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A Tactical Flintlock? Why? WHY NOT!?!
So they don't have radios, but they do have intercontinental ballistic missiles!
The setting may seem at first to be The Middle Ages, The Colonial Period, or some Fantasy Counterpart Culture thereof, but when you look closer, you find polyester, robots, or other high-tech toys in between the horse-drawn wagons and wattle-and-daub buildings. There's generally no rhyme or reason for which technologies are anachronistically present besides the Rule Of Cool. Sometimes these may be leftovers from a lost technological civilization, but most of the time there is no explanation whatsoever for the bizarre mix of medieval and futuristic.
Schizo Tech is a key component of Punk Punk. It's also the foundation for Fantasy Gun Control. Compare Decade Dissonance for when one side has all the cool toys. When a story nominally set in a real-life historical period has this problem, you've got yourself some tasty Anachronism Stew.
When putting on a candidate for this trope, try not to confuse anachronisms with non-western-isms. For example, a kimono can be just as modern as a three-piece suit, if not more so.
Beware: Many sci-fi settings that aren't harder than diamond can become this if you think about it too hard.
Compare Fantasy Kitchen Sink, Culture Chop Suey. Technology Levels is what this trope averts. As well as Medieval European Fantasy, of course.
Examples:
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- Trigun uses this to good effect, mixing use of native animals and chemically propelled weapons with use of extreme high tech terraforming equipment, for the most part cannibalised for energy production.
- Ironically, none of it is anachronistic or out of place, as the people came from a failed terraforming mission.
- The Manga ends with Earth forces taken over so now Vash is getting chase by Hover Tanks and Mechs
- Aoi Umi No Tristia (aka Tristia of the Deep Blue Sea).
- In Dragon Half, magic and dragons and dragon slayers coexist with supersonic passenger jets and radio and cds. This, along with just about everything else in the series, is played for laughs.
- Don't forget the Space Shuttle shot down during the Anime.
- El Hazard The Magnificent World is a setting that superficially resembles the Arabian Nights, but is littered with the explicit remains of ultratech civilizations that destroyed themselves in a massive war centuries before.
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, England berates America during World War II for having a laptop model from 42 years in the future. "Are you trying to show off?" He doesn't bother mentioning the flippant use of Google, from even further into the future, which winds up functioning as the joke of the strip. It's as seen here: [1].
- Vision Of Escaflowne mixes a fantasy world with Lost Technology Humongous Mecha... and a technophile Big Bad intent on conquering the world through the power of Mad Science. (Of course, his interest in both magic and science is easily explained by his being Isaac Newton.)
- Aura Battler Dunbine is a classic Schizo Tech series, in which the inhabitants of a medieval fantasy world have kidnapped a group of robotics engineers and computer manufacturers from Earth to build advanced weapons. (There's an almost surreal shot of a chip-assembly "clean room" in a castle basement.)
- In Bleach, we see that the 12th Division of the Gotei 13 has some pretty advanced computers...in an afterlife that seems to be based on feudal Japan. Also, IVs.
- Although, given that Shinigami are fully capable of traveling to, and interacting with, the world of the living, the real question is why more of the Gotei 13, much less the rest of the Soul Society, doesn't have access to this level of tech.
- Honor Before Reason practically fuels everything else in this series, so yeah, why not. Komamura definitely would view such things as dishonourable, Soi Fon might as well, and using 'soul healing' magicks is probably superior to scientific medicine for most purposes, especially invasive, so at least this can be explained away. But every other squad probably falls somewhere along the HBR line.
- Grenadier is set in a feudal Japan that somehow still manages to have modern automatic weapons and other high-tech goodies.
- Lost Universe and Outlaw Star both appear to inhabit the opposite end of the Schizo Tech scale — futuristic worlds with anachronistic magic. That's actually Space Opera, the same thing as Star Wars.
- The characters of Haré+Guu live in a hunter-gatherer society, in a village in the middle of a jungle. However, they also have television, video games, modern school buildings, and a typical late-20th-early-21st-century city just a plane trip away.
- This is actually a Truth In Television since there are hunter-gatherer societies that have remained mostly unchanged for years, but do in fact, have radio, televisions, electricity, and wear modern clothes such as jeans and T-shirts. While going on hunting trips. One British journalist was shocked to see said society watching episodes of Star Trek, despite them not being able to understand the language.
- Smack-dab in between the two extremes is Paradigm City, the setting of The Big O, which would appear to be a 1940s film noir New York — if it weren't for the giant glass domes, androids, robots and Humongous Mecha all over the place.
- This can be explained by the entire world that we see (barring a minuscule exception or two) is part of a gigantic set reminiscent of The Truman Show. Why the producers, etc, of the show inside the show, who presumably have all of this technology and more, chose to do this is another story altogether.
- The universe of Fullmetal Alchemist at first glance seems to be early 20th century Europe. Most long-distance travel is done by steam train, the streets are paved with cobblestones, soldiers dress in uniforms similar to the era and are armed accordingly with period weapons (though the anime messes things up a bit by replacing the WWII-era guns with Vietnam-era ones), things like automobiles and telephones are just coming into existence, and are only being used by those with money or influence and it's mentioned in one episode that delivery of meat in a refrigerated truck is a new technology. Yet at the same time, Ed has prosthetic limbs that while they aren't beyond the capabilities of 21st century medicine to manufacture, are not quite perfected in real life yet, and no one seems to consider this unusual.
- Its worth noting that regular prosthetics exist in the setting, but only Automail is hooked up directly to the nervous system, and there is an entire town dedicated to it. It's believable that the presence of alchemists might have caused technological research to go down different routes.
- Part of the "briefing" part of the OVA collection explicitly states automail owes its existence to alchemy. Somehow.
- Perhaps an alchemist with a bad case of science related memetic disorder came up with the prototype, then concealed the original method of creation to avoid being "recruited" by the military.
- This troper assumed that, with the power of alchemy, they can reach the precision and complexity required to make it work.
- Interestingly, elements such as the steam trains and the State Alchemists' watches are accurate reproduction of early twentieth-century ones. Even more interestingly, Ed is puzzled at the Alternate Universe because 'our' (Western!) universe relies on technology rather than alchemy and Ed had never seen zeppelins, for example.
- Really, nearly all Steam Punk fits this category.
- It's probably even an integral part of steampunk. The whole genre seems to play with anachronisms and the 'vintage' feel.
- It's like why the Spy in Team Fortress 2 uses a revolver instead of a silenced pistol-it's all about style. Sure, advanced technology beyond even what we've got, powered by steam or, at the outside, clockwork, isn't very realistic, but damn if it isn't awesome.
