Aeolipile: A Roman Steam Engine?

Well, they need a lot better fuel than wood. I don't believe coal was widespread, but lots of religions use oils.

Would be fitting if they hit upon the idea of using oil from use in religion, given the engine's initial design.

I was told by someone whose name I cannot recall that steam engines able to put out the necessary power to do something like power the machines that ran factories or trains simply could not be invented that much earlier than IOTL because the metallurgy hadn't caught up yet. There were simply no metals strong enough to withstand and contain the forces produced.

Now, I'm not sure this is true and, in a great coincidence, I was actually coming here to make a new thread on this exact topic to ask whether or not it was. In order to further contribute to your thread, instead, I will pose the question here:

Is the above assertion true?

I'm not so sure about metallurgy, but:
Petroleum was known to the Romans, even if coal wasn't.
The wide availability of slaves would have made development of a steam engine economically unviable, and steam engines were not originally developed for railways, but as mine pumps. Did the Romans have a need for these? I'm not sure...

I think it's more a case of physical principles rather than metallurgy. Don't quote me on it though

acient logic just didnt work that way
in the 1700eds someone sees he cant pay enough workers to do enough useful labour to produce enough goods to stay competitive on the market and so he desings a machine to multiply the useful labor

in the 100ds someone sees a mine doesnt produce enough ore so they showe another 300 prisoners of war inside after cleaning out the dead bodies of the previous work shift

but its not olnly the slave labour thing

the concept that machines can preform useful tasks other than killing other people didnt realy cach on untill the midle ages
the whole concept of machine was wery far from the idea of an motor of any kind
maibe if it prowed to have some aplication in war, possibly a seige weapon, or a machine to be used by the besiged to fight of the attackers
then after that, maybe, the concepts used in said machines could of been aplied to ships, or possibly used to help in lager architectural projects

but as to how it would afect the empire, it wouldnt, at least not before it would start to colapse, then betveen the 300 and 500 tehnologies might dewelop from it to replace the lack of laborers as the urban areas became seriously underpopulated, cities turned into towns clustering around fortifications, and the imperial rural sistem colapsed, and the need for self suficiency arose, and would remain a problem during the rest of the midle ages
it is in the midle ages period especially from 1300 onwards that such tehnology would find realy widespread aplication
thys howewer doesnt necesarily mean the industrial revolution would start earlier, or that it would happen at all
chances are this would butterfly away many crucial social and political factors necesary for the development of capitalist economy and modern industry as we know it

Jaded_Railman said:

I was told by someone whose name I cannot recall that steam engines able to put out the necessary power to do something like power the machines that ran factories or trains simply could not be invented that much earlier than IOTL because the metallurgy hadn't caught up yet. There were simply no metals strong enough to withstand and contain the forces produced.

Now, I'm not sure this is true and, in a great coincidence, I was actually coming here to make a new thread on this exact topic to ask whether or not it was. In order to further contribute to your thread, instead, I will pose the question here:

Is the above assertion true?

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I've also heard this, and, as we all know, hearsay ^ hearsay = truth.

It makes sense though. Effective steam engines produce a huge amount of heat and pressure, to the point that the very early steam engines were very prone to exploding. And they were made from (AFAIK) steel, which is many times stronger than bronze, or any other of the metals known to Rome.

romans, and other mediteran and eurasian cultures, had known steel for a long time, and produced it in high quality and quantity

Could be it referred to steam locomotives. For a stationary device, you could simply make the walls thicker. One meter thick bronze walls would hold quite a bit of pressure.

one meter?
how many metrick tons would such a device weigh?

how much fuel would you need to heat it?

