Technology

**Aerospace** technology is roughly 10-15 years behind due to the lack of impetus from World War II. Jet propulsion exists but is not universally adapted and is still quite expensive - while the USA and Germany have a fair number of jet propelled aircraft, both military and civilian, they still use propeller craft for secondary purposes. Japan is further behind on this front and has not yet got past the prototype stage with jet propulsion - it is rumoured that Japan´s research is based on reverse engineering a wrecked German fighter-bomber that disappeared in the South China Sea *en route* between Jakarta and Hanoi. Everybody else uses propeller craft, meaning flights can take quite a long time and a good degree of island hopping is needed to cross the Pacific, Atlantic or Indian oceans.

A Franco-German consortium is working on a supersonic airliner that could cross the Atlantic in 3 hours but it is not expected to be completed until the late 70s.

**Zeppelins** are still a viable method for long-range passenger and cargo transport, chiefly because the need for stopovers on long flights means passengers often prefer sitting in their cabin on a zeppelin to sitting on a tarmac refuelling, although they are expensive enough that they are out of reach of most people - an equivalent of "first class". Flights from Berlin to New York, or Berlin to Rio, or Los Angeles to Tokyo, or Sydney to Shanghai would likely go via zeppelin, but a shorter trip from Berlin to Rome or Los Angeles to New York would be via plane. Zeppelins don´t have much military application because they can be very easily shot down by guided missiles, although they do have some limited use as observation platforms in low-intensity conflicts.

**Trains** are still popular for long-distance travel. Germany has built a comprehensive railroad network over the *Bund*, including a rail bridge from Copenhagen to Sweden that benefited from major German investment. Japan introduced a high speed rail service named the *Shinkansen* in 1965 that competes with aircraft for short distance travel, and has begun building a similar line in China, aspiring to link Shanghai with Hsinking.

**Television** is very important almost everywhere in the world. Germany and Britain pioneered state transmission of television in the late 1930s; at the same time, companies in the Netherlands and United States began commercial broadcasts. As no significant war broke out to interrupt the swift growth of the industry, television sets became ubiquitous among the middle classes of Europe, North America, Japan and comparably prosperous societies by 1950, followed by the working-class households of the world. Now, in 1970, television is perhaps the key mass medium on the planet, equally crucial to capitalist and state marketing. Germany, the United States and Japan have an enormous output. German and American sitcoms, westerns, romcoms, costume dramas, pop music shows, crime dramas and other escapist entertainment are broadcast to billions of people worldwide weekly. Japan lags behind, often screening American and German content that is dubbed with varying quality, but does have a lively animation industry, although it has found little market outside Asia. France and the United Kingdom also punch above their weight in terms of television and film production.

**Computers** are about 10-15 years behind, again thanks to the lack of a development impetus from World War II. The transition from vacuum tubes to circuit board transistors has begun but is not yet complete. The possibilities of transistor-based computing hardware has opened up the possibility of "supercomputers", but the technical challenges involved in building one have not yet been addresse. Computers are used by large corporations, universities and governments, but they are still bulky and require quite a lot of manual input. Japanese computer technology is generally considered to be slightly ahead of American or German models, and it is widely known that a group of Japanese academics based at the University of Osaka are working on building a "supercomputer" that will be a major leap in processing power beyond the existing transitor-based prototypes, but they have not yet done so.