- Although Team Fortress 2 IS set in the 60s, by all appearances, so, the engineers toys aside, most of the characters weapons are actually not subject to this trope, including the spy's revolver.
- It WAS possible to create prosthetics and metal limbs prior to the early 19th century, just stupidly expensive and a major hassle. The one surviving relic to prove this was possible: Gotz von Berlichingen's 'iron hand' on display in a German museum. It is likely that for various reasons blacksmiths who could do this would hide the secret because to be commissioned for such a work would require months of pain and sweat, and the political climate of the times required them to focus on spears, swords, axes, horseshoes, and armor instead. Although useful, sheer time involved probably relegates this to Awesome But Impractical
- Some Automail is even made of composite, carbon based materials.
- Parodied in Shaman King, in which the Patch Native American tribe has "traditional hand-made" versions of things like pagers, monitors, and cell phones.
- Later on, it is shown that they really ARE hand made. The tribe became friends with an alien who taught them how to make all of their tech with what they had at hand.
- The anime movie, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, which takes place in the 1960's, but includes both anachronistic WWII-era weapons and futuristic powered-armour suits.
- This applies to the rest of the Kerberos franchise as well, with most technology being from the 50s or so, except for the aforementioned power armour, and the social structure being entrenched in the 1960s and the cold war... aside from the totalitarian dictatorships and massive gang warfare caused by that very same power armour (or rather, those who use it). It's complicated.
- Their armor ISN'T POWERED. They are just that awesome.
- The world of Saiyuki has ancient Chinese architecture, clothing, and farming technology (witness the hoe-wielding mobs of angry cheongsam-clad villagers found in many episodes)...and also such everyday items as butane lighters, a jeep, a revolver, and a gold credit card.
- Specifically, a deity booted out of heaven- who was reincarnated as a small dragon- who can transform into a Jeep via magic. Nice going, Hakuryuu.
- The Naruto universe essentially mixes feudal society with modern technology (and clothing). The only exceptions are things like cars and guns. The author once admitted this, and said that he thought of the Leaf village as more of "a place in my head" that existing in an definite geography or time period and that the existence of ninja, and really the whole story, would be pretty pointless if they had those (or maybe just guns, as he stated there might be vehicle).
- The lack of guns can be attributed to the types of enemies one would be using them against. With even the lowest-level mook shinobi having super-human speed, agility, and aim with thrown weapons, an early gunpowder weapon such as a musket or blunderbuss would be completely ineffective. Without any proof they're a viable weapon against a major source of difficulty for the user, there's no incentive to produce, use, or improve them.
- The various shinobi have been seen to utilize laryngophones for short-range communication but long-range communication seems to rely on couriers and messenger beasts.
- In the Naruto manga (chapter 19 page 8) there is a gun behind the shop counter.
- One of the Six Paths of Pain is a friggin cyborg armed to the teeth with high explosive homing missiles and a huge-ass laser beam and Nagato himself is confined into what appears to be some sort of mobile throne, both oddly futuristic compared to the rest.
- The village he's from is also somehow heavily industrialized (even somewhat steampunkish), despite it being frequently desolated from wars held there by other countries.
- It's also worth noting that this body was apparently constructed either by being hooked up to a demonic statue or via Superpowerful Genetics, and either way it was a power used by the Sage of the Six Paths, who lived centuries ago.
- In chapter 354, apropos of completely freaking nothing we see dozens of buildings of late 20th century build, all of which are abandoned except for one that was used as weapon storehouse by the Uchiha and is inhabited by some old lady, her granddaughter, and their cats.
- It's fairly indicative that fake spoilers claimed Zetsu and Madara showed up to help Sasuke with a fucking tank and people actually believed them.
- Why not? They already had a massively armored train in the first movie.
- The civilian sector seems very much like the 20th century, with plastics and various machinery, including occasional small, fat monitors.
- Murder Princess appears to be set in a traditional Medieval European Fantasy, right up to the moment when a Tyke Bomb Robot Girl punches down a door with her bare hands in the first episode. (The sci-fi technology seen in the opening sequence doesn't hurt, either.)
- The manga version of Inu Yasha is a completely feudal Japan fantasy setting ... until a group of bandits suddenly come into the picture, one of whom appears to be half-tank.
- Explicable as we learned he has a jewel shard and used to be an explosives/gunner type.
- Samurai 7 has massive cyborgs and warships, equipped with what seems like anti-gravity systems, Wave Motion Guns...and samurai, armed only with katana and Implausible Fencing Powers. The villagers fire incendiary arrows at power armor. The cities are part cyberpunk, but the villages are traditional Japanese in style. And the "mother of all crossbows" is so very worth the watching...
- That's called a ballista, and it's a real medieval siege engine.
- One of the Seven is also a robot. Powered by steam. To borrow a line, I wasn't aware steam could form allegiances.
- In the Orguss 02 OVA, we have Industrial Age societies digging up Humongous Mecha which have teams of psychics onboard to navigate and act in lieu of radar and other sensors, and machine guns installed to replace any Energy Weapons that aren't still working.
- Shina Dark has the Vansable Empire with steam-powered war devices. But more notably, when one of the main characters gets injured, she is sent a hospital which has an oxygen tank with a mask.
- The rabbit-people in Utawarerumono go to war with Eva-style Humongous Mecha. In a medieval-fantasy setting. Oh how the Hilarity Ensues...
- Not only that, but the main character apparently was some modern day archaeologist sciency type before he lost his memory.
- Adding to its ever notorious anachrony, Samurai Champloo features semi-automatic handguns, rocket launchers, and elevators all existing in the Japanese Edo Period.
- Afro Samurai. The opening scene looks like something out of feudal Japan to Wild West Europe... not too long later, cut to a man using night vision goggles. Other technological marvels include rocket launchers, cellphones, androids and cyborgs alongside old-style clothing, architecture and swords.
- Saber Marionette J has Robot Girls, spaceships and all sorts of technology in what looks like feudal Japan; supposedly, this is the result of a space colony operation gone awry.
- Mamoru Nagano plays this trope to the hilt in The Five Star Stories, where genetically enhanced Super Soldiers who act like knights in shining armor and pilot Humongous Mecha serve in the same military forces as WWII-style soldiers, but with laser rifles and anti-gravity tanks. Most of these armies serve various feudal empires, though democracies and fascist dictatorships are not unheard of. This is occasionally Lampshaded, with characters lamenting what a ridiculous game war has become, and various justifications are given, the most common being that it's more a matter of tradition than practicality and that the prevailing military theory favours personal combat to weapons of mass destruction because it isn't worth conquering territory if it's just going to get nuked (which doesn't stop the main character from creating a mecha with a gun that can blow up entire continents when fired at full power, but let's not get into that).
