Technology In Columbias Era

* See also Columbia_Era_Machines (Real)
* See also Historic_Tech_Timeline
* See also Real_Lighter-Than-Air_Ships (somewhat after)
* See also Make_Columbia_A_City
FANTASY :
* See also Floatyshit(tm)
* See also NO Autopilots In Columbia
* See also Jeremiah_Fink
* See also Finks_experiments (Humorous)
Fink & Genetic technology - Yeah Right ...
--- --- --- --- ---
THIS actually would have been the latest thing right around the time of the Columbian Exposition ( Adding Machines were a big Labor Saving device starting in those years ).
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
Electric Power For Columbia, HOW ? :
Nikola Tesla developed "Polyphase 3-wire" AC in 1888 ( Used/completed in the Niagra powerhouse in 1895 )
Energy has to come from somewhere. Oh a 'power plant' at Finktons ? SO where does all the huge amounts of coal/oil come from, and how is it obtained ? Oops, more Quantumz magics does it ? Wires would need to be SEEN connecting to all those independent floating chunks ... (( Sorry Lenny-Squarepants, there is a severe penalty for having such bad fantasy. ))
Columbia without Electric Power would be unworkably Stupid ( You need big thick wires running everywhere - and between all the floaty segments of Columbia. Oops - Unseen. ) 
Consider : Reactionaries ( rural fundamentalists at that time who had never had/seen electric power before EVER ) would be NOT wanting it, and not trust such new-fangled stuff ( In the early days some people feared that 'Electricity was like Gas and might leak out of the sockets, ) So here's another 'story' situation which is 'Kinda Conflicting' with reality.
There is no Niagra Falls ( hydroelectric ) in Columbia - So maybe it is giant preposterous windmills ? ( Impractical when no wind ... Or with enough wind, the normal environment must be thus 'Windy' - But then ALL of Columbia would get blown about too ). So, Bad Choice.
(( OK, so just Fantasy Magic shit, like so much in the game depends on. )) 
---
REAL WORLD - Coal Powered America 1912 ( Even Moreso In 1893 ) :
Floating doesn't equal generating power. So where's the beef (coal rather) ? And how does it get to Columbia ? And this would be to power STEAM engines, as internal combustion was in its infancy still ( Unless Fink now gets to wave a wand and can thus invent the 1000 technologies/tools/materials needed to make that work on more than just some rich men's toys ). 
Remember, 'Columbia' started in 1893, and had to operate using 1893 WORKING technology, even if later developments upto 1912 were added ( and ALSO somehow had to be paid for, acquired/made, run, integrated, maintained, repaired, replaced when worn out ).
--- --- ---
Motion Film Cameras in the 'Teens' did look like this. They had film cartridges and were hand cranked. It is strange that Fink did not 'look into the future' thru some Tears to retrieve far better devices than this. 
--- --- ---
==ELECTRICS - NOT ELECTRONICS==
A Problem with many Know Nothing Game writers who just regurgitate Nostalgic Eras is they haven't the Imagination to find a way to express similar idea/reasonings for their Game World Setting WITHOUT using later Technological Developments. ( A Reason why SteamPunk Fiction generally 'AVOIDS' trying to EXPLAIN things in modern terms how their 'advanced' (for their time) Fantasy things work. )
Columbia is shown to 'work' 20 years before the story's time ( ex- Floating 'city' in 1893 ), which leaves little time to develop ALL THE MANY sophisticated things (technologies) THAT game setting is shown to have made use of.
--- --- ---
For Columbia - One word of REALITY : "PRIMITIVE" 
* Electronics ? Vacuum Tubes - Didn't much exist yet beyond experimentation ( ?? Boost them forward due to 'Tear Peering'? But that still requires far more intelligence than Columbia's bunch of Racist Cultists could achieve ). So 'electronics' WERE NOT VIABLE -- it had to be 'Electrics'. 
* Steam - So they are hardly able to use Internal Combustion ( still too primitive yet for decades to come in that era ).
* Electricity - Light Bulbs were still mostly for the Rich in that era (and dimmer than modern bulbs).
* 'Magical Blue Orb' things ( Seriously, Fantasy-driven 'Steam Punk' has more logic to it than this ... ) Maybe they are just "Bug Lights".
* Internal Combustion was Revolutionizing the World by 1912 - Comstock (and/orFink) had not apparently been very APT at seeing the Future.
