The original vehicles were simply coaches with
cranked axles driven by steam cylinders; the heavier
models (drags) pulled one or more wagons, while the
lighter and faster models transported passengers and
high-value goods. The spread of condensors freed
autosteamers from their dangerous dependence on
local water, and liquid fuels' gave added range.
Continuous improvements were made in the 1805-1825
period in steering, suspension, gauges and auxiliary
systems; e.g., oil-lamp headlights with mirror backing.
By the late 1820s, autosteamers had become common
enough (a total of over 2,000) that rudimentary traffic
codes became necessary, and there was some export of
luxury models and intercity steamcoaches to Europe
and America. Bad roads (America and central-eastern
Europe) and vested interests (Britain and Europe)
slowed the adoption of steam road-transport outside
the Domination. In Africa neither of these factors were
important, and the expansion of the mining/slaving
frontier into areas where sleeping-sickness (ngana)
made animal transport impossible was a further spur.
The next major innovation was in transmission
systems. Direct drive to the rear axles was simple but
unreliable, as the necessary long connecting rods and
cranked axles often broke, given the erratic forging
techniques and rough suspensions of the day. The
development of pneumatic power systems for mining
and industry suggested an automotive application. In
1829 Edgar Stevens redesigned a popular light
autosteamer. Instead of power cylinders driving the
wheels, a three-cylinder expansive uniflow compressor
was installed and linked to air motors in the wheel
hubs. All four wheels were independently sprung and
steerable, and all could be powered. A reservoir evened
the supply of compressed air, and there were automatic
venting and shunting systems to prevent overpressure.
The boiler feedwater, as had become standard practice,
was preheated by being used as the cooling-water for
the compression cylinders.
Fuel consumption proved to be roughly comparable
to the direct-drive models, and the power-to-weight
ratios were drastically improved. Pneumatic
transmission also proved to be much more reliable,
more flexible, and to offer better tractive power on
steep slopes and rough ground, and maximum speed
was increased. The resulting machine was, however,
somewhat more expensive and required more
sophisticated manufacturing techniques.
Concurrent advances in materials and machine tools
(the universal borer, the turret lathe, planing
machines, and diamond-tipped cutting tools) resulted
in a mutually reinforcing process. As autosteamers and
drags dropped in price and increased in reliability, the
market increased. This permitted increased economies
of scale in production (leading to full-fledged
conveyor-belt mass production with interchangeable
parts by the 1850s), which in turn reduced
costs—including fuel and maintenance as infrastructure
and skills built up— and increased reliability. The
willingness of the Legislative Assembly to vote funds for
road-building and maintenance was a tribute to the
precious importance of powered road transport in the
Domination's growth.
Another factor pressing for mass-production was the
bulk nature of demand. Private passenger autosteamers
were fairly common, but well into the 1870s remained a
luxury for the very wealthy, even among the Draka
aristocracy. Steam drags for transport purposes, and
steamcoaches for urban mass-transit, were the most
common types, and these were ordered in bulk by
municipal governments and by the embryonic
Combines. The Landholders' League was also a steady
customer; for example, the sugar plantations of the
Natealian coastal zone rarely processed their own cane.
Instead, League-owned heavy drags collected the cut
and bundled cane from the fields and transported the
produce of dozens of plantations to central-powered
crushing mills, a crucial factor in the successful battle
for the world sugar market; by the 1850s, 90% of
Europe's cane sugar, molasses, and rum were Draka
grown. When the more prosperous planters began
buying steamtrucks and drags for their own use in the
1830s and '40s, they almost invariably ordered
standard models through the League's cooperative
purchase program, if only be-cause they could do so on
credit—an early example of hire-purchase.
Steam road transport spread slowly outside the
Domination-to-be, but it did spread. Besides the
opposition of other forms of transportation, and the
poor quality of roads, there was the problem of climate
(the early autosteamers were very susceptible to
freezing weather, being designed for Africa) and
infrastructure. Until fuel, spare parts, and trained
maintenance technicians were available, there was little
incentive to buy autosteamers; until people bought
autosteamers, there, was little incentive to invest in
infrastructure. The Combines had been able to
introduce the technology gradually, and in any case
they had capital reserves (and government backing)
unmatched elsewhere in a world of Victorian
laissez-faire. Accordingly, the first non-African use of
autosteamers was as toys for the rich in Great Britain;
this almost led to a complete ban in the 1820s, and did
result in punitive speed limits. France then established
an early lead, since it was comparatively large and had
good roads by the standards of the day; Paris was
connected with Lyon, Orleans, Strasbourg and the
Channel ports by autosteamer coach services by the
1830s, although these had difficulty competing with the
railways in later decades. Most European states
gradually copied Draka autosteamer and road-building
technology, and steam power gradually supplemented
horse traction in local transport.