- A girl asked him. So the guy thought "What the hell!" and went all-out with the said mecha.
- The only difference that Glass Fleet has from The Cavalier Years is the presence of space-faring vessels. Swords, flintlock pistols, crossbows, spears, horse-drawn carriages, and plate armor are still well in place. This is taken to ridiculous extremes when artists' renditions of mercenaries are used as a stand-in for intelligence/surveillance photographs.
- The majority of the world of One Piece doesn't appear to be particularly advanced. They have guns and cannons, cameras, but they substitute alot of communications technology with magic snails.
- Then we meet Cyborg Franky who, true to his name, is a cyborg. Turned himself into one In a
cave junkyard! With a box of scraps!. Has a bottomless magazine in his left arm with doubles as a cannon and an automatic weapon, a sort of Rocket Punch attached to a chain. What have you.
- A bit further into the story we meet Bartholomew Kuma. Like Franky, he's a cyborg, but of a much higher quality. He's called a Pacifista.
- Not long after that, more cyborgs show up in the form of what are essentially clones of Kuma, but with lasers.
- And now we have plasma flat-screen TV monitors and Dolby Surround Sound stereo speakers. Out of nowhere.
- Xamd Lost Memories mixes Studio Ghibli with Neon Genesis Evangelion, producing an Anachronism Stew that has to be seen to be believed.
- Its not actually that implausable that two sides of a war that had been going on for ages would have different technology, and even the remote village kingdom place had rifles, so it was more a case of aesthetics.
- Kino no Tabi: in the "Land of Wizards" episode, it is pointed out that no one has ever successfully built an airplane. Never mind that various countries have artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, fully-automated economies, incredibly-advanced neurological science, and, of course, hovercrafts. No airplanes, just hovercrafts.
- In New Getter Robo, the Getter Team find themselves transported back to the Heian era, and are quite surprised to find Samurai fighting the Oni with guns, tanks, and airships.
- It's suggested by Hayato that their arrival, which deposited each of them at different points in a 2-year period and the robot itself long enough ago to be recorded on scrolls as a fable, somehow screwed up the time line.
- Kuroshitsuji is explicitly set in the Victorian era, complete with Queen Victoria and Arthur Conan Doyle both making appearances. But television and video games are referenced.
Comic Books
- Comic books seem to be egregious examples of this. Batman's nemesis Mr. Freeze has invented a freeze-ray; Lex Luthor currently waltzes around in a battlesuit full of crazy power and can probably fly; Firestorm can synthesize any material in any quantity (I'm looking at you, lithium); Thanagarian N-th metal is apparently capable of bestowing flight; Black Lightning is capable of generating mounds and mounds of electrical current, and... well, you get the idea. And yet, citizens of Earth are still using gasoline-fuelled cars.
- Lampshaded somewhat in the first Superman/Batman comic. Alfred is guarding the sewer entrance to the Batcave with a shotgun. Superman remarks on it, telling Batman "You didn't have an extra freeze ray gun you could've given him?"
- Also, Lex's suit is "borrowed" from Apokolips, so it scientific value is rather shady.
- Lampshaded in Starman, when Jack Knight tells his father that when he invented an unlimited, clean source of power in the 1940s, he should have used it to make cosmic-powered cars instead of flying around fighting crime. Jack's father actually goes on to construct a cosmic power plant big enough to power the entire county, which hasn't been seen since in the DCU.
- This is somewhat justified by the technology being created by super geniuses, aliens, and downright magic, all of which have [Reed Richards Is Useless competence.] Or maybe they just don't trust regular people with these wonderful toys.
- Marvel Comics is guilty of this as well. Stark Industries have technology that really should have revolutionized the world by now, SHIELD have jetpacks and spaceships (technically, SWORD has the spaceships, but whatever), Charles Xavier has a global surveillance system (mutant only), Henry Pym has his shrinking particles, and of course, Reed Richards Is Useless.
- Justified, when Tony Stark mentions that the battery that keeps Pepper Potts alive is costs a cool billion dollars, and the Iron Man suit is another billion dollars. That's cheaper than a Stealth Bomber, but the jetpacks and spaceships must still be hideously expensive. In other words, making the technology is a different matter than making it a viable technology that can be easily replicated, maintained, and created by someone other than super geniuses.
- This huge waste of world changing technology is noted as one of Pym's "sins" in Paradise X since Pym could have saved many more lives but adapting his technology to industry or health technology rather than using it to beat up criminals.
- Beetle Bailey's been going since The Fifties and the Korean War, so Beetle and his unit wear Korea-era uniforms, drive Jeeps, and use old-fashioned rifles. In more recent strips, there are computers, microphone headsets, modern-style golf, and other modern technology, but the 50s tech has never gone away.
- Nävis, the protagonist of the French comic series Sillage, lives in a treehouse inside a sort of biosphere spaceship, presumably because she grew up in a jungle and likes her home feeling close to nature.
- The Trigan Empire has supersonic planes and swords. Guns exist, but haven't made swords and spears obsolete, for some reason.
- {{2000AD}} strip Nemesis the Warlock, intergalactic spacecraft, Humongous Mecha and swords and battle axes.
- Superman Returns keeps so much of the other Superman movies' look and feel that it appears to take place not long after Superman II. And then someone pulls out a camera phone.
- Well, Superman II couldn't have taken place that long before, otherwise Lois's kid would've been finishing graduate school by then. It's more like the previous two movies got pulled forward in time twenty years, and therefore have all archaic tech.
- The 1996 movie Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh. The external guards in the beginning use polearms, the statue of the old King Hamlet wears platemail, and Norway is allowed to invade Poland without any alliance system protecting Poland, making it at least seem like medieval times. Then there are some old-looking guns inside the palace, making it seem like 17th century at least. Then there are steam trains, one way mirrors, and a globe with a complete map of Africa, making it seem like 19th century. Then there are electric lights, which make it seem like the 20th century.
- To be fair, the original Hamlet was pretty anachronistic to begin with. Shakespeare did this a lot, probably because he thought his audience wouldn't be able to identify with the characters or the setting if he didn't include things they were familiar with.
- The old-fashioned weaponry of the guards could be justified considering that many modern guards of honour carry similarly old weaponry. Real-life Rule Of Cool.
- In Tim Burton's Batman, photographers rely on flash-bulb cameras, while Batman has a jet plane and a rocket car.
