Greek Steam Engines

[DominusNovus]

Lets have someone in antiquity (I'm assuming a Greek) invents a steam engine. Hero (Heron) of Alexandria pulled it off, but never went anywhere with it. So, what if someone manages to build a version that can propel a ship? What effect does this have on, well, everything?

One thing to think about is that barbarians are gonna have a much harder time beating civilized nations with steamships. Think of the logistics possibilities.

 

[wakie]

Umm ... ASB.

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

With steam engines you can get lots of things other than steamships. How about real irrigation for farming, or railroads for transport where shipping doesn't go? The Greeks weren't up to the task, but the Romans (had they developed calculus) certainly could have done it without ASB...

 

[tom]

I thought calculus was invented by Newton, and also Leibnitz.
Did the Romans have the metals and other basics to use steam power?

 

[Archangel Michael]

I read somwere (can't rember were) that the Romans had designed an early steam engine, but it was lost when the Library of Alexandira was burned down.

 

[DominusNovus]

Umm ... ASB.

ummm... http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/hero_of_alexandria.shtml

All I'm proposing is that someone decides to take this novelty and apply it to practical use. No more ASB than the Aztecs putting wheels (which were previously only on toys) to practical use.

 

[carlton_bach]

I thought calculus was invented by Newton, and also Leibnitz.
Did the Romans have the metals and other basics to use steam power?

Hellenistic Greeks designed and built functioning pneumatic catapults and pistons (though they must have been maintenance nightmares). Roman 'vigiles' regularly used man-powered water pumps that projected streams into fifth-storey windows. Roman engineers could build closed siphon water conduits several miles long (though they preferred traditional aqueducts as those pressurised lines had a way of going messily wrong). Heron of Alexandria had developed experimental (a better word might be playing-around) steam-driven systems and cybernetic gears. They certainly had the technology and the ingredients. However, the mass production would likely have created huge problems without coke-fired blast furnaces, puddled cast iron, and the technology dissemnination brought about by printing.

But ASB it isn't. Remember Antikythera?

 

[Steffen]

I won´t pretend that I know much about metallurgy and the like, but wouldn´t it be hard for antique level forges to create the goods neccessary which can bear the pressure etc?

Interesting point would be the impact on the slave-holding society of the time.
I postulate: A transformation of the economy, brought by steam-engine, in quite a short time, would cause massive freesetting of low-skilled workers

This would therefore lead to a massive downfall in the slave prices. As we dn´t have sophisticated financial services, it wouldn´t just impoverish several classes, but will lead maybe to civil wars.


Great timelines: The luddite wars of Diocletian/ The "Ironsides" of the Empire, fighting the barbarians out- and inside Roma.

 

[NHBL]

Incentive to develop steam

An incentive to develop such an engine could be a sharp RISE in the cost of slave labor. Suppose that there was a plague of some sort--enough to push the cost of labor up. Then, Hiero or someone decides to try and solve the labor crisis with his new toy. If the timing is right, it takes off dramaticly.
Once there's some marginal success, there could be an urge to develop it further. This eventually leads to better techniques in engine building, which leads to a greater demand for metals, greater industry--all the same things that happened in the industrial revolution.
Assumeing that gunpowder doesn't get developed any time soon, weapons could still get a lot nastier. Steam could be used to propell a bullet, or even some sort of machine gun.
It's possible that Greece will finally be united, as scientific skill begins to outweigh sheer military training.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

As I understand it, the Greco-Roman aversion to technology had to do with slavery. Slave work was despised and anything even slightly allied with it was very much beneath anyone of intelligence. The intelligent went into politics, law and the military, in about that order.

An example I read about was supposed to be illustrated in the construction method they had surmised for a Roman ship they dug up. The ship was constructed by laying the boards first and then building the frame inside it, instead of making it over the frame. This much more laborious method was employed because noone went to the trouble to improve it as it would only save time for a slave.

