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Mankind doesn’t really evolve. Not as a people. We copy, mimic, and integrate, all standing on the shoulders of the great men that came before. It’s an inherently unsteady system, and especially tragic where we can peer back through history and spot one of the rare and special truly great men who was, in his time or the generations thereafter, disregarded.
One such man was Hero of Alexandria. One of the Greek inventors of the first century AD, his geometric proof “Hero’s formula” was embraced and lived beyond him, he put automatic supermarketesqe doors on the temple, made a coin-operated vending machine for holy water, and built a fully automatic machine gun for arrows; but the one invention that really should have earned him notoriety was completely missed by the men of the era.
Hero created a steam engine, but they called it a aeolipile. Basically, a sealed boiler pot with a pipe running up to a sphere that would spin with the release of steam. The invention was likely dismissed because that’s all it did; it was a sight, but not practical at that time.
In 1600 years, when the steam engine was reinvented in France, ideas for its use came fast and frequent, but it hasn’t been until near the 21st Century that the first inventor of the world’s most used engine type has gotten any credit.
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First post… a few months later…
But i will say that it is amazing when you look back how much we have actually copied from earlier civilizations. The Greeks had machinery that used complex gears and other such devices… yet we were in awe with ourselves in the 1800’s… some industrial revolution… merely a subchapter in the book of redundency.
Imagine what would have been achieved if Hero and Leonardo Da Vinci had been able to team up!
Heh, the invention didn’t go anywhere because there was no one else around with the imagination to find a practical use for it at the time. No one else could think around the current way of getting things done. At least these days we have people that will think of good uses for important inventions, even if most of them are motivated by greed instead of helping humanity. (not the inventors, the people who find uses for the inventions – although these days the inventors are also thinking of ways to use their creations).
I’ve seen a replicated model of this on Discovery or History channel. Truely amazing what inventions these brilliant minds in the past conjured up, and now we realize their potential. Now if these “inventors” these days can make more useful things instead of bigger, faster, stronger ways of blowing things up.
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I invented the “fart” and I’m taking credit for it.
Got to go, that sticks!
This article hits a nerve with me. I love figuring out how stuff works, but I have to say. Does anyone know if this design actually generated any power? (not electrical, but horses) Also, what of this automatic arrow launcher and sliding doors?!
I’ve thought up several inventions over the years. Some I’ve seen come out on the markets and others I’ve found other people hold patents for… too bad the patent system is so easy to prospect an idea.
They did use gears, but not at all as fine or small or as useful as the ones that came later.
i gotta say, whenever the topic of inventions pop up, i just can’t help but wonder how money was invented and what the hell people at the time were thinking to make sheets of fancy paper be worth killing for.
Is it just me or would that engine be really inefficient? Seems that there’d be a lot of energy lost to heat on top of that jetting the steam into air would provide little thrust compared to a turbine (which allows the air to be compressed, right?) and another part of me doubts the jets would be very powerful to begin with. Also, the tendency of the engine to throw very hot steam everywhere could hardly help its case for vehicular use.
That being said, I love old inventions like this, and wonder at how the world could be if they were used to their potential. (Also, I wonder what we have today that will give people from the future that thought…)
and jyk1014- first, money had intrinsic value (ie gold and such) so it was in a literal sense worth what it was considered to be worth. However, when only rare metals are used for currency, one can’t effectively increase the amount of currency in an economy to match rising populations. This further increased the gap of wealth between rich and poor. Paper currency allows more money to flow through an economy. They’re only worth killing for, or worth much of anything for that matter, if people believe that they are valuable. (I’ve heard that without the shared illusion of money, a dollar bill would have a real value of around 2-3 cents)
Actually, the first money is what’s refered to as commodity money. Something like food or tools that has a clear value to everyone involved and which is common enough that people are fine with using it as a store of value.
It shifted to coins due to factors like perishability, storage and transit.
Note to self: Finished re-reading.