- Titus. Roman helmets, old-timey microphones, cornrowed glam-rock looking barbarians, oh my!
- Planet Of The Apes. The Ape civilization seems to be on the level of ancient Rome, yet there's an abundance of semi-automatic weapons, plastic pens and high pressure water hoses.
- Although they are remains of human technology (the whole civiilization in the original, a crashed ship in the remake).
- Dark City includes elements of this to reflect the fact that the city's builders just kind of yanked technology off of Earth for the city's inhabitants (humans) to play with. The makers of the movie did this simply to enhance the noir elements of the movie.
- It also provides hints that the city is somehow displaced in time, which is kind of true.
- Knightriders is a film where the characters embrace this trope on purpose.
- The Emperors New Groove is largely set in an ancient Incan kingdom, although a floor waxer inexplicably appears for a one-shot gag.
- The Wookiees in Star Wars use advanced lasers and holographic systems, and still live in wooden treehouses in the middle of jungles. This is one of the reasons that Return of the Jedi used Ewoks instead - a technologically advanced Wookiee battle would be too expensive to create.
- Note that 'middle of jungles' also means 'middle' in height terms. They're high up in pretty feckin' tall trees, and are likely afraid of heavier technologies causing them to crash to the jungle floor, which is supposedly even more dangerous than Australia.
- The Wookies are also noted in KOTOR to be advanced enough for the Rakatan totake over. this doesn't sound impressive given that they have over 500 planets, until you remember that the Republic had like 1.3 million. Basically, the Wookies are real old and real smart (they've mapped their own hyperspace routes).
- In Jesus Christ Superstar Roman soldiers have swords, spears, submachineguns, tanks and jet fighters. Rule of symbolism?
- A shot of Tatoine featured a hovering cart pulled by a beast of burden. Seriously, what's wrong with the wheels in that galaxy?
- Most Steampunk works revel in this trope, though counterexamples do exist: The Difference Engine sees computers developed in the victorian era with considerable effort devoted to making them both plausable and integrated, though even here the rollerskates do seem pure Schizo Tech (or Rule Of Cool).
- The Planet Cull in Neal Asher's The Brass Man features "knights" riding on giant hogs who use lances to kill local monsters, protecting villagers who construct photovoltaic cells by hand as a trade. This is because they are the descendants of a stranded colony ship, of which their leaders are trying to use a telescope and a laser to re-establish contact with as it's still sitting in orbit and can be used as a relay to phone home back to Earth.
- Iain M Banks' Culture has the technology and resources to essentially run on in-universe RuleOfCool. As such, you get things like the air-bubble projected around a kilometres-long hyperspace-capable starship operated by a godlike AI...filled with people flying propellor planes and airships, or, despite having machines that can materialize practically any food at any time, people cooking kebabs on barbecues.
- Sort of justified in that the Culture has automated so much of society that people can essentially do whatever they want all the time, so they will use the technology that's the most fun for them, not necessarily the most efficient.
- Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy has cigarettes, cameras and bathrooms with running water, but no weapons more advanced than crossbows.
- Justified in that every member of the society can shield, making them everything proof, not to mention the ability to kill people with a thought.
- Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series features nations with fleets of flying warships and mile-range rifles that shoot explosive rounds, but in which the most valued comabt skill is swordsmanship.
- In Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series, a benevolent mind-controlling computer keeps anyone on the planet Harmony from thinking of anything that might lend itself to large-scale warfare, with the end result that they have advanced computers, but the horse pulled wagon is a new invention in the story.
- L. Sprague de Camp's novella Divide and Rule was written primarily to have as much fun with this trope as possible. It features trains pulled by elephants, knights with armor made of chrome steel and plexiglass, cavalry battles with radio correspondents, and castles that use canned food to outlast sieges, among many other things. This is justified by the fact that Earth has been conquered by aliens who give humans a fair degree of autonomy, but don't allow them certain technologies, such as explosives and motor vehicles.
- In Western SF, Frank Herbert's Dune is perhaps the preeminent example of this, though the reasons for it are well-rooted in the series Back Story.
- Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is a great version of this. It takes place in a mystical Wild West filled with malfunctioning robots.
- Jerry Pournelle's Co Dominium is defined by a century-long period of Medieval Stasis following the creation of Faster Than Light Travel, due to every politician in the named entity being either an Obstructive Bureaucrat, a Strawman Political or a Well Intentioned Extremist; the only way all these megalomaniacs could agree not to start World War III was to agree not to develop weapons technology any further, which of course meant not developing anything, and even trashing all the libraries so nobody could build better weapons by Mac Gyvering. They then proceeded to deport millions of people every year to every marginally habitable world they could find, often with little more than the clothes on their backs. The result is a smorgasbord of Schizo Tech. Casual Interstellar Travel, but no lasers. Hand-held anti-satellite weaponry stored next to bolt-action rifles. Spaceports with horse troughs. Pournelle's 'Verse never actually recovered from the whole mess; a thousand years later, every Space Marine thinks PDAs are state-of-the-art.
- Mortal Engines has quite a few examples of this: heavier-than-air flight doesn't exist (at least at the start of the series), swords are still as popular as guns, but engines that can move entire cities and technology that can bring people back from the dead as cyborg killing machines are commonplace.
- Everpresent in A Series Of Unfortunate Events, in which telegraphs coexist with fiber-optic cables.
- The Book Of The New Sun 's Schizo Tech can be summed up by paraphrasing one of its appendices - The future Urth is a world where continents are just as far away to the average person as other star systems. And the peasantry carry crossbows that shoot thermite explosives.
- One very representative example is a short story in an issue of Analog, in which the most advanced two species in the universe can use black hole as a source of energy and have more Wave Motion Guns than you can imagine, but are surprised and, for one of the two species (both flew around in gigantic spaceships), destroyed by a lucky shot from a device consisting of a long tube, a titanium coated projectile, and an explosive, i.e., a gun. Apparently, only humans are brutish enough to come up with the idea.
- This could be called a Wall Banger though, since any civilization powerful enough to develop the technology to harvest Hawking radiation from black holes would be a Type-II society at least, just because of the infrastructure required. A society that powerful could unleash the tiniest bit of their power and turn Earth into a glowing, airless desert that looks like the surface of the moon. Guns should, logically, be useless against a society of that scale (but not the almighty pointed stick!). But then that would spoil the hamfisted moral "Guns R Bad!" wouldn't it.
