Comment on Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 1 day agoHerons 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.
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.
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.
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.
All it would have needed is fixing the steam exhaust and have it drive a shoveled wheel.
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.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
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.