> every coal and nuclear electric power station, and a good fraction of the oil ones and part of each combined-cycle gas power station, runs on steam.
I'm aware of this. This is written in the context of the cultural decline of steam power as something people think and dream and write science fiction about, not its physical elimination from the world. See this post [0], particularly the last section, "The Twilight of Steam."
> so is contrasting steam engines with 'combustion engines'. steam engines are combustion engines
I'm aware of this also. But internal combustion engine is a mouthful, so I elected to shorten it, as described this post [1]
> but an obvious alternative hypothesis is that only henry ford knew what the fuck he was doing, so everybody else (including gm, which he had sort of founded before he founded ford) copied him once he outsold them ten to one in the 01910s
This can't be correct, because internal combustion cars left steam cars in the dust well before the 1910s; it was obvious to most people that internal combustion was winning by 1903.
[0]: https://technicshistory.com/2024/04/25/twilight-of-the-age-o... [1]: https://technicshistory.com/2024/03/21/twilight-of-the-steam...