- "The Road Not Taken", by Harry Turtledove. It turns out that antigravity and faster than light travel are absurdly simple, but have no applications other than travel, and don't fit into other scientific theories, and thus provides no other benefits. Humans, who have missed the discovery, are invaded in 2039 by a species that did during their age of sail. It's humans with 21st century tech versus aliens with highly maneuverable aircraft, starships...and black-powder flintlock muskets. The only thing earth fighters were somewhat inferior was maneuverablity; they more than enough made for it with the speed, radar and sheer firepower. It was very short-lived invasion.
- Once Humanity copies the technology, their invasions are even shorter.
- A couple of captive aliens even lampshaded it in a hilarious "What Have We Done" moment — exactly in these words, no less.
- This happens in Worldwar too. The Race, despite having mastered things like cryogenics and quarter-light speed travel, never thought to stick poison gas in a canister and shoot it at their enemy. Meaning they never invented a proper defense.
- The aliens have been united for ~50,000 years, so while guns are utilitarian and useful, the more focussed (powerful in war, but useless in peace) weapons have been all but forgotten. Besides when you have nuclear weapons which can destroy a city or battlefield a lower-powered version of the same weapon might not be considered useful, in the same way that a gunpowder musket would never be used in a modern military.
- Had The Race invaded just twenty or thirty years later, there simply wouldn't be any invasion: their technology is so 80's, and their industrial base is limited to only their expedition fleet. They have had major difficulties even with 40's era humanity and had to agree for a truce, Earth of thew 70's would've made a short work of them. The Decade Dissonance doesn't really matter when your industial capabilities are infinitely better than those of the enemy. And the concept of orbital bombardment —when they're the only ones with spaceships— just never quite occurs to them.
- The only weapon they have that ist orbit to surface capable is nuclear bombardment. The debate over whether or not to use this is the main reason why Straha defected.
- If the race HAD invaded twenty or thirty years later, however, their initial High Altitude Nuclear Explosions would have found microchips far more accomodating than vacuum tubes!
- Then again we probably would have detected them shortly after they entered the Solar system.
- Explored at length in the form of Stargate Crossover in http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3876464/1/Worldwar_Discovering_the_Balance
- Had the race invaded even 10 years later they'd have suffered worse than they did (compare the F-86 to the P-40, or the M-48 to the M4).
- The Land of Oz is a Magical Land with wind up robots, cyborgs, and radios. The books actually inspired many Sci-Fi writers, like Isaac Asimov.
- In Neal Stephenson's Anathem this is a deliberate trait of the Avout, who live extremely simple, monastic lives without even a printing press, but make their robes using femtotechnology, grow trees genetically engineered to have leaves that can be used like paper, and carry around nigh-invulnerable femtotech "Spheres" that can be resized, recoloured and to a limited extent reshaped to serve as anything from stool or lantern to bullet-stopping shield (actually the effectiveness of the sphere as a bullet-proof sheild was tested in the book, the verdict: ineffective).
- Which is not impossible, assuming they got the technology from someone else, or some kind of lost tech.
- Actually, the reason for this apparent anachronism is explained in the text. Because this whole order of monks is totally devoted to learning stuff and figuring things out, they develop incredibly advanced technology. However, the normal people outside of the monks place of residence feared this technology. At least three times throughout history they have come in and told the monks that they needed to stop messing with certain technologies or the outside governments would destroy them. These banned technologies include, nukes, computers, nanotech, and psychic powers. Certain elements of the technology were allowed to the monks however including their trademark femtotech ball and robes.
- In The Planiverse, most Ardean technology is described by the humans as "late nineteenth century", but they also have an experimental computer, rocket planes, and even a space station. Justified because of the limitations of a two-dimensional universe.
- Doctor Grordbort's Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory is a spoof catalogue of Victorian-era rayguns, robots, and other Cool But Inefficient Steam Punk devices. Includes a short illustrated story on a
hunting expedition rampant wildlife slaughter on Venus.
- Any book (or TV series, RPG, etc) where residents of a generation starship have forgotten their origins and reverted to feudalism or the Stone Age (the Bits of Repurposed Plastic Junk Age?) certainly qualifies.
- At the primitive end of the anachronism scale, the fuzzies from the Fuzzy novels are initially mistaken for pre-sentient primates, because they didn't use fire. Their tools, however, were more sophisticated than what a pre-fire culture should've had: they just had lots of thick fur to keep warm, and liked eating their food raw.
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation series is full of Schizo Tech, since the decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire saw science degrade first into mere past-revering authoritarianism, then into a religion of technology where Foundation-indoctrinated priests made machines work by rote and have no idea of the principles behind them. Only the Foundation(s) keep the concepts of science and research alive, plus records of the Lost Technology from brighter days.
- Eric Flint's 1632 series is practically bursting with this trope. This isn't really surprising to anyone who's read the series, considering that the 1630s of the setting had books covering over three and a half centuries of technological advancement dumped into it, courtesy of the arrival of Grantville from April 2000.
- His Dark Materials has this. Lyra's Earth has Victorian/steampunk tech plus an advanced knowledge of physics, electricity, and nuclear weapons.
- Discworld is going through an accelerated technological revolution, having in the course of the books starting from extremely low-tech fantasy to having a fully functional continent-spanning semaphore network acting as a proto-Internet. Several other schizo-tech examples were temporary magical errors such as the invention of the movie industry (silver portals for eldritch abominations) and shopping malls (a giant creature-hive that hatches from snow globes that feeds on society)
- In Kevin J. Anderson's Terra Incognita series the general tech level is the usual Middle Ages type found in fantasy stories but the Saedrans use navigational equipment better suited to the 18th century that enable them to determine longitude and the Urecari invent crude, balloon based airships.
- Gor has enforced Medieval Stasis for the most part but they also invented immortaliy formulas. The "justification" for this is that on Earth we spent too much time learning how to make guns.
Live Action TV
- The Firefly/Serenity Verse mixes starships and Wild West technology indiscriminately. There's a good in-Verse explanation for this: the Alliance tends to dump colonists on recently-terraformed worlds with the bare minimum needed to survive. As well, high technology is concentrated in Alliance hands, due to the Unification War between the outer planets and the core worlds, which ended in an Alliance victory, and they have no intention of letting the outer planets rise again.
- In fact, one can actually see real Schizo Tech at work in a few locations in the series. For example, in "Heart of Gold" there's a house that looks like it would be right at home in a Western, with minimal technology, period dresses, an old-style well, and cheap newspaper-based insulation....and they have a futuristic-looking wall terminal complete with interplanetary communications.
