Before I can speak on the disciplines of Mechanology I must speak on the basis for Mechanology even existing... The Luminiferous Æther. In both of our worlds the study of the Luminiferous Æther continued down the same path, up until the Michelson-Morley Experiment... and that is where our worlds diverged.
On my world science experiments in light diffraction and interference determined that light behaved like a transverse wave. However, a wave could not exist without a medium to transmit it. The theorists of my world, Young and Fresnel, proposed that the universe was filled with an invisible substance they called the 'æther'. This æther had remarkable qualities that made it both rigid yet intangible, strong yet tenuous. Lord Kelvin, one of the foremost scientists of your Victorian age, as well as my former world, described it thusly:
"Now what is the luminiferous æther? It is matter prodigiously less dense than air; millions and millions and millions of times less dense than air. We can form some sort of idea of its limitations. We believe it is a real thing, with great rigidity in comparison with its density: it may be made to vibrate 400 million million times per second; and yet be of such density as to not produce the slightest resistance to any body going through it." (From a lecture on the Wave Theory Of Light, delivered at The Academy Of Music in Philadelphia, Under The Auspices Of The Franklin Institute, On my world it was given on September 29th, 1878, while on your world it was given by Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) on September 29th, 1884.
Added to that Professor Etienne Moreau hypothesized that the æther, like the matter and energy of the universe, was not evenly distributed because of its interaction with matter caused thin patches, vortices, and even compact clumps. He theorized that the interaction of matter, energy, and the æther meant that the former could be used to manipulate the latter. Nicola Tesla turned Moreau's theories into practice by formulating his 'Movement Cycle' and 'Release Cycle', which described the relationships between the three. That, in turn, allowed him to build a working Æther Propellor and opened the solar system to exploration and exploitation by the human species.
In my next journal entry I will discuss the Michelson-Morley Experiment and how our two worlds diverged in their interpretation of it.
Godspeed, Silas