If you could get to work it would make sense with a Streamdriven "Galley", They would fit quite well into a sea like the Mediterranean ("arrrrg the name can't you just call it the Middel Sea/Ocean like civilised people")

The slave saociety meme is largely a red herring. Roman slaveowners hads a very keen appreciation of the economic realities of their mode of production and treated their investment-grade slaves accordingly. The idea of adding another few hundred was only viable where the supply was plentiful, which means the Late Republic, pretty much. The problem, though, is perceived need and perspective on solution. There really weren't any applications fopr which the Roman world would have needed steam engines. It was less machine-minded than Europe later, simply because a lot of development wasn't in place yet. The Romans *could* build impressive machiunes, but it is unlikely that they would have built something because 'it had potential'. And I can't see any reason for a Roman to commercially build a steam engine. The mines that went deep enough were few and far between, and their problems could be solved by other means. Mills could be driven by water- or animal power. Why put the effort in to solve the (considerable, but not insurmountable) problem to design a machine that produces a large amount of mechanical labour while consuming huge amounts of a scarce resource - fuel.

Bronze? As mentioned steel did exist at this time and iron was the norm.

I'm working on a psuedo-plausible TL at the moment for this. I've been reading up on the Roman roads, famous as they are, were almost soley for military use. If a mobile engine could be created surely the Legions would jump on it, as it would give them a major boon when it came to travelling across the massive Empire. Plus if the roads were handed over to civilian use I can imagine quite an economic boost as well.

How was fuel scarce? Apart from vast forests, coalfields in Britain and elsewhere were being used mined at an alarming rate

Valdemar II said:

If you could get to work it would make sense with a Streamdriven "Galley", They would fit quite well into a sea like the Mediterranean ("arrrrg the name can't you just call it the Middel Sea/Ocean like civilised people")

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The problem I see is that a steam engine light and efficient enough to drive a ship is likely to be at the very least a second-generation model.

carlton_bach said:

The slave saociety meme is largely a red herring. Roman slaveowners hads a very keen appreciation of the economic realities of their mode of production and treated their investment-grade slaves accordingly. The idea of adding another few hundred was only viable where the supply was plentiful, which means the Late Republic, pretty much. The problem, though, is perceived need and perspective on solution. There really weren't any applications fopr which the Roman world would have needed steam engines. It was less machine-minded than Europe later, simply because a lot of development wasn't in place yet. The Romans *could* build impressive machiunes, but it is unlikely that they would have built something because 'it had potential'. And I can't see any reason for a Roman to commercially build a steam engine. The mines that went deep enough were few and far between, and their problems could be solved by other means. Mills could be driven by water- or animal power. Why put the effort in to solve the (considerable, but not insurmountable) problem to design a machine that produces a large amount of mechanical labour while consuming huge amounts of a scarce resource - fuel.

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Well, for one Hero was actually a Greek living in Hellenistic kingdom. Even after the Romans incorporated Egypt, the majority there was still Egyptian and Greek, in that order. Greeks carried the flag of Tinkering for more than a millennium after this. The doors of the Saint Sophia, if I have the right church, were opened by a device similar to an aeolipile. The Komnenian Emperors had animated, sound-making replicas of birds and lions in their court.

Just because the Romans themselves were very conservative doesn't mean everybody in their Empire was.

ninebucks said:

I've also heard this, and, as we all know, hearsay ^ hearsay = truth.

It makes sense though. Effective steam engines produce a huge amount of heat and pressure, to the point that the very early steam engines were very prone to exploding. And they were made from (AFAIK) steel, which is many times stronger than bronze, or any other of the metals known to Rome.

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It is true only about high pressure engines, while low pressure engines(Newcomen, Watt, Polzunov) can be safely made out of cast iron or bronze.

Jaded_Railman said:

Well, for one Hero was actually a Greek living in Hellenistic kingdom. Even after the Romans incorporated Egypt, the majority there was still Egyptian and Greek, in that order. Greeks carried the flag of Tinkering for more than a millennium after this. The doors of the Saint Sophia, if I have the right church, were opened by a device similar to an aeolipile. The Komnenian Emperors had animated, sound-making replicas of birds and lions in their court.

