One way that my fictitious 1899 differs from the real world is the existence of arcane magic. Before I get started: there are three types of magic in the Pathfinder system: Arcane, divine and inborn. Arcane magic is the "learned it from a book, cast it in the field, have to relearn it again after burning it off" magic style that's the classic AD&D Wizard stuff. Arcane magicians have a spellbook that essentially holds the instructions for the spells that they know (which can be anything from a classical "big leatherbound book with parchment pages covered in arcane diagrams" to a silken cloth stained with finger-traced scribbles that describe what goes into spellcasting. It's different for each wizard and it's possible that one wizard would be completely unable to understand the spellbook from another. It's also possible that two wizards would be able to swap spellbooks between each other if they learned their skills from the same teacher. "Wizard's ink" is the personal recipe for spellbook inscription that each wizard derives on his own and the composition of their own ink is the magical equivalent of a DNA test or fingerprint. One might use the dregs from beer mugs and ground charcoal to make his own ink while another could use literal blood, sweat and tears.
All arcane magicians have the inborn ability to learn and channel magical energy. In past times it was called anything from hell-spawned powers to the will of the divine working on Earth, but with the coming of electrical power in the 1800s the general term is "the Spark". You can hear the capitals when a wizard says it, incidentally. People (or Skaven or Lizardmen or Jaguar Men) who have the Spark are recognizable to each other, in a vague "I sense a ripple in the Force" manner. That's one of the most common ways that existing wizards find new wizards. The Spark can manifest at any time of a person's life, and in either gender. Peachtree used a Calculating Engine to try and determine how, if at all, it was possible to determine whether or not someone will develop the Spark but after four years of continual study the results are decidedly inconclusive. They have found that women are slightly more likely to develop the Spark than men, but it's still only one in a couple thousand people who show this capability.
Once it is determined that someone possesses the Spark, several years of book learning ensue. Different countries have different methods of teaching (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a Department of Arcane Studies, the foremost college of magic in the country but by no means the only one; the CSA has the Midnight Academy based in northern Alabama, while Peachtree has a campus made up of the Red Tower, the White Tower, the Black Tower and the Green Tower in its capital, Carver City, where each tower corresponds to a different school of magical influence (but covers arcane magic exclusively). La Republica de Tejas has a series of scattered colleges on a county-by-county level, students accepted at any one are given research and education privileges at all of the others. Deseret has the Golden College, which has the unique feature of teaching arcane, divine and inborn spellcasters. The arcane spellcasters from the 500 Nations tend to learn and teach each other as they encounter each other, with the operating theory being that the more each individual magician knows, the stronger all the tribes are as a whole. Incidentally, teaching a slave to read in the CSA is a felony but teaching one with the Spark how to cast magic is a capital offense. The official position of the Confederate government is that a trial for someone teaching slaves with the Spark how to use it is an unneccesary formality. Each nation's presence on other planets has at least a small magical library and college there as well.
Arcane magicians are rare on the ground in every country on the American continent and valuable due to scarcity; even in the impoverished CSA magicians are not expected to pay for their own tuition, supplies, or upkeep at the Midnight Academy (though that institution only admits white human students; no blacks, no Skaven, and no other sapient species from other planets). That's because as they grow stronger and more capable, wizards are among the fiercest weapons available to their countries and can provide great leaps forward in the understanding of the world.
Arcane magicians fall into the adventuring life essentially as a way to gain more control over their abilities through use. Some people, when given the choice between studying in a library for twenty years or risking their lives for two in order to gain the same mastery over their inborn skills, will take the second option every time. To the ones who live through their experiences, great power and knowledge are granted.
Specific to the rules of AD&D / Pathfinder, material components do not exist and are not used in the game. Verbal and somatic components only.
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