- In that episode, it's also quite likely that the higher than usual level of Schizo Tech is due to a conscious, in-universe decision; one character mentions that the Villain Of The Week deliberately keeps the world in a low-technology state so that he can dominate it economically and indulge in an Old West fantasy.
- Some of the planets visited on the various incarnations of Star Trek exhibit this trope. One Next Gen episode had a relatively primitive, pre-industrial society that had dissolving doors that spontaneously re-formed after use. Yeah. Oh and faster than light communication but were too primitive to contact.
- The Wild Wild West series is a sterling example of the trope. The Wild West setting mixed with gadgets worthy of James Bond and plenty of mad scientists with anachronistic inventions.
- The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr. was the same thing, but with a lot more Lampshade Hanging.
- Fringe offers an interesting three-tiered use of this trope. In the show, scientific and technological advances have been taking place for decades under the radar of the public. In addition to typical present-day technology, mega-corporation Massive Dynamic produces space age future tech weapons and gizmos. However, a third tech level exists as the protagonists have some rudimentary prototype gadgets designed by Mad Scientist Walter Bishop. The prototypes were designed 20-30 years in the past, as Walter has spent the 17 years before the first season in a mental institution. His laboratory and devices have a low-tech look but function beyond the scope of conventional science.
- For an example of the latter, witness Walter's amazing matter transporter machine. It looks like some metal, wires and lenses...no computers or even obvious power source. But it can teleport a person from any point in space and time to any other point in space and time. Shit just got real.
- There's also a subtle aversion. While tech developed by Massive Dynamics is sleek and efficient, the various reality bending gadgets (old and new) essentially never work as advertised or have bizarre complications involved. The development process is very much apparent.
- Earth in Power Rangers. Fully functional interplanetary spacecraft by 1997, space colonies by 1999, and Ridiculously Human Robots indistinguishable (literally) from the real thing by 2007, and yet everyday technology looks and works exactly the same. One would think that if antigravity technology is advanced enough to show up in earthmade ranger bikes, it'd show up in at least the very high class cars, but no.
- Red Dwarf has more than a bit of this too, video tapes and spaceships for example. Lampshaded in the recent Dave special when Kryten explained that the human race abandoned DVDs in favour of videos because mankind could never be bothered to put them back in the cases and videos are too large to lose.
- It could be argued it's like that because VHS cassettes were current, and affordable, reliable disc media like DV Ds were unheard of in 1988 when the show began.
- Parodied by Holly, a tenth-generation AI Hologrammatic computer whose one true love was unreliable ZX Spectrum.
- Max Headroom had computers with old-fashioned manual typewriter keyboards. Think "steampunk" but dirtier.
- The land of Pylea from Angel seems to be set in The Dung Ages but the most advanced piece of technology it has is the remote-controlled restraining collars put on the human slaves.
Music Video
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000 ranges from worlds covered entirely in cities and advanced space age factories to planets full of human colonists that have regressed to a medieval or even Stone Age level. This is explained in the setting by the Age of Strife, when the manifestation of a new Chaos God disrupted interstellar travel and cut worlds off from Earth for millenia at a time.
- There is also a bit of "lost tech" going on in the setting. The Imperium's technology is controlled by a religious cult call the Mechanicus that doesn't believe in researching new technology or trying to understand the technology they currently have. Instead, they worship whatever old technology they can find from before the Age of Strife.
- The fantasy version of Warhammer features this too, particularly in recent editions. The Empire have a steam-powered tank and a "clockwork" horse while the Dwarfs - better yet - have a helicopter armed with a steam cannon (not mentioning an organ gun and a huge cannon-like flamethrower). The Skaven, infamously, feature "fantasy" versions of a sniper rifle, a ratling gun, a flamethrower, a laser cannon, a hamster wheel of death and what what appears to be a nuclear bomb (all of which may fail with destructively hilarious results). This in a world where a powerful human kingdom still think knights and longbows are cutting-edge, and there's at least one major faction that's entirely Stone Age. Fan reactions have been mixed, although some earlier editions featured actual plasma guns and laser pistols, so modern players get off lightly really.
- Rifts, being set After After The End, has a lot of this. Many wilderness villages may not have running water and only a few electrical generators, but will have laser rifles capable of blowing a sedan in half with one shot. And let's not get into magic.
- BattleTech is also rife with this sort of thing. The mecha all have guns and missiles with great range and hideous damage, but due to the rubbished industrial base apparently nobody can build decent fire control or air-conditioning systems, so most fighting takes place at close range (under 1 kilometer!) and most mechwarriors fight in what amounts to underwear.
- It enters Fridge Logic territory for Battle Tech, mostly because of Did Not Do The Research (the master-slave limitations of the Cł suite, just as an example—really? no transceivers? and a network that's hardwired to be closed, even to allies? er?).
- The Yu Gi Oh trading card game world is full of this, possibly because nobody's ever bothered to explain any of it. We are talking about a world where a medieval knight◊ can do battle with a low-orbit ion cannon◊ and win. That same ion cannon also greatly fears duct tape.◊
- Dungeons And Dragons has their share. As usual.
- Gary Gygax played around with this trope a lot in his original Greyhawk home games, although most of them (mostly imported from Earth or found in crashed spaceships) got left out in later releases for that campaign setting.
- Mystara also has a number of anachronisms, either as Shout Outs (Heldannic Knights' bird-of-prey flying vessels), in-jokes, or remnants of (again) a crashed spaceship.
- The Hollow World, inside Mystara, proactively averts this trope with the Spell of Preservation, which makes people in various cultures distrust and spurn unfamiliar technologies, no matter how useful.
- Technology levels in Ravenloft range from Stone Age to late Renaissance, depending on where you are, with even higher tech turning up in the local Mad Scientist Laboratory. Somewhat justified in that new domains are added to the Land of Mists from different worlds with their own indigenous tech-levels, rather than technology evolving in tandem within adjacent countries.
- Spirit Of The Century plays with this, as it's set in the 1920s but uses pulp Science! to allow more futuristic technology, and even full on mad science inventions that we still haven't made. The book does a good job of cataloguing what inventions are just around the corner to give you some idea what the state of the art inventions you could get prototypes to, or make, are.
- Conventional technology in Exalted is mostly around middle-to-late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. But those with the needed skills can create a hyper-precision wristwatch with perpetual calendar, sunrise and sunset calculator, moon phase display, and the functional equivalent of high resolution GPS as a minor tool.
- The world of Alexander Athanatos from GURPS: Bio-Tech is mainly in the Iron Age yet capable of producing genetic hybrids thanks to Hippocrates triggering revolution in medical science.
