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sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
Heron of Alexandria invented an ‘almost a steam engine’ in ~40 AD/CE.
ancient-origins.net/…/ancient-invention-steam-eng…
He also invented basically early robots, vending machines, and floor pressure activated doors.
They just… did not catch on widely, or were viewed as toys or one-offs.
Again, roughly in the same timeframe ascribed to the life of Christ.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
The problem he had is the same problem some scientists face today - forgetting to / being unable to also invent a way to mass produce it.
Pressure doors for example used way more resources and labor than today’s automatic doors.
Vending machines were limited on what they could vend and again, weren’t ready to build.
Not to mention all this type of information back then had to be hand copied, as blueprints &tc didn’t exist either, so any scribe errors would hinder spread further.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 hours ago
Well yes, but, the irony is that, had he gone a bit further with his device, connected it to say, a shaft, and a gear, and then ground millet with it…
Welp, thats how you get an industrial revolution.
Which then lays the ground work for a society to be able to develop mass production.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
The aeolipile wasn’t really a stream engine. I’ve played with modern versions, and you can stop the spin with your hand. Not a bare hand mind, because it’s rather hot. But a cloth or a glove is fine.
These toys have zero power to do any useful work.
This is why an actual steam engine uses a reciprocating piston. Because doing it that way builds pressure and thus power.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
I can stop any household fan with my hand. That doesn’t mean they’re not real machines. Scale of a device has nothing to do with whether it’s design is real or not. Is a mechanical watch not a real machine because Big Ben is so much bigger? Is a motorized bicycle not a real machine because trucks exist? That steam engine is absolutely a steam engine. It uses mechanical principles to induce motion. Being weak doesn’t disqualify it. Alter the jets, raise the temperature, link 10 of them together, whatever and you’ll have something more difficult to stop.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
I’ve enjoyed both sides of the conversation you’ve been having with XeroxCool.
But here, here’s an “alternate tech tree”.
Take aeliopile.
Scale it up a bit, make it out of a bit stronger alloy.
… Fire it with a bellows, or a kiln.
Alexandria? ~40AD?
The Romans were making a crude form of steel for swords.
I think you can fairly easily get that rpm and torque up.
Oh, but the joints, the rotation points will heat up! It will deform!
So have some dudes dousing it with a mixture of olive oil and water fairly regularly.
Shit, set up a plumbing system, do it with the dudes turning Archimedes screws.
… this is the civilization that had construction cranes, invented a self healing form of cement that we literally only figured out the actual recipe for within the last few years.
I thinks its entirely plausible that if somebody had just managed to nudge this spinning screaming ball just a bit conceptually further, it could have snowballed.