Industrial Age Rome

Hero of Alexandria built a primitive steam engine just a couple of years before or after the birth of Christ. What if Roman culture, instead of becoming a Grecophilic humanities fest, starts to revolve around machinery and science, and this steam engine prompts a primitive Industrial Revolution by, say, the 3rd century?
 
Hero of Alexandria built a primitive steam engine just a couple of years before or after the birth of Christ. What if Roman culture, instead of becoming a Grecophilic humanities fest, starts to revolve around machinery and science, and this steam engine prompts a primitive Industrial Revolution by, say, the 3rd century?

Personally, although I have limited knowledge on the Roman period, I believe this is a possibility. The Romans, while still religious, were also practical needed money. I could imagine the Romans going down the science route to an industrial revolution.

But as I say I have limited knowledge of the period.
 
I'm really not sure the Roman world was ready for steampunk. They hadn't developed the ideas of industry or motion to employ a steam engine in mass use and even if they stumbled across the applications of steam in industry, I don't think they had the capacity to produce coal/wood/whatever in great enough amounts for steam to power the Roman Empire. To my mind, if this ever happened you'd have a really limited usage of steam - they might use it, for instance, to power turning mechanisms on siege engines or some such thing which traditionally required the back-breaking work of lots of manual labourers, but I think this would be about the extent of it.
 
No there is no great possibility of an Industrial Age Rome. There are a number of reasons why which are discussed in great detail in previous threads. Take a look via the search engine or in the archives.
 

Germaniac

Donor
You might see some very simple toys being developed, BUT it will take a very long time before people start taking it seriously. They might start with steam powered siege weapons which will then turn into civil engineering tools, which will then turn into some primitive form of machinary. Wood would remain the main fuel source as Coal was only used extensivly in Britain and it might take a century before it begins to make an impact. The Industrian Revolution in Rome Will take Centuries as opposed to Decades.

But, Yes you will eventualy see Roman trainlike vehicles and thing of that nature but dont go thinking it will be all steam punk lol
 
Just to be clear, I never mentioned steampunk. I just said primitive industrial revolution, meaning the earliest railroads, steam engines used to pump water, and maybe a small factory.
 
Hero of Alexandria built a primitive steam engine just a couple of years before or after the birth of Christ. What if Roman culture, instead of becoming a Grecophilic humanities fest, starts to revolve around machinery and science, and this steam engine prompts a primitive Industrial Revolution by, say, the 3rd century?

The real problem is not the lack of coal or other, but the over abundance of cheap manual labors: slaves.
As long as Romans have lots of slaves to perform any task they don't have any need to develp machines. They didn't even use the watermill, which was probably known in the late empire.
A sudden decrease of slaves could lead to the use of machines and the development of the needed technologies. OTL the black death plague of the late middle ages triggered the spreading of watermills into the manufaturing sector.
 

ninebucks

Banned
The Romans lacked significantly strong metals. The Heronic engines worked fine when they were just spinning toys, but if you tried to get one of them to power a pump, or propell a locomotive, the engines would have breached pretty swiftly, spreading exploded fragments of engine into whoever was standing around it.
 
When someone did invent coalburning steam engines in 19th century, the Mediterranean people found that they did not have much fossil coal. England had quite some, Belgium, Germany also. What Spain had was in Asturias, on the Atlantic side. Italy and Greece lacked large fossil coal reserves.

But where an interesting spot does exist is Zonguldak on Black Sea. Not awfully far from Bosporus, close to water transport to Constantinople.

Suppose that in 4th century, someone invents coal-powered water pump. And builds big baths heated by coal, and with water pumped uphill by steam pumps.

Roman aqueducts rely on bringing water to hilltops by long bridges. But these bridges are vulnerable to enemy action when the foes are outside the walls. Steam pumps, on the other hand, can pump water uphill to the fortress, from watercourses or groundwater low at the foot of the hill which enemies cannot easily block. The coal for pumps can be stored up in peacetime, and the available people can make themselves busy fighting enemy attacks rather than carrying water uphill.

Would this use of steam engine make sense in 4th century?
 
The industrial revolution did not come about because 'tech' had advanced to the level where it could. The technology largely came about because the need was there.
Just look to the early days of the industrial revolution- since they didn't have trains they used canals.

What ninebucks says is very true too. I looked into a tudor steam engine a while back and it seems to be just really hard to do even if someone has all the know how. This is a minimum time you can do it though- steel advances come quite regularly from the 16th century onwards. For the Romans though....nyeah.
 
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