By the 1850s, autosteamer taxis were common in
most large Euro-American cities (London had over
1,000); a majority of these were imported from the
Domination, but Britain, the United States, Brazil,
France, Belgium, and Prussia had the beginnings of
indigenous industries—see, for example, the crucial
role played by steamcoach schedules in Dickens's
masterpiece
The Drood Detective
. The technology was
now not very demanding, and any country with an
up-to-date ferrous metals and steam engine industry
could manufacture passable vehicles. In the United
States, with its weak federal government and poor
roads, autosteamers tended to be limited to urban use,
and to prairie-plains areas (such as the Midwest and
the Far West) where flat hard ground was available.
Everywhere, autosteamers were a driving force in
industrial development; machine tools, precision
engineering, lubricants, and bearings, all benefited
from the demand and served as learning-centers for
industrial skills. The prominent roles of smaller
industrial countries such as Belgium (from the 1840s)
and Sweden (1860s) were made possible by the initially
rather small scale of autosteamer output. The fuel
requirements of the new form of transport also
encouraged first process-coal industries (especially in
Germany, where chemical byproducts were important)
and then the French, Romanian and Russian petroleum
producers.
The Prussian military, always among the most
flexible of European institutions, saw the potential of
steam transport as early as the 1840s; the use of
improvised armored warcars in the suppression of the
revolutionaries in 1848, and the use of railways and
steamtrucks in shuttling troops between centers of
insurrection, were exemplary. At the same time, Britain
and Prussia (both areas characterized by large estates
and labor shortages) experimented successfully with
mechanized traction in agriculture. By the 1870s, some
British landowners and east-Elbian Junkers had
consolidated single farms of up to 5,000 acres worked
by autosteamer traction power and powered
harvesters; these attracted much attention from Karl
Marx and his followers, but remained exceptional. In
the United States, the demands of the Civil War
(1860-1866) transformed the small-scale autosteamer
industries of Pittsburgh and Cincinnatei, leading to the
formation of the predecessors of the great Stanley
Motors, Angleheim, United Autosteamers and Carnegie
companies. The Confederacy remained dependent on
imports from the Domination and Europe, a crucial
handicap after the Union succeeded in closing most of
its ports in 1863-64. Pittsburgh-made warcars, artillery
tractors and steamtrucks, plus limitless numbers of
Mexican conscripts and European mercenaries, ended
the Confederate experiment.
By the 1880s, with alloy-steel and light-metal
construction, electric light/ignition/heaters and cheap
light-oil distillate from the newly opened fields of
Texas, Ploesti, Baku, and Libya, autosteamers had
become a mature technology. Pneumatic tires gradually
replaced solid models, bodies contained less wood and
more metal, safety glass was introduced… but these
were detail matters. Costs remained high—$1,500 for a
six-seater Trevithick in 1885, equivalent to four times
the average per capita wage even in the US—but steam
transport was gradually replacing the horse and ox
throughout the developed world. The postwar surge in
road construction in the US laid the foundations of
American supremacy in passenger-steamer production,
and by the 1890s America was also the only country to
introduce steam-powered farm machinery on a large
scale; however, this was limited to the large grain-farms
of the Midwest and Great Plains areas. The Domination
had already decided, for a mixture of social and
economic reasons, effectively to ban direct use of
powered traction in agriculture, and lacked a mass
market for light passenger steamers; Europe remained
uneasily poised between the two models. The next great
breakthrough was in production technology rather than
design—the reduction of prices in the US to the point
where, by the 1890s, tens and then hundreds of
thousands of the middle classes could afford the light
four-wheel models pouring out of the Midwestern
factories.
strong>Air Transport:
Hot-air and hydrogen balloons were a product of the
1790s, with the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers
in France. While there were some military applications
(e.g., for artillery observation in siege operations) the
lack of directional control limited their usefulness.
Later development of hydrogen-inflated balloons lead
to valuable experience in how to balance ballast and
gas-valving, and in gasbag materials.
By the 1860s, the steam engine (especially the
automotive types) was making some sort of powered
balloon possible if not practical. Individual inventors
tinkered with a number of models, usually with
Domination-built autosteamer motors, but these
remained one-off curiosities. Several Combines in the
Domination experimented also, but while providing
valuable experience these studies also indicated that a
long and expensive process of trial-and-error would be
necessary before anything useful resulted.
The first major impetus came during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Paris, which by this time
had an autosteamer and compressor industry of some
size, was surrounded by Prussian troops and under
siege for several months. Powered semi-rigid diriuibles
(craft with a fixed keel but a gasbag whose shape was
maintained by internal pressure) were built to restore
communication with the armies in the field and the
national Government in Bordeaux; these were powered
by automotive engines driving wooden propellors
through air-turbine motors, and provided a
power-to-weight ratio just sufficient for controlled
flight in calm to moderate winds. The dirigibles were
also used for counter-battery fire and artillery
observation, and on a small scale for bombing Prussian
positions. The Prussians retaliated with light cannon,
firing upward and mounted on autosteamers; there
were several dramatic chases cross-country. After the
French government admitted defeat, the Paris
Commune uprising saw the "Versailles" use the two
surviving powered craft to bomb the communards.
The dramatic role of the dirigibles attracted military
attention in many quarters. The new German Reich
copied the French models, with improvements,
regarding them as principally useful for scouting and
artillery observation. Britain tended to regard them as