I dunno. Seems to me if you're making boats and can make them in half the time then you're going to make more $, whether you have slaves making them or not. Also, the Roman military were the ones who made much of the major construction of the Empire and they certainly weren't looked down upon

 

[DominusNovus]

I've been thinking that the best way for steam power to make an entrance into the Greco-Roman world would be a steamship. Galley sailors were actually pretty well trained soldiers (at least in Rome), not slaves as Hollywood depicts. So they definately wouldn't mind reducing costs there, while developing a much faster ship.

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

The reason that I mentioned calculus, is that it was essential to design workable steam engines. Yes, the Romans did build one or two toys (demonstration devices), but for something more (an engineering and technical revolution), they would have to have more mathematics than their number system would support. Specifically, they would need a ZERO...

 

[Steffen]

An incentive to develop such an engine could be a sharp RISE in the cost of slave labor. Suppose that there was a plague of some sort--enough to push the cost of labor up. Then, Hiero or someone decides to try and solve the labor crisis with his new toy. If the timing is right, it takes off dramaticly.
Once there's some marginal success, there could be an urge to develop it further. This eventually leads to better techniques in engine building, which leads to a greater demand for metals, greater industry--all the same things that happened in the industrial revolution.
Assumeing that gunpowder doesn't get developed any time soon, weapons could still get a lot nastier. Steam could be used to propell a bullet, or even some sort of machine gun.
It's possible that Greece will finally be united, as scientific skill begins to outweigh sheer military training.

The greeks and romans had plagues quite often, so the "logical" thing if your slaves die you go out and get some new ones, start a war with the objective "capture" not "land-grab". Even if your plague covers the whole mediterranean world, I doubt it could be an incentive to put history on a new track so soon.
This kind of circle is too short to bring in a newly invented, radical design, into accepted use.
But this big plague could lead to some kind of dual movement: "rights for slaves" if they are skilled, and harder pressure for low-skilled farmworkers, as in some way happened in the middle ages after the Black Death.

 

[DuQuense]

Conneticutt Yankee

? Would Mark Twain"s Yankee have as much trouble in Caesers Court, As he did in King Authur's?

 

[carlton_bach]

As I understand it, the Greco-Roman aversion to technology had to do with slavery. Slave work was despised and anything even slightly allied with it was very much beneath anyone of intelligence. The intelligent went into politics, law and the military, in about that order.

An example I read about was supposed to be illustrated in the construction method they had surmised for a Roman ship they dug up. The ship was constructed by laying the boards first and then building the frame inside it, instead of making it over the frame. This much more laborious method was employed because noone went to the trouble to improve it as it would only save time for a slave.

Actually, if you get to look at boats made by this method you will find that while they are harder to build and ciostlier than the 'modern-style' ones, they are also more flexible, take greater strain and leak less. Shell-building a ship is highly skilled craftsmanship, which, BTW, was a reason it was often left to slaves. Would you trust a free worker with the knowledge investment? He'll just walk away from you...

However, I think the upper-class attitude to crafts would have been a problem (though one easy to overstate: there was considerable pride in workmanship and respect for Skill in the Roman world, just the top 1% chose to look down on craftsmen).

My problem is that I still can't see a plausible incentive. THe Romans did not have the twechnology for true mass-manufacturing on the scale of the machine age, and their metals were rarer and more expensive to make (though just as good as anything prior to 1800). Why would they be particularly interested in steam power? In Britain, a unique constellation of deep-shaft mining needed to meet the demand for iron ore and coke required by the new ironworks that, in turn, could provide the cheap high-quality iron and coal needed by the steam engines that drained the mines touched things off. 'Atmospheric engines' had been around quite some time. Someone even built an experimental steamship in the 1690s.

What would the Romans' excuse be? Maybe they discover canal navigation as a cheap mode of transport and build steam tugs? Their mines were a lot shallower.

 

[DominusNovus]

What would the Romans' excuse be? Maybe they discover canal navigation as a cheap mode of transport and build steam tugs? Their mines were a lot shallower.

Part of the reason that I think that a steamship would be the first application. Using steam engines in an industrial funciton would probably come much later.