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Why was Heron of Alexandria's aeolipile (proto-steam engine) not properly developed and made to do useful work? Can one imagine circumstances in which the steam engine, more or less as we know it, could have been invented and spread through the known world in Heron's time? Are there any other of Heron's devices (the slot-machine, the stand-alone fountain, the syringe) which, if circumstances had been slightly different, could have formed part of the panoply of human invention centuries earlier than they did in OTL?
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