- Crimson Skies is an Alternate Universe setting where the United States of America broke up and the successor states are plagued by air pirates. It regularly features propeller driven aircraft armed with magnetic rockets in addition to zeppelins armed with remote controlled gun turrets and rocket launchers. The Xbox adaption, High Road To Revenge, features a German Fascist Group called Die Spinne who have Tesla weapons and a weather control device. This series is set in the 1930's.
Video Games
Web Comics
- An example is the satirical Bruno The Bandit, which is set in a basic "middle ages" fantasy setting, but still has vacuum cleaners, television (complete with every TV trope in the book) and cellphones.
- It's rather jarring, since there was, for at least the first parts of the comic, no call whatsoever for these things. Talk about pointless anachronism.
- The very first strip has Bruno claiming to be a TV repairman... While it may be pointless, it's not really a surprise...and it is, after all, Rule Of Funny.
- Order Of The Stick is set in a Medieval European Fantasy setting much like a typical campaign setting for Dungeons And Dragons. However, in various strips it has featured coffee machines, indoor plumbing, stethoscopes, bug zappers, cell phones, and even a desktop computer (the last one was admittedly owned by an angel). The technology levels appears to be whatever inspires the best jokes.
- V calls the strip out on it once:
- Honestly, magic-powered trains still makes more sense than a majority of Greyhawk's anachronisms...
- Girl Genius has numerous instances of technological disconnects. They have autonomous robots with advanced AI but no computers. Airships the size of cities cruise the skies but no fixed or rotary wing aircraft. Energy weapons abound but no radio or telephonic communications.
- Somewhat justified, as the people who invent this stuff are crazy.
- The son of the Baron - Gilgamesh Wulfenbach - actually does invent a gas powered fixed-wing aircraft early in the comic archive. The chapter is aptly called The Infamous Falling Machine! - Hilarity Ensues
- Questionable Content is set in Present Day western Massachusetts, but features sentient robots sold at retail, various Transformer-style mecha (Vespa-Bot FTW), and a major character spent her childhood on a space station. This seems to go forgotten for large stretches of time.
- MegaTokyo appears to take place in a normal analog of the modern world. Except when the Tokyo PD breaks out the giant mecha.
- While the setting of Blade Of Toshubi is mainly feudal japanese, there have been instances of higher level technology, such as Reiko's training taking place in a chamber with nuclear waste barrels.
- In Inhuman, the technology level of the planet Hekshano is that of 1970s Earth - but with spaceships.
- Rune Factory has this. It seems like a typical fantasy based, medieval game franchise, however..They have microwaves, recorders, mixers, light bulbs, among other things.
Web Original
- Though mostly sticking to its early 19th-century flavor, Open Blue has the occasional incendiary bullet (WWI), bullets loaded with a nerve agent (1936), and swords coated with diamond (???) to make cutting easier. This of course, does not count the myriad of weird things left behind by the precursors.
Western Animation
- The Flintstones are absolute kings of this trope.
- In the Diniverse, Batman series tend to have a film noir style, down to the appearance of cars, guns, etc. However, modern technology exists as well. You're sure you're watching something taking place in the days of the earliest Batman comics, and then Batgirl mentions Pinky And The Brain.
- Video cassette recorders exist, but television sets are limited to displaying black and white images.
- This was all done for artistic reasons (giving Batman a somewhat nebulous setting in time) and also to keep network censors from forcing the GCPD and the Mooks from using laser guns (by apparently sending it so far in the past, the network couldn't put in lasers since it would strain even a kid's disbelief)
- Except lasers are used in several episodes, they just aren't hand-held blasters.
- Which is what happened in Spider Man The Animated Series, everything is early 90s - but the cops have lasers, and every security company has combat drones - equipped with lasers.
- There was a bit of a semi-major Genre Shift between the original Batman: The Animated Series and the later Batman episodes (in the Batman/Superman era). In order to make Batman fit in more with the style and tone of the new Superman cartoon, the film-noir visuals were basically entirely dropped and everything heavily updated to present-day in appearance — newscasts now in color, Bruce Wayne now in a modern business suit, etc. The original series very carefully avoided any real-life pop-culture references that would date the series while the Batman/Superman episodes are rife with them, see the above Batgirl one-liner.
- Except for random people clearly reading Tiny Toon Adventures comic books in several episodes.
- Both versions of He Man And The Masters Of The Universe had heavy Schizo Tech. Flying vehicles, cyborgs and robots in a Sword And Sorcery setting.
- If the former count then add in Thundercats
- But Thundercats weren't even from that planet...And the planet they landed on presumably didn't have the right things to power their most common weaponry so they stepped it back a notch.
- Avatar The Last Airbender is set in a world where the highest technology is the Steam Punk Fire Nation. But in the third season they are pursued by what apears to be a Terminator knockoff with a frikkin' laser for a third eye! His origin IIRC is never explained, even by Zuko who hired him in the first place.
- The laser is easy enough to understand - it's a form of firebending not seen elsewhere in the show (although this begs the question of why the Fire Nation Army hasn't learnt it and conquered the universe). However, the apparently cybernetic limbs are indeed puzzling.
- Cybernetic? Are you sure they're not just metal prosthetics? They don't move on their own, and the hand never closes.
- Avatar The Abridged Series Lampshades this, from the first season: Tanks (invented 1915), buildable; Jetskis (1973) Buildable, On steam power; Gigantic drills, (invented 20XX) Buildable; Hot Air Baloons (1783) Nope, sorry.
- No hot air balloons? Then what was the invention of that guy from the Earth nation in the air temple? He was the one that came with all the inventions!!!
- Note that most of the tech is powered by benders aside from the drill, which is likely a one-shot Tesla-like flashperation by Azula. So most of the tech can actually fit within the world. Also, there just wouldn't be an impetus to discover certain technologies since you could simply have a bender do it for you. Also, everything about Combustion Man is All There In The Manual should you look it up, and all of it rational. (He's essentially Cyclops with firebending, the 'eye' is a tattoo representing where it comes from, the arm and leg were forged specifically for him after he blew himself up the first time as a kid learning to firebend, etc etc.)
- Despite there being no technology more advanced than Steam Punk (and even THAT shows up rarely), The Marvelous Misadventures Of Flapjack had one episode end with Flapjack pulling the plug on a mechanical genie that worked by electricity. And on a dock no less.
Real Life
- Unlike the Aztecs, Maya, etc., the Incas didn't even have writing. It didn't slow them down appreciably: imperial administrators communicated by exchanging quipu, bundles of strings with knots tied in them to represent numbers.
