In some ways, technology in the 1899 world is significantly farther advanced than it is in present day real life 2016 (there's no routine passenger travel to Mars, for example). In other ways, things have remained stagnant or failed to develop the same why. Because why would it? With the massive loss of manpower after more than a decade of civil war and the technology-retarding effects of magic, not everything is going to wind up exactly the same way on our Earth in 1899.
One of the major differences is that the Difference Engines were constructed in England in the 1820s and turned into major sources of mathematical knowledge. Once the concept proved usable, inventors in Great Britain and elsewhere quickly worked on ways to create Difference Engines that could perform calculations thousands of times faster than a human being. The first major quantum leap in computational technology occurred in Boston in 1855; a group of Difference Engineers at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technological and Arcane Arts worked out a way to construct a mechanical device that had multiple functions; rather than simply performing mathematical calculations it could be directed to display two-inch by two-inch black and white panels on a massive grid to display pictures or writing. The distinctive noise of the panels flipping back and forth led the constructors to start referring to themselves as "clackers", a term which quickly fell into general use.
Their new device was christened the first Calculating Engine, and it's probably best to think of these devices as mainframe computers that run on steam and have to be programmed and calibrated with a monkey wrench rather than a keyboard. The display screen for a standard sized Calculation Engine can cover as much space as the interior wall of a room and the machine, when operating, fills the area with the stink of heated oil and metal as the incessant clacking of the gears and other parts working against each other as well as the picture cards flipping back and forth. Thirty years of progress and development has led to smaller and smaller Engines being produced, with Etheric Transports making do with an Engine the size of a large breadbox rather than one the same size as a dozen steamer trunks lashed together. The ones used for Etheric navigation tend to be simplified to the point where they are very, very good at the few things they can do out of necessity--the more complicated a mechanical device, the more that can go wrong and having the Engine break on a spaceship means a longer voyage at best and the death of everyone on board at worst. The military and larger commercial Etheric Transports have multiple clackers (given a low officer rank and excused from regular duties) for each crew shift to minimize the danger of the Engines malfunctioning or breaking.
(Remember, by the way, that computers in our world didn't have keyboards or monitors for several generations of their technological development.)
In the USA the government and military use Engines for various tasks related to their fields of endeavor, and with the advent of the 1890 Census each person in the United States was assigned a twenty-digit Citizen Identification Number; the Engines used by the government keep track of people to assess taxes, observe lifespans and monitor disease outbreaks, among other tasks. A national Citizen Identification Card program was started in 1894, with cards listing the bearer's name, C.I.N., height, weight, race, eye color and hair color going into use. In various industries Engines have come into use as well; with the loss of manpower in the Civil War some factories have automated large sections of their production floors in order to keep making items. A single-purpose Engine can run an entire factory, overseeing the various aspects of manufacture that humans aren't needed for. The railroads use Engines to check tracks for breaks and adjust timetables as needed. Nickelodeon theaters have been known to project films on one wall of the theater and have another made up of a massive display screen; patrons can see motion pictures and animated Engine "clicks" over the course of their evenings. Vaudeville acts have even been known to use an Engine or two in an evening's entertainment--either as a repository of history and trivia or as a comedic foil for an actor or two; one specific Engine, referred to as the Musitron, controls a bank of brass, woodwind, percussion and stringed instruments; Robert Duke, its owner, wears a tuxedo and theatrically inserts a programming card and then lets the machine play a four-minute section of a classical work.
In the Confederate States, there are a bare handful of Engines used by the government and their lack of industrial power tends to make them less useful for governing the CSA than it is for the Union. They did adopt the use of monitoring citizens with the Engines that they do have. The CSA has a tiered system of civil rights, with the literate white property-owning males granted full rights under their Constitution and varying other levels existing for white women married to a first-class man, unmarried white women, white men and women who are not literate and / or do not own property, visiting humans from other countries, other sapient races (granted guest visas with an expiration date prominently stamped on it) and finally any human beings with measurable African ancestry, who are considered property rather than people. The use of Engines in the CSA is meant to keep everyone aware of their place in the social hierarchy.
Deseret does not currently have any Calculating or Difference Engines; the dust and sand of the Utah desert is exceptionally bad for the machines and they don't have enough clackers to keep them usable.
The 500 Nations generally view the Engines as a white man's speaking toy; they recognize the utility of them when keeping track of millions of people but their own situation in their territory does not include steam or coal power that is needed to run the machines. Some individual Native Americans find the Engines fascinating, and there are a few clackers among the 500 Nations. Out of necessity they need to study the machines out of their own territory, which has led to Irongear Alley, a city in western Minnesota founded by clackers where the newest techniques and programs are tried out. Irongear Alley is also notable for having dozens of coffee bars, cocaine dispensaries and other places to get stimulants over the counter, cheap and reliable. Lastly, Irongear Alley is considered one of the most welcoming places on the American continent for the other sapient races, provided they don't mind getting lots of lectures about clacking techniques and algorithms for shortening processing time.
Peachtree, perhaps unsurprisingly, is beyond the forefront of Calculation Science, with the gigantic mainframe "Monolith" helping George Washington Carver administer the country. One of the most promising experiments in this field is Peachtree's attempt at "Distributed Intelligence", a method of connecting different Engines in different cities via telegraph wires. Peachtree also assigns Citizen Numbers to the people living there, and the Citizen Cards for anyone living there are used as proof of identification at banks, post offices, libraries, museums, concert halls and the like. Peachtree's identification cards are also the only ones on the continent to have a picture of the person on them; none of the other nations have yet managed to make a usable photograph system. There are guest visa cards for people visiting Peachtree, but unlike the CSA they do not involve curtailing the rights of others who are in the country. Peachtree is also unique in that its arcane colleges have used Calculation Engines in their research, working through the difficult task of harnessing the Spark and running through hundreds of permutations of spells and alchemical reactions without casting them.
Finally, Tejas has a bare handful of Engines, and no identification cards in use. The government uses their Engines just the same as the USA, CSA and Peachtree do but the country is so large and so sparsely populated they lag behind in research (although they do keep up to date in the various ways other countries are using their Engines).
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