* Computers - SORRY NO. Advanced Computational Automatronics - NO. Even mechanical Calculators capable of ( + - / X = ) were very new in this time ( Divide/Division function being the most complicated/difficult -- If even attempted ).
* Auto Pilot (for a 'Zeppelin')? Only in the dreams of an ignorant/simpleton pothead for something so complex to exist THEN -- When they hardly work NOW (today).
* Science - The Lutece Particle ... When the "Electron" hadn't even been discovered yet ( it was in 1897 ) ??? - You cannot SEE the future UNTIL you HAVE a WAY to 'see' the Future ( which requires something that hasn't happened yet ) ... Note - 'Atoms' had been theorized since the days of the Romans (in Greece), but that didn't mean they had any way to prove the theory ( or manipulate them as objects ) for near 2000 years. Genetic Manipulation ? - Sorry NO.
* Huge Factories - Fords Moving Assembly Line was not built til 1913. Oh, there were other HUGE factories in the World before then, but Fink's monstrosity doesn't even have enough customers for something ONE HUNDREDTH its size. 
* Mechanical Agriculture was fairly well developed by 1893. BUT we see NONE OF IT in Columbia. Supplies for a whole 'City' ???? ( NOT EVEN SHOWN - Far Simpler For Hack Gamewriters To Just Ignore It - Not even a vague hint in the distance).
-
So DESIGNS Allegedly Stolen through Tears ? How do you apply something you hardly understand, let alone know how to build ??? -- Wave of the Hand bad Fantasy is really pathetic Hack writer stuff.
Makes the Writers look Clueless ... Careless ... Second Rate ... 
--- --- ---
Reactionary People - they hear Spirits/Demons in those things - "You won't get me to touch that DAMNED thing !!!" 
WIRES In those Times :
* Masses of telephone wires being strung in Cities ( Real World had this in that period in many cities, back when phones were the province of affluent people and businesses ).
* Multiple arms of 10-20 wires each (on insulators) - Telephone pole often with 10-20 arms ( that's 100-200 wires !! ) How do you reach into that mess of wires to do repairs ? 
* Fun happened when frequent ice storms loaded down the wires with a coatings of Ice. Later they started insulating and putting the wires underground - in bundled cables.
The overhead wires got really troublesome once they became so numerous. Methods of insulating wires then allowed telephone wires to be run underground through conduits ( and now the sheer number of them made construction of underground cabling financially viable ). 
'Underground' ? - STILL DOESN'T HELP COLUMBIA WITH THOSE HUGE AIR GAPS BETWEEN PARTS OF THE 'CITY'.
Same problems with Powerlines in Columbia - now with shock and fire as you fly thru the air and hit them and are cut in half.
--- --- ---
Form of Things :
A good thing Infinite BS was set in the transition times between 'SteamPunk' fantasy and 'Dieselpunk' fantasy, cuz the later objects can be more streamlined, versus the earlier era's intricate objects which are very hard for Game Computers to Render in '3D' ( and tedious/expensive for 'artists' to make Assets for ). For Similar reasons, BioShock 1 used Art Deco instead of Art Nouveau ( which is full of curves ). 
--- --- ---
Automatic_cylinder.jpg|Mechanical Solutions were still intelligently done
Powerscolumbia.jpg|In a non-fantasy universe, there would be machines required to generate power
Actually_Look_Like.jpg|Game writers so often haven't a clue ...
FactoryInteriors.jpg|Real manufacturing was Men with Tools in that Era.
Shovelingcoal.jpg|This is a boiler furnace for a building.
TelephoneWires1906.jpg|individual wires run with glass insulators on telephone poles
Earlyoilref.jpg|Raw materials gathered from half a continent is how a Real World City exists ...
Thisisfuturisticforfink.jpg|Control board for machinery ( including alarms and intercom )
Phonekeyboard.jpg|Typewriters were still fairly new when Columbia was first shown. Another variation on early typewriter ( before the well-known linear style mechanism drove all the others to obsolescence ).
Columbiahightech.jpg|Things of that era showed their complexity ( you constantly needed access to all the fiddley-bits to keep them running ). Game Artists representing such things face a challenge to create such realistic props ( and as in this MMORPG, LOTS of them ).
Elecmotor1901.jpg|Electric motors had continuous improvements.
