AHC: Hellenistic Dynamo

Here’s my challenge of the day: Before the end of antiquity - nevermind, thats too vague. Before AD 476, how can we get electric dynamos in the Greco-Roman world?

Yes, its crazy, but I think it could be a fun challenge. Its also the only way I can possibly see an Aeolipile amounting to anything useful.

Yes, I’ve been poring over a copy of How To Invent Everything.
 
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It really isn't much of stretch for someone like Hero/Heron of Alexandria to come up with an extremely simple dynamo using a lodestone and a rotating copper coil (or vice versa). It'd almost certainly be little more than a toy or trinket for a rich patron that wouldn't lead to anything but an interesting discovery channle episode millennia later
 
It really isn't much of stretch for someone like Hero/Heron of Alexandria to come up with an extremely simple dynamo using a lodestone and a rotating copper coil (or vice versa). It'd almost certainly be little more than a toy or trinket for a rich patron that wouldn't lead to anything but an interesting discovery channle episode millennia later

Making lightning at will, I think would impress people more than a spinning wheel.
 
Making lightning at will, I think would impress people more than a spinning wheel.

Such a device would also get people talking about the nature of lightning, which could potentially drastically alter the history of scientific development. After all, they could try manipulating the lightning, focusing it to hit things...
 
Such a device would also get people talking about the nature of lightning, which could potentially drastically alter the history of scientific development. After all, they could try manipulating the lightning, focusing it to hit things...

Forget Greek Fire, we’d have Greek Lightning...

Greek Lightning, go Greek Lightning!
 

Skallagrim

Banned
It's quite possible to make such a thing during the Hellenistic era. I'm indeed at once reminded of heron, just as @piratedude wrote. But keep in mind: you're ultimately still talking about a "party trick machine", or - to be a bit more kind - a "proof of concept" that cannot be cost-effectively used for anything practical at the time. (Same as goes in OTL for Heron's 'steam engine'.)

The greatest possible benefit of this is that the invention of this impressive thing becomes a cause célèbre, and thus lead to greater interest in the science behind it all. As I have often observed: one of the note-worthy things about the late Hellenistic era is that certain purely scientific understanding was lost, apparently because it didn't interest the Romans as much. The Romans advanced practical (e.g. engineering) know-how, but we can tell from Roman commentaries relating to ealier greek math texts that the Roman commentators literally failed to grasp the full mathematical principles involved.

If an impressive invention like this provides a reason to be interested in theoretical science - because it proves that such science can yield technological feats - then perhaps this helps motivate some key Roman thinkers to have more regard for the purely theoretical. I'm not saying "ow, wow, this mean we get a scientific revolution"... but it might lay the seeds for such a thing, a few centuries down the line. One little discovery leads to another, and so on and so forth. It's not a given, but it's not any kind of ASB, either.
 
I agree we wouldn’t likely get a scientific revolution. But I’m not so hard on the Romans and their attitude toward theoretical knowledge. Regardless, there’s plenty of Greeks available.

As far as practical uses, I think the most practical and easiest to develop would be an electric motor - its just a dynamo in reverse. And it would allow you to get some better torque out of an aeolipile. And they’d likely start to figure out how far they can transmit the power.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
I agree we wouldn’t likely get a scientific revolution. But I’m not so hard on the Romans and their attitude toward theoretical knowledge. Regardless, there’s plenty of Greeks available.

As far as practical uses, I think the most practical and easiest to develop would be an electric motor - its just a dynamo in reverse. And it would allow you to get some better torque out of an aeolipile. And they’d likely start to figure out how far they can transmit the power.

I don't mean that the Romans were wholly uninterested in the purely theoretical, but that they tended far more to 'run with things' that had more practical implications. Unlike the Greeks, who had a tendency to revere the purely theoretical as worthy of a philosopher, and more than occasionally expressed the general idea that as soon as it became too practical, it started looking suspiciously like craftsmanship (and thus unfit for a lofty well-born man).

If you can somehow inspire people, at the close of the Hellenistic era, to unite the Greek reverence for "pure" abstract thinking and the Roman love for practical applications... you get a marriage made in heaven, basically. I's like think an invention such as the one you have proposed - which demands understanding of abstract principles but also shows how those can be put to use in actual reality - might help that synthesis along.
 
If people mention "it's not ASB!" is because it is ASB. This is honestly on the same level of "we wuz kangz!".

Please, elaborate.

I won’t go so far as to say this would be plausible, but I think there’s enough rudimentary understanding of electricity in the Hellenistic age to allow for some accidental discoveries to be made.

We know that the Greeks had some understanding of static electricity, and had some (flawed) idea that it was connected to magnetism. From there, perhaps someone decides that an Aeolipile would provide a great way to produce static electricity (it would). From there, maybe someone (or the same person) decides to screw around with some magnetic iron during such tinkering.

I can see each of these steps happening. I don’t think they’re likely, I’ll readily admit. But if we get to that point, and the Greeks and Romans are spinning magnets around, we’re pretty well all the way there.
 
Please, elaborate.

I won’t go so far as to say this would be plausible, but I think there’s enough rudimentary understanding of electricity in the Hellenistic age to allow for some accidental discoveries to be made.

We know that the Greeks had some understanding of static electricity, and had some (flawed) idea that it was connected to magnetism. From there, perhaps someone decides that an Aeolipile would provide a great way to produce static electricity (it would). From there, maybe someone (or the same person) decides to screw around with some magnetic iron during such tinkering.

I can see each of these steps happening. I don’t think they’re likely, I’ll readily admit. But if we get to that point, and the Greeks and Romans are spinning magnets around, we’re pretty well all the way there.
When did anyone in antiquity, anywhere on Earth not just the Greco-Roman world, ever achieve some form of electricity control?
 
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