To amuse myself I compiled a list of inventions and events that, in the real world, happened shortly before and shortly after 1894. I leave their Neathy uses and transformations to your imagination.
Late 1870s – Electricity begins to be used for public lighting
1877 – Phonograph invented
1880 – Frist commercial installation of incandescent lamps
1882 – Electric clothes iron invented
1884 – First practical self-powered machine gun
1884 – Opening of telephone service between New York and Boston
Late 1880s – First practical gasoline-powered, internal combustion engine-powered automobiles
Late 1880s – Electric street cars begin becoming a mode of public transportation
1888 – Henry Babbage completes simplified version of his father’s Analytical Engine, perhaps the first general-purpose computer
1892 – First public exhibitions of filmed motion pictures
1895 – In private experiments, Marconi transmits radio waves over a distance of a half-mile.
1895 – Paris to Bordeaux automobile race: 731 miles in just under 50 hours
1895 – Electric generator at Niagara Falls produces power
1896 – Röntgen announces discovery of x-rays
1896 – First modern Olympics (Shroom Hopping is not an event)
1897 – Dracula is published
1898 – Invention of pneumatic carpet renovator: a gasoline powered cleaner that blew dust into a receptacle
1900 – First automatic rifle
1903 – Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk
1904 – Electric washing machines advertised
1905 – First vacuum-cleaning device for the domestic market (vacuum created from hand-powered bellows)
1906 – First public radio broadcast
P.S. The research for this was pretty facile; I make no claims of absolute accuracy.