- One of the fallacies that people commonly, mistakenly believe is that Primitive Society == Stupid People. Many older "more primitive" societies have had mixes of a wide range of technologies. A good example would be ancient Greece and the Antikythera mechanism which is now generally accepted to be a clockwork computer for calculating planetary orbits; technology that literally took another thousand years to reappear.
- Among the inventions of Ancient Greece's Hero of Alexandria: a water-powered pipe organ, and a vending machine that gave out cups of holy water.
- The steam engine was invented in Egypt in the 1st century. But slaves were cheaper.
- The Incas didn't use the wheel for transportation, but there where toys with wheels. (Maybe it wasn't the Incas but some other ancient civilization, I Did Not Do The Research)
- Those were the Aztecs, since they didn't have any beasts of burden, the Incas on the other hand had llamas.
- While Llamas are better than nothing, they're not hugely strong beasts, and were raised for their wool about as much as for their muscles.
- The Amish, especially if you do the research. Name a technology level, any tech level, between Medieval Stasis and "FINALLY released in the US", and there's an Amish or Mennonite sect somewhere in the Midwest that's stuck there.
- Also note that they do sometimes pull themselves into modernity and fully learn a specific farming-related machine. They have votes on technological inclusions in the same way the French vote on adding words to the language.
- In general it's more complicated than most people think. there is no Amish Pope or Curia handing down cammandments from on high so various communities have different standards of what is appropriate technology.
- Many wars in impoverished nations tend to take on elements of schizo tech. One example would be a video from early in the war which overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where Coalition/NATO supported tribesmen used horse mounted cavalry wielding AK-47s to charge a Taliban position while F-16s gave air support. I only wish I can make stuff like this up.
- It's almost normal. Horse-transported machine guns were used in WWI and even in WWII Soviet troops armed this way were nasty surprise for invading Germans — mow down some foes from an ambush, retreat into the forest, move a bit, repeat.
- When invading the Soviet Union during WWII the germans used a bit more than a million horses.
- Similarly, Poland's cavalry units were surprisingly effective against German infantry. No Pole cavalry unit suffered defeat, actually. The idea that they charged the modern German tanks with sabres drawn was Nazi propaganda to insult their opponent.
- It may have been something of propaganda backfire as it turned out. A lot of people believed it because they admired the Poles and thought it was cool even if it sounded like Honor Before Reason . And in any case gloating about such a thing sounds uncommonly lacking in class. Not something a Cultured Warrior would say about a Worthy Opponent.
- One finds the same situation in present-day Papua New Guinea, where wilderness tribes (having pre-industrial level agriculture) fight skirmishes with Kalashnikovs and may use modern simple telecom equipment and put petrol-driven outboards on their canoes, provided that they get hold of ammo, fuel and batteries.
- India has a thoroughly modern military, with an Aircraft carrier, an indigenously designed Main Battle Tank, a joint produced 4.5th generation jet fighter, nuclear weapons and...Lee Enfield Rifles, a design that is 114 years old still in active service, though not as a front-line weapon.
- Attempts to avert Decade Dissonance lead to this in a lot of cities in developing countries. You'll see old-style villages between shining new skyscrapers, and rickshaws alongside cars. Thanks to recycling of handsets, many parts of Africa and South America have cell phone service, but no electric grid for battery chargers. Missionaries and aid organizations bring (some) modern medicine and literature, but cooking is still done over charcoal fires in handmade clay pots.
- Developing countries, heck, go to some places in America and you'll find this. People still live in log cabins in some parts of West Virginia. Now it's mostly by choice though, but 40 years ago it wasn't.
- Archaeloegy has a term for this. "Out Of Place Artifact." Now, most Oopart (or "O-Part") tend to have eventual explainations or turn out to be hoaxes. But it is a concept that gets its own name.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: there's lots of known "false start" or forgotten inventions, both Cool But Inefficient and working alike (most were closely guarded secrets known only to a few in the eras before concepts like "scientific community" and "public education" were in fashion), so either from a "could be" or real state of affair —depending on the point of view— may be considered Schizo Tech:
- Heron Alexandrinus (10-70 AD) made (supposedly first): the first steam turbine, ages before the piston steam engine that first got on trains and boats; several self-regulating feedback control systems (precursors of things like the later self-regulated steam engine once again); a slot-machine (drop a coin, get a drink).
- Heron also described earlier (attributed to Archimedes) inventions, including an odometer, both in taximeter and naval log variants.
- According to Aristocles (2nd centrury BC), there was an alarm clock in Plato Academy.
- Around 424 BC Boetians burned down wooden walls of Delium. With a bellows-powered flamethrower.
- Aside of an organ (hydraulis), which quickly found its place as a church organ *
in the temple of Venus and was the first keyboard musical instrument ever, Ctesibius invented: a pump (ironically, it was lost in the fires that ravaged Alexandria), a water clock (a direct precursor to the flushing toilet), solar-powered mechanisms and a pneumatic cannon. In the third century B.C.
- The Chinese magazine-fed crossbows (Chu-Ko-Nus) are rather famous, but there were more advanced forms. The first known chain-driven weapon was not "Chaingun", it was the chute-fed Repeating Catapult by Dionysius of Alexandria. This means it wouldn't have required anything new to have steam-powered cannons and full-auto turrets, centuries before anything similar appeared.
- Fully mobile artillery was known at least in the Roman era. The Ballista quadrirotis was simply a two-horse cart with a ballista on top, but it was enough to make a field artillery with a significant level of maneuverability.
- The field transistor predates the bipolar transistor by 22 years: Lilienfeld filled the first patent application in 1925, the idea was much closer to the electron tube. Whether he really built it is dubious: considering the proposed scale and the quality of early semiconductors, it would not give a measurable amplification. But the principle was right, even though the theoretical basis was not yet developed.
- Another Chinese example would be the south-pointing chariot
- We have had modern lasers for over half a century. For much of that time the technology was described as "an elegant solution lacking a problem".
- The Phillipines is full of this, even the parts that would be considered 'developed' in the first place, though some is necessitated by climate, for example barely anyone in anything lower than a 'suburbia' rating using exclusively cell phones. Even clothing and furniture falls into this, most people over 30 mixing and matching haphazardly, seeking a medium between trendy and comfort. Due to having few telephone lines outside the largest cities, they also skipped straight to satellite-everything in most cases. Some people also greatly dislike the noisy trikes and motorcycles but do not produce enough to justify buying a jeepney or utility vehicle, so still rely on animals, but those types are slowly dying out as vehicles become cheaper and larger companies expand.
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