FOr the record - electroid appears to act in terms of vertical lift only. Propulsion comes from initially airscrews (aka propellors in the mundane timeline), then ducted fans, then multiple ducted fans.
(Thinking outside the box, imagine a Leviathan with great, big wings. Use electroid to gain lift, then cut power, and hope your flying battleship's gliding characteristics are as good as a wide-bodied jet's.)
In 1910, anyway, electroid is well understood in a pragmatic sense, but not in a theoretical sense. The leading electroid theoreticians of the age - Bequerel, the Curies,Thompson and his irascible student the New Zealander Rutherford, Germany's Placnk - are still coming to grips with the stuff.
Maximum elevation will depend on a complex interplay of electroid, power generation and materials. More power & higher voltages usually means more engines, which means less usable lift, etc etc. Of course, these things will improve over time. And it's worth noting that, to 21st Century eyes,s it's apparent that the Leviathans of our 1910 do not appear to be pressurised.
W.
Is it generating actual lift, by which I mean interacting with the atmosphere? Balloons by containing a low pressure volume inside the higher pressure surrounding air or wings by creating pressure differential.
Or is it a lift effect created by countering/negating gravitational attraction?
If the latter, then there could be a tipping point where the gravitational attraction weakens enough that a lev that has gone too high could break free and be hurled out of the atmosphere. With the baseline levs complete lack of anything resembling pressurization, this would be fatal. And even if an engineer could remain conscious enough to shut down the power to the electroid, trying to re-start generators of that period, especially driven by compression steam engines, would almost guarantee impact before enough crew were conscious to try.
Without anything like a flight recorder, they would have no idea just what was causing the test ships to suddenly plummet to destruction or even worse, disappear without a trace. After a few 'mysterious' and 'tragic' loses of experimental high altitude Levs, there would probably be a moratorium on further research.
If this was the case then this would not only allow the current 'world' to neatly fit just as it is, but it would allow for future (far far future) development that could even include space travel.
I'm just saying