Earlyradio2.jpg|Early radios, before they became mass produced consumer items.
Earlyradio.jpg|Radio Reciever (Tubes, coil, variable capacitor ...)
Titanic1911.jpg|Shipbuilding
PowerHouse.jpg|Power Plant
Otiselevatorengine.jpg|Steam Powered Elevator soon replaced with Electric Motors
1910tech.jpg|Electrics - this looks like a charging unit for battery-powered vehicle used in those early times.
1900style.jpg|Flush Toilets were still a New Thing for many people in that Era
--- --- ---
A 'City' takes alot of Materials and Goods 'coming in' to exist. Fuel was one such important material. A slight Note- "Slight Lack" for the writers of Infinite BS - that is known as UNDERSTATEMENT lack of this Real World phenomenon was apparent in Columbia.
Bad Fantasy is like that - LACKING support for what else is shown.
--- --- ---
Electric Age (REAL WORLD) :
In 1893, Westinghouse and Tesla, using 160,000 lightbulbs and Polyphase AC ( powered by 12 - 1,OOO-horsepower generators ), lit up the Chicago Columbian Exposition - "CITY OF LIGHT". Tesla had a large display including phosphorescent lighting ( a precursor to fluorescent lamps ) powered without wires by his high-frequency fields.
Tesla's "Egg of Columbus" was a demonstration of how an AC electric motor worked ( yes this was real ).
IMO, Tesla Coil powered stuff might have been a better 'scientificky' FANTASY basis for whatever plot ( Was there really the need for the faux-quantum weirdness Time Travel, et al ... ?? ) They barely scratched the 'Tear' multiverse possibilities ( certainly for the game play ), so why even bother with it ??
(( Hey Ken, If you are going to do Magic shit anyway, don't try to describe it too much - It just makes you look stupid, instead of clever. ))
Tesla Coli ( the electric bacteria ) might've been the threat brought back thru a 'Tesla Portal' and which threatened the world of electricity. Franklin knew the 'cure', but he was well over a century dead - his secret dying with him ... yada yada ... ( need to find that secret archive ... yada ). Hinted that Franklin was actually an Alien, etc ...
With real Tesla Coils, electric power is transmitted through the air as a high frequency magnetic field, so people/vehicles/homes/etc ... could carry a receiving coil to power any old electric thing you wanted. People could be walking lightshows - that woulda Wowed-Em with rather-easy-to-make game special effects ... Electric EVERYTHING -- even 'Levitation' ( as long as BIG magnets were under you ( streets paved/imbedded with the stuff ), and perhaps served to repulse force the Tesla-coil powered magnets within the floaty things/vehicles.
Instead of 'Gearz' you would get 'Gadgets' to do all the pseudo-magic stuff ( no longer limited by that odd magic 'clothing' idea ) - and maybe (strange idea) allowing NPCs to actually also use that 'Gadget' stuff to make the combat more unpredictable/interesting. You can still have your electrically 'insulated' rubber pants, if you must.
-
If you can float with "Quantum Mechanics", then you could Float with some make believe abilities of a "Tesla Coil" ( which also might, for a wonderful Fantasy plot, rip holes in the universe and allow Time Travel. "Fantasy", after all, means never having to stick to real Science ) .
Its a FACT that Tesla, in many of the infinite universes, destroyed Evil Columbia with his Death Ray. In at least one, he was merely a Penguin ( infinite possibilities, you see ... ). AND Like magnetic fields, you have 'positive' and 'negative' (in opposition) which could serve the plot somehow symbolically or whatever ( opposites attract, etc ... Good vs Evil, whatever ).
See how easy it is -- without employing that 'too explained' quantum bullshit ( which is little more than hype-buzzwords to most everyone anyway ). " Tarnation ... it be magnetz!!! Makes sense, rightly so. Yep. Now, back to the slaughterin', lynchin and splodey stuff. Yeehaw !!! " 
--- --- ---
Columbia Construction - Lets Make it Actually Logical :
In the early 1900s the large buildings still had to have their interior spaces close to the external wall of the building because of the need for Light and Air ( particularly in a summer environment ). It limited the width and shape of building. Starting in the late 1920s building started having 'artificial air' ( air conditioning as well as heating ).
