Alternative Histories-A world without Oil

Orionaut

Orionaut

Orionaut

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(Or at least, only very limited supplies of Oil)

Last night I was thinking about Steampunk and found myself thinking how the world of the 19th and 20th century might have progressed had Oil not been commercially developed from around 1860 onwards.

So, consider this. 1850, the world of Brunel, Steel, Coal and Steam.

How might industrial societies have developed from 1850 to 2000 with Coal as the only readily available fossil fuel?

(I am not suggesting "No" oil, but only limited supplies of the sort that have been available since prehistory)
 
We would just have found alternatives.

The human race is inquisitive, inventive and we're constantly developing new ways of doing things.

Coconuts to make biodiesel.
Seaweed for plastics

The list goes on.
 
I fancy boys said:
Could we have still made plastics without oil? Is rubber affected too?
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There are plastics and plastic like materials that can be made out of various non fossil oils, they tend to be more expensive to produce which from memory is the reason we don't use them (IIRC various animals/plants produce oils or saps that can be processed).

Rubber is/was originally the sap from a tree, so it would be unaffected, but you may not get the same performance levels out of natural rubber as man made versions/compounds that use fossil oils as part of the process.

From memory one of the main reasons we use fossil oil for plastics is because it's easier/cheaper than alternatives (and many applications of plastics could in turn be done via other means but maybe not as neatly - things like early wiring used different insulators but plastic became the norm because it was stable, thin, light and very quick/easy to apply reliably).
 
wazza300 said:
We'd have gone electric imo,some of the earliest cars were electric,battery powered
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I am sure that EV would have become more common earlier. EV's were widely used in the early to mid 20th century. It is easy to forget just how common they were. Not so much for personal use but delivery vans (EG Harrods in London) and of course milk floats. even today, I suspect that the total number of "Pure" ev's in current service (IE Not hybrids) is probably not as great as it was in the 1960's, or at least not that much greater.

It would have been likely that larger/long distance steam cars and lorries would have become common too. Steam lorries were under development until the 1930's and they performed well (It was changes in tax rules rather than technological limitations that discouraged further development)

I fancy boys said:
Could we have still made plastics without oil? Is rubber affected too?
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Yes, but it would have been more expensive relatively speaking and possibly only a more limited range of materials.

(We could have made liquid fuels too, but again it would have been relatively more expensive)

touch said:
Maybe coal gas.
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Oh yes, Coal gas and gasworks would still be in use, especially after the clean air acts (Something similar would certainly have been introduced eventually, though the timeing would have been different) Coal gas could also be used to power road vehicles too.

If one was to consider a world where not only Oil was rare but also Edison won the war of the currents, we might well have seen CHP and distributed electricity generation via coal gas becoming the standrd too. But not too many alternative histories at the same time perhaps... ;)
 
A lot of the reasoning why oil 'took over' is due to availability and price. A good example (contrarily) is the British railway system after WW2; many countries after the war modernised their railways, switching from coal fired steam locomotives to diesel or electric traction. Because Britain had a plentiful domestic supply of coal, our first post-war 'modernisation plan' was to build a whole new generation of steam locomotives.

What we should have done was use the coal for generating electricity, and fully electrified our rail network. We're still paying the price for these decisions now.
 
JonnyT said:
A lot of the reasoning why oil 'took over' is due to availability and price. A good example (contrarily) is the British railway system after WW2; many countries after the war modernised their railways, switching from coal fired steam locomotives to diesel or electric traction. Because Britain had a plentiful domestic supply of coal, our first post-war 'modernisation plan' was to build a whole new generation of steam locomotives.

What we should have done was use the coal for generating electricity, and fully electrified our rail network. We're still paying the price for these decisions now.
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That also misses a very important point.

Britain was bankrupt after the War.

A lot of our money ended up contributing to the Marshal plan and providing defence against further Soviet expansion west. Rationing didn't end in Britain until the mid 50's

Steam trains were actually relatively cheap to make, very reliable and though labour intensive, not that expensive to operate.

Added to which, our rail network was left intact after the war. Most of Europe's was not so they were forced to start again from scratch in a way that we were not, which always makes investing in new tech easier.
 
Orionaut said:
That also misses a very important point.

Britain was bankrupt after the War.

A lot of our money ended up contributing to the Marshal plan and providing defence against further Soviet expansion west. Rationing didn't end in Britain until the mid 50's

Steam trains were actually relatively cheap to make, very reliable and though labour intensive, not that expensive to operate.

Added to which, our rail network was left intact after the war. Most of Europe's was not so they were forced to start again from scratch in a way that we were not, which always makes investing in new tech easier.
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Britain benefitted the most from the Marshal plan as well as separate loans from the US. I agree with the rest though. I think its impossible to know what the world would have been like without abundent oil. The cheap availability of oil provided huge portential for economic growth. Yes thare are alternatives but would the spare capital have been available to invest in them without oil.
 
D.P. said:
yes, the earliest car were electric.
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Some of the early prototypes weren't even hideously outside of the specs of the latest and greatest - there was some that could break 60MPH and prototypes that could do 30MPH with ranges around 60 miles, etc. and this was 1890s-1920s! (and no Li-ion tech).
 
The air would would be a damn sight cleaner and we would have far less plastic waste filling up the stomachs of animals. A few more cyclists still alive, probably, too.
 
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