It is not true that the ancient Romans ignored Heron's Aeolipila, but they studied it thoroughly, as Pliny the Elder testifies in his Natural History. And just downstream of these studies, they realized how the invention of this ancient steam engine had two major limitations: poor efficiency, current reconstructions, with the advantages of current metallurgy, reach a maximum of 1500 revolutions per minute and a disproportionate consumption of firewood. Therefore, this invention was not set aside in favor of servile work, but of a competing and more effective technology, the water mill, which had greater performance, cost less and met the needs of Roman entrepreneurs ... the Romans, who needed an economy of scale compared to classical Athens, for the Greeks the difficulty of adopting this technology would have been greater. If ITL had been adopted, it would certainly not have led to mass industrialization, but its impact would have been limited to specific production niches.