Issue - Fresh air - Not even Air Condition - Lots of Windows
Ex- At the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904, organizers used mechanical refrigeration to cool the Missouri State Building. The system used 35,000 cubic feet of air per minute to cool the 1,000-seat auditorium, the rotunda and other rooms within the Missouri State Building. It marked the first time the American public was exposed to the concept of 'comfort cooling'. 
Ex - A big breakthrough in 'comfort cooling' technology came in the 1920s, when Americans flocked to air conditioned movie theaters to watch Hollywood stars on the silver screen. The first air-conditioned Office Building in the United States opened in San Antonio, Texas in January 1928.
The Chrysler Building (1930) the first fully air conditioned skyscraper, and was to be the dominant building design for decades afterwards. ( Note - this was 16 years before Rapture's 'start', where its entire environment had to be air-environmentally maintained ).
--- --- ---
All Them Telephone Wires :
About the time of the Exposition ( and Columbia's construction ), Telephones were still something which 'rich' people had or businesses which required their utility. Wires were still un-insulated, and thus were thick copper/iron and strung separately, spanning the distances between poles. ( Count the insulators that are there - about 80 wires and the other one 96 lines, and I've seen pictures of ones with 20 insulator/wires per 'arm' ). The wires went direct either to the the local company switchboards, or point to point between 2 phones (private line).
Imagine Booker 'jumping' and hitting these wires ... Can you say "Sliced Egg" three times fast ??????
--- --- ---
"Telharmonium" in Columbia - Phone-Line-piped Ambient Music :
A real world thing - http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-telharmonium-was-the-spotify-of-1906
Probably in Rapture it could be done easier with the 45+ years-on technology ( except by then Radio was IT, EXCEPT in Rapture Radio uses phone-lines/wires - As radio waves go through water quite miserably ). Elevator Music ...
This thing coulda be in Columbia ( maybe as a method of keeping the half-lobotomized Untermenschen calm ... ). Certainly possible for the early days before Radio was developed. Except then Columbia would need to show signs of the 'mess of telephone wires' which REAL cities had. There's yet another Opportunity Lost for a more Spiderman-like '3D' game - No doubt the magic 'Skyhook' thing could have you hanging and flipping about on those wires, no ? So sad.
--- --- ---
 Real World - How Primitive Internal Combustion Engines Were 1893 : 
So many things mighta/woulda still have been Steam Powered ( ex- steam-powered automobiles actually competed with gasoline powered ones - using 'Flash Boilers' - no big water boiler ). 
Fink&Co lookin' at future thru "Tearz" to get technology ??? Right. Just cuz you ( the Baron Finkenstein ) saw them, did NOT mean you could make them. They never mentioned in-game the STEALING of such things/objects - OR having at least one caper being something stolen BACK through Tears from some other universe/dimension -- done by some rather angry inhabitants of that other place. )
--- --- ---
"Fink .... Yeah He Just Did That ...." Riiiiiight :
Science and Technology require Engineering to actually be used :
All the Floatyshit(tm) used on vehicles and such requires miniaturization of the 'quantumz' floaty mechanisms, whatever they are -- That includes the power units (??) and the control mechanism too ( and probably some Tear Suppression Thingee as well ). 
Oh right, the Luteces just "whipped that out" for him ? Guess they forgot that the story says that Columbia ( the first chunk of it anyway ) was built by the US Government ( Taxpayer Money - remember ??? ) Imagine all the faulty slipshod things the contractors delivered ( as they always do when bureaucrats are involved ).The rest of the 1893 Columbian Exposition was built with Private Money. Floaty 'Show Exhibit' Columbia probably barely made the 6 month run of the Exposition before its failure.
Blue orb things ? Q-Particles ? We needed "A Bicycle Built For Two" with its blue orby thing for Booker and Elizabeth to be seen riding about the city -- as well as a hundred other 'city' vehicle traffic objects to make believe this isn't just all a bad Gingerbread World.
Making Big clumsy 'fixed mechanism' things to 'float' like a slow moving city block is one thingStill wholy fantastical with whatever limited technology Columbians could manage to understand.. Making a steerable vehicle like those Barges is a whole 'nuther'. Steam Punk without the Logic ... ( It all being hamstrung by the writers general lack of real imagination ).