Just because the Romans themselves were very conservative doesn't mean everybody in their Empire was.

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It's not that the Romans were inherently conservative. They were, if anything, gadget-crazy. The problem is that basic steam engines like Hero's are useful only for a very limited number of applications, and most of them are high-status and showy (much like the cathedral doors or the - hypothetical, but possible - twelfth-century steam organ in a French church). For those, one-of-a-kind engineering will always do. You don't get systematic progress unless you have a real market where efficiency matters. I don't see where we get that in the Roman world unless they do start coal mining on a larger scale.

I'm still with bronze for the early modely, BTW. The Romans used bronze (well, various fairly specialised copper alloys, really) for most applications that required precision and tight fits.

Broz said:

one meter?
how many metrick tons would such a device weigh?

how much fuel would you need to heat it?

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It would weigh a lot. Which is why you wouldn't be making anything mobile from such a design. More likly to be a stationary water pump, etc.

You shouldn't need to heat the entire thing, just contain the pressure. Maybe a layer of firebrick cladding?

carlton_bach said:

The slave saociety meme is largely a red herring. Roman slaveowners hads a very keen appreciation of the economic realities of their mode of production and treated their investment-grade slaves accordingly. The idea of adding another few hundred was only viable where the supply was plentiful, which means the Late Republic, pretty much. The problem, though, is perceived need and perspective on solution. There really weren't any applications fopr which the Roman world would have needed steam engines. It was less machine-minded than Europe later, simply because a lot of development wasn't in place yet. The Romans *could* build impressive machiunes, but it is unlikely that they would have built something because 'it had potential'. And I can't see any reason for a Roman to commercially build a steam engine. The mines that went deep enough were few and far between, and their problems could be solved by other means. Mills could be driven by water- or animal power. Why put the effort in to solve the (considerable, but not insurmountable) problem to design a machine that produces a large amount of mechanical labour while consuming huge amounts of a scarce resource - fuel.

Click to expand...

carlton_bach said:

It's not that the Romans were inherently conservative. They were, if anything, gadget-crazy. The problem is that basic steam engines like Hero's are useful only for a very limited number of applications, and most of them are high-status and showy (much like the cathedral doors or the - hypothetical, but possible - twelfth-century steam organ in a French church). For those, one-of-a-kind engineering will always do. You don't get systematic progress unless you have a real market where efficiency matters. I don't see where we get that in the Roman world unless they do start coal mining on a larger scale.

I'm still with bronze for the early modely, BTW. The Romans used bronze (well, various fairly specialised copper alloys, really) for most applications that required precision and tight fits.

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I have speculated that the Romans may have invented the thing, but they may not have been the ones most in need of it.

That would have been the Garamantes. Who had the opportunity to see the insuffciency of slave labour first hand, and who could see it kill their empire slowly, for lack of the power to pump water out of the ground.

You may need a flash of inspiration or the basic notion of fueling it from naphta, but those fellows needed something like it desperatly, and it must have been fairly clear to them as well.

it alvais comes down to economic demand in the end, roman economy had no need for such technology, and the general logic of roman technology didnt work that way

the interesting thing would be how such tehnology, if it became popular in roman times in the form of gadgets and expencive toys, and as such became comonly known, could dewelop in later centuries, when demograficks change completely, and roman economy simply colapses

no doubt mideval europe and midle east would find numerous aplications for it

Umbral said:

I have speculated that the Romans may have invented the thing, but they may not have been the ones most in need of it.

That would have been the Garamantes. Who had the opportunity to see the insuffciency of slave labour first hand, and who could see it kill their empire slowly, for lack of the power to pump water out of the ground.

You may need a flash of inspiration or the basic notion of fueling it from naphta, but those fellows needed something like it desperatly, and it must have been fairly clear to them as well.

Click to expand...

These Garamantes sound very interesting... would there be enough ground-water around to keep them going though, even with steam power?
Although they could switch to desalinisation if ever they get a coastline...