a portable nuclear...

Suppose another culture found arquebus-equivalent before Europeans. Would the basic shape of that arquebus (crossbow-like trigger, armpit-stock, etc) still same as OTL?

Suppose another culture found arquebus-equivalent before Europeans. Would the basic shape of that arquebus (crossbow-like trigger, armpit-stock, etc) still same as OTL?

I didn't not find this outlandish enough to put in ASB but others might disagree. Lets say that all events regarding electricity in ancient times happen but everybody from William Gilbert to Michael Faraday, who would later inspire Andre-Marie Ampere, Georg Ohm, and James Watt never happen...

All right, this could very well be a future history WI as well, but given possible alternate developments in ESA's past, I'm rather posting this discussion here. To date, the European Space Agency has not developed a spacesuit of its own, particularly due to not having its own manned...