Google "Space 1889"
--- --- ---
"Hertzian Waves" Technology :
Radio Waves were NEW too in that era ( Terms use like 'Pressure' and 'Flow' and Condensers and later 'Valves', etc ... )
The Infinite BS game writers could have used the term "Hertzian Waves" in place of 'Quantum', and then just made up a bunch of stuff the same way ( but I guess one of them heard that buzzword first and it sounded more futuristic ).
-
Spark-gap Transmitter ( have a Columbia-style mechanism ). These were generally Large (huge) equipment, with lots of electrical power being required. Electro-Magnetism can 'levitate' things too, but rarely more than a few feet.
--- --- ---
 
--- --- ---
Patent diagram for a Thomas Edison improvement to the Stock Ticker mechanisms ( one of his pre-lightbulb technical inventions ) -- Improving the automatic return of the wheel.
Point Being : Various REAL WORLD things took MANY collaborations/improvements/Increments over Years - By many minds and gifted efforts - NOT 'Just Saw It Through a Tear' INSTANT lazy simpleton storytelling to create them for a Pop-A-Mole Shooter game.
--- --- ---
Thomas Edison bought an Electric Automobile ( He didn't make it himself ).
Prophet ... Swaying people with his prophesy ... Yet Comstock doesn't much look ahead much, and his city gets built with a hodge-podge of weirdness and 'bad ideas'.
--- --- ---
Early sub-machine-gun using an oscillating mechanism between two firing barrels to create the 'automatic' cycle of its firing. Smaller mechanisms more sophisticated methods of automatic firing, took decades and numerous experts and 'trial and error' to produce. Even if Che Lin the Gunsmith was handed the designs from decades after Columbia's time, the engineering of mass manufacture was far beyond that strange equipment which the game shows -- AND moreso the skill of the numerous machinists ( and materials and tools ) required. Stealing Columbia's advanced guns from the Future ( via Tears ) would have been a thousand times simpler story-wise.
--- --- ---
Late Columbia Era (real world 1912)
Trucks were VERY useful, and available easiy by 1912. So why were there still those weird MECHA-Horse things and wagon ( when all else was so magically provided ) ???
Don't use the excuse they were all Luddites, OR no such things LIKE WE SAW would be in Columbia ( and Fink needed to make all these new things in that GIANOURMOUS Factory complex of his to stay in business ). If a horse could have a Derpy glowey orb thing, then so could a truck. ( HELL, Why not a FLYING TRUCK ??????? )
--- --- ---
This is in French because after it was used at the 1893 Exposition, a longer one was used at the 1900 Paris Exposition.
Rightmost is the non-moving platform, Middle is a slow moving walkway transitioning to the Left main moving walkway with benches and such, both moving in a continuous chain. Round cutouts joined flush sections, allowing the walkway to bend/go around curves.
It might've been imaginative to see this going in a circuit around Columbia ( or a more realistic train system or proper use of 'the skyline' for passengers or anything logical ). 
(( But then they abandoned the 'big map' city scene idea that looked too neat as shown in the FAKED EC3 Trailers -- unfortunately a bait and switch fraud, and instead sold you a game that was a dumbed-down linear slaughterhouse/shooting-gallery skill-ramp story path. ))
--- --- ---
A simple manual plug type Telephone 'Switchboard' ( 'jacked' wires connect the lines, buzzer buttons )
Comstock would have had the telephone operators in Columbia listening for 'Sin' and transgressions against the Prophet. This likely eliminated alot of wasted telephone usage and idle phone gossip.
--- --- ---
Real Factory In Columbias Era :
Real Factories were messy ( like the above picture ), and there would be many different ones used to make a thousand different things which a city might need ( or be sold outside the city ),
Factories generally did NOT look like that 2nd-graders-vision one seen in the game - the Finkton complex - for which its huge size simply makes no sense ( and with a bizarre 'assembly line', as if it was some Henry Ford automobile plant ). The story 'class struggle' was merely the pretext for having that absurdity.
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
--- --- ---
Actually, the upper microphone should be lower half ??? The Speaker grill in upper half ??? You ear should be where it hears the speaker easiest.
Telephone Box hanging off wall ?? Designed elevators have them embedded in the wall (designed)
--- --- ---
Coal or Wood ? Neither Fits Columbia. Some game artist just picked this without understanding the game.
Electric : 1896, William Hadaway received the first Patent for an Electric Stove.
So Fink (who can look forward in time) missed the obvious ??? No ??? 
--- --- --- --- ---
.
.