this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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We stand on the shoulders of giants etc etc. But it seems odd to me that they wouldn't think about using this for communication at least.
It's not always immediately obvious to what end you can use a new innovation. For instance, the Romans discovered and built a steam engine. But nobody connected the dots that it could be used to power a train.
To me, it showcases the main reason why we need to collaborate. Only together, we can exponentially increase the potential of everything we build.
Herons steam "engine" had no power whatsoever and was not scalable. And even if it would have been scalable, they had had no fuel to drive it.
I thought they did invent a steam engine at some point. I'm sure I read that somewhere.
The thing is they were never going to invent the steam engine because they didn't have the technology to produce steel to the quality and strength that would be needed to build rails. And for that matter they didn't really have the metallurgy necessary to construct reliable boilers either.
No fuel? All you need is something that makes a fire. And it is not like crude oil wasn't know to people back then.
If the invention had been further explored it is entirely reasonable to assume people could have invented a "practical" steam engine 2.000 years ago. All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
They did not use coal back then – I'm not sure whether it was even known to the Mediterranean culture. Forests were plundered for shipbuilding. Crude oil was only available as naphtha in the Middle East, barely enough for the local fishermen to pitch there boats and for the Byzantines to use in their flamethrowers. Furthermore, crude oil was not used in steam engines — you cannot shovel a heep of oil under a kettle. Fuel existed, yes, but they had no access to it.
So a completely different machine? Shoveled wheels were invented centuries after Heron. Even if they played with such a setup – an open, non-pressurized turbine has no usable power. To use steam, you'll have to pressurize it, and the technology to tame high pressure was only developed to build cannons that do not burst.
In the history of the steam engine, the fuel supply was available before the engine. IIRC, Watt's incentive for the invention of the steam engine was the need to drain coal mines.
Still, going from a stream powered spinning toy to locomotive is a few orders of magnitude. Heron's "engine" was a little jet engine. Heated water pushed it's way out of pipes. It's a far cry from building steam pressure in a tank, using that pressure to drive a crank shaft, and pushing along a vehicle of any kind.
There are a number of industrial era inventions required before you can even start putting something like a train together.
The Romans didn't even have replaceable parts yet. Every nail was custom made.
If you haven't seen it, watch Clickspring's series on the antikithra mechanism. It'll give you an idea of how hard it was to produce complicated machinery was at the time.
Imagine industrial revolution Roman Empire, thank fuck they didn't connect the dots.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio
I suppose beyond the engineering know how required they were looking at possible transmission ranges and thinking it simply wasn't practical, square law and all that.
This.
There are often actual limits to what can be done, and there are practical limits. Especially in the early days of a technology it's really hard to understand which limits are actual limits, practical limits or only short-term limits.
For example, in the 1800s, people thought that going faster than 30km/h would pose permanent health risks and wouldn't be practical at all. We now know that 30km/h isn't fast at all, but we do know that 1300km/h is pretty much the hard speed limit for land travel and that 200-300km/h is the practical limit for land travel (above that it becomes so power-inefficient and so dangerous that there's hardly a point).
So when looking at the technology in an early state, it's really hard to know what kind of limit you have hit.