What if Heron invents the Vacuum Pump?

Heron of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria (c. 10 – c. 70 AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt. He is considered the greatest experimenter of antiquityand his work is representative of the Hellenistic scientific tradition. Hero published a well recognized description of a steam-powered device called an aeolipile (sometimes called a "Hero engine"). Among his most famous inventions was a windwheel, constituting the earliest instance of wind harnessing on land.He is said to have been a follower of the atomists. Some of his ideas were derived from the works of Ctesibius. (wikipedia)


Heron‘s Vaccuum Experiment in OTL

„In many of his works, Heron would start by reviewing past works. However, he would not always give credit to previous inventors and would tend to dismiss easily the work of others, before presenting his own solutions. Heron recognized the value of experimental work. The example passage, taken from Lloyd (1973), attacks first those (like Aristotle) who denied absolutely that a void can exist, accusing the of following their faith as opposed to evidence: Those then who assert generally that there is no vacuum are satisfied with inventing many arguments for this and perhaps seeming plausible with their theory in the absence of sensible proof. If, however, by referring to the appearances and to what is accessible to sensation it is shown that there is a continuous vacuum, but only one produced contrary to nature; that there is a natural vacuum, but one scattered in tiny quantities; and that bodies fill up these scattered vacua by compression; then those who put forward plausible arguments on these matters will no longer have any loop-hole. Following this statement, Heron described an apparatus designed to show the existence of vacuum. This is basically a metal hollow sphere with a small hole and a thin tube of bronze attached to the hole. Heron argued that if one blows air into the sphere, then air enters it and therefore it must be compressible. This compressibility was attributed to the existence of small pockets of vacuum. He also continued his argument by saying that one can also draw air out of the sphere by inhaling air. Once this is done, then the sphere must contain more vacuum than before.“
HERON OF ALEXANDRIA (c. 10–85 AD) by Evangelos Papadopoulos


The Trompe Compressor

A trompe is a water-powered gas compressor, commonly used before the advent of the electric-powered compressor. A trompe is somewhat like an airlift pump working in reverse. Trompes are very simple devices. A vertical pipe or shaft goes down to a separation chamber, a pipe coming away from that chamber allows the water to exit at a lower level, and another pipe coming from the chamber allows the compressed air to exit as needed. Water rushing down the vertical pipe falls through a constriction. The constriction produces a lower pressure because of the venturi effect, and an external port allows air to be sucked in. The air forms bubbles in the pipe. As the bubbles go down the pipe they are pressurized proportionally to the hydraulic head, which is the height of the column of water in the pipe. The compressed air rises to the top of the separation chamber. The separation chamber has a compressed-air takeoff pipe, and the compressed air can be used as a power source. The energy of the falling water entrains the air into the water, but that is not the energy that pressurizes the air, as is often incorrectly claimed. That energy is solely a derivative of the hydraulic head. Large trompes were often situated at high waterfalls so that plenty of power was available.


Sprengle Pump

The Sprengel pump is a vacuum pump that uses drops of mercury falling through a small-bore capillary tube to trap air from the system to be evacuated. It was invented by Hanover-born chemist Hermann Sprengel in 1865 while he was working in London.The pump created the highest vacuum achievable at that time. As Sprengel himself explained -- Sprengel (1865), page 17 -- his vacuum pump was a modification of the "trompe" (or "trombe"), which had been known in Europe at least since the sixteenth century. In a trompe, water falls from a reservoir through a pipe. The pipe's upper end is closed except for a set of small-diameter tubes, each of which is open to the air at one end and which dips under the water at its other end. As the water falls, it entrains air from the tubes. The water carries the air to the bottom of the pipe, where the air collects in a reservoir at high pressure. The trompe was used to produce a constant stream of air for smelting and metal working, among other uses. Sprengel merely connected a tube to the pipe's upper end in order to use the flow of liquid to evacuate a vessel. (wikipedia)

POD

So lets say Heron invents the trompe, a fairly reasonable possibility given his OTL research record in hydraulic and pneumatic devices. Now we go a bit further and give him a Eureka moment that lets him to invent the Sprengle pump, a design that could probable have been manufactured by the rather sophisticated roman industry. How would that change history?
 
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