The Greeks made a sort of "toy" that spins when a fire boiled water. It's almost a shame that no one took it a step further. Imagine ancient Greece and Rome entering a steam age in the 1st or 2nd century.
Here on HN I read about the theory, that one of the main reasons that the time of the steam engines came, was the rise of the cannon.
Over generations, every king wanted to have the best cannons as that translated into power - and once you can build a cannon, you can build something that can contain high pressures and give that pressure a direction. In other words, to take that toy further, they would have also had to greatly improve their metallurgy first. Otherwise a smart greek inventor would have just created spectacular (and dangerous) booms, but nothing that could reliable do more work, than a ordinary slave.
Hmm, I don't think Savery's engine would have required that - it's just a copper vessel, and the pipes were often even made of wood. I've often seen the cannon theory applied to piston-using engines, but that was the next stage with Papin and Newcomen and beyond (hopefully our chapter II)
Not an expert, but apperently this design was hard even with the modern tech_
"Second, the next stage of the process required high-pressure steam to force the water up, and the pump's soldered joints were barely capable of withstanding high pressure steam and needed frequent repair."
I see that but we know the Romans had lead pipes. I'm curious how much steam those pipes could withstand. Perhaps enough to get some sort of rotary tool.
Regardless, it's a fun hypothetical to think of an ancient Roman and Greek steam age.
That's Hero's aeolipile, mentioned near the end of the article.
Most scholars tend to agree that Rome [1] was nowhere near an Industrial Revolution. One take on it is here: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus..., but the general tl;dr is that a) even if you backported a fully working Watt steam engine to Classical Antiquity and they could manufacture it, there's nothing that they could use it for [2], and b) the Roman economy isn't really in a shape that encourages the kind of industrial innovation feedback loop you see in the Industrial Revolution.
[1] Side note: at the time the aeolipile is developed, there is no independent Greece; Rome thoroughly conquered all the polities in the Balkans in the 2nd century BC. Classical Greece is largely 5th century BC. The aeolipile dates to 1st century AD, rather late in Roman history.
[2] The historical motivation for the steam engine was of course draining coal mines, and the Romans weren't really using coal in enough quantities to require it. The Industrial Revolution itself was initially jumpstarted with textile production, which Rome was even further behind in--the spinning wheel wasn't developed until after 1000!
You are correct as far as anyone alive today can know. I would just add that there was quite a bit of cultural aversion to non-agricultural enterprises among the senatorial class. Merchants and tradesmen were looked down upon. This was made worse as many skilled laborers in the city of Rome were actually slaves.
Exactly. It was basically a kettle on an axle, with two spouts, causing it to spin as the water boiled off. It had no valves so couldn't build up enough pressure to do usable work. It couldn't be reloaded with water when operating. The overall concept was constrained by the limited metal working skills of the era, which weren't up to making reliable high-pressure vessels.
The development of usable pistons for steam engines followed centuries of experience gained making cannons and associated ammunition, which slowly provided the skills to make metal tubes that fitted and could hold pressure without themselves exploding.
Though note, from the post, that there were some applications of stationary aeolipiles with their spouts directed at vanes to do some light mechanical work - things like turning roasting spits and grinding pigments. All known throughout the fourteenth through to the seventeenth centuries, if not earlier, though it's unclear how widely any of them were adopted.
