Steampunk and our Technology

An interesting idea about the course of history and technological creations that have taken place is that it is all a unique chain of events that relate to each other. Just as the coming of the bronze age made stone and bone tools obsolete, so did the advent of guns make rows and rows of heavily armored knights obsolete. The invention of sewing machines and tailoring factories allowed the mass production of textiles and affecting the prices of clothes and their accessibility.

But what if this rigid set of historical events happened in a different way? What if the invention of the airplane happened during the renaissance? What if steampowered tanks rolled across the known world in the name of Caesar?

Ideas such as this are what comprise the genre of Steampunk. Generally themed around the mid to late 19th century, the science fiction genre of Steampunk originated from several sources in the late 1970's. Originally about a victorian-esque 1800's world where steam powered appliances and ornate, Baroque devices often have gears or components visible. The concept of steampunk is a unique blend of victorian art, 1800's society, and scientific discovery.

But what are the odds of history having had a different course? Well, it's not like we can go back in time (yet) and change things and then zip into the future and see how things worked out differently, but what can be said definitively is that what HAS happened is a very specific chronological line of events that happened in a very specific way, and should something have happened differently then we would most likely have ended up with a very different product, and that product would be our history.