Why didn't anybody see the potential in the Aeolipile and what would happen if they did?
>>1288392
Well, it didn't really have an application at the time.
Slave labour was cheap and plentiful.
>>1288412
Is that the only reason or are there others? I'm also not saying that this isn't a good reason, but just curious if there were other factors.
>>1288437
In order for steam power to be reliable for large scale mechanics (such as transportation, mechanised industry etc.) you need very VERY high pressure boilers and pistons. This necessitates the ability to produce high quality wrought iron in very large quantities, something that was not really possible before the 18th century. Without the metals and metalworking technology needed to make use of it, primitive steam power couldn't be anything more than a curiosity, as it wouldn't produce enough energy to drive anything of any great scale.
The other main problem was that the Romans had no way of making the connection between steam power and the need to drive wheels with it, as they lacked the single most important invention of the industrial revolution, the automatic spinning machine, the spinning jenny being what ignited the industrial revolution in Britain. Having automatic spinning machines gives you the ability to produce vast amounts of cloth insanely cheaply and quickly, these machines were driven by wheels connected to water mills, and unless you live next to a large and fast flowing river, you need some other way of driving these giant wheels, this is where steam power comes in. Without this technological and economic chain going all the way from production of goods to powering of machines, there is simply no need to have steam power, because it only forms one link in the industrial chain.
Even if the Romans had had the metal-working technology to take advantage of steam power on a significant scale, there would have been to reason to, as they did not have a technology to which they could apply steam power to vastly increase productivity, and to allow for productivity autonomous of natural conditions (i.e. the building of factories in cities as happened in the industrial revolution).
There were of course other issues such as the lack of large scale coal production, large scale textile crop production, and a large enough market to make it feasible.
>>1288664
I feel retarded for not knowing this, but thanks m8. I learned a quite a bit from that post
Greeks had lots of small steam powered novelties in their temples. So the plebs would be awed and give more offerings.
It's a stupid design.
>>1288664
This. You need to be able to produce good quality steel and enough of it for boilers.
>>1288437
They couldn't make connection between the machine spinning and the energy being generated by the heat.
They were missing critical understanding of energy. They were missing critical understanding of motion. They were missing critical understanding of scientific/experimental method.
TL;DR they were stupid.
Lack of good materials to mass production.
>>1289634
Not as stupid as mediaeval retards who didn't invent fucking buttons until 1300 and for centuries lived in shitty one room houses which were smokey smelly shitholes with no plumbing
>>1289634
Surely you don't need to know about energy to see that if you attach the spinning thing to something you usually have to manually spin, then thats going to make it easier.
>>1289665
You can't see the mechanical energy until you learn about it or create it via experimental sources.
Imagine trying to see a computer when you have never heard about the word computer, seen a computer, don't know its function, don't know about electricity, etc. You simply can't see the computer even though to another person its right infront of you. You do not possess the capacity to understand what a computer is, let alone see it.
Yes, they will see the device spin. They will see the water boils. But what is in between? They will say its god of wind or god of fire does it. They have no concept of mechanical energy nor the understanding of heat as energy nor the proper understanding of what energy entails nor the ability to understand the properties of water.
>>1289677
Nah i don't buy it. If im spending my days spinning a wheel to grind corn and then i go to the temple and they have a thing that automatically spins just from some fire under it then I'll make the connection that i should stick them together. There's no need to understand the physics of energy. They had waterwheels and shit, it's only an extension of that.
>>1289683
The aelopile itself is useless to drive anything but itself. To drive anything useful with steam power, you need pistons (or a turbine, but that is even more complex). To make a functioning piston, you need to understand the properties of steam and the principles of pressure and heat. And that is something I doubt the ancients understood.
>>1288392
It has no torque, it wouldn't drive shit.
>>1289690
Scale it up. The Romans invented all sorts of mechanical wonders, it is odd that they didnt take advantage of steam.
>>1288664
I fucking love this board. Masterful. Bravo, sir.
>>1289696
They couldn't because they didn't understand the mechanical and thermal properties of steam, and because the aelopile is fucking useless.
>>1289703
Did they understand the mechanical and thermal properties of water?
>>1289706
They understood that a stream of water can be used to drive a wheel, which is the most important part. Steam power is a hell of a lot more complex.
Look at early steam engines and compare them to a water mill.
Early steam engines were only possible because of decades to centuries of physics research.
>>1289683
Cashiers at work use computers all the time. Doesn't mean they understand how they work or know how to program.
>>1288664
Nice post there, good job.
As other anons have said, steam power as an invention requires a plethora of other inventions before it. Advanced mining techniques, steel, coal, mechanical seals, precise measurements necessary for machining, as well as tons of research
>>1289696
>it is odd that they didnt take advantage of steam.
It's not odd. They didn't use such technology because they had slaves. Slavery ruins everything.
>>1290638
yeah slavery makes everyone completely retarded and wastefull hurr that's why the romans didn't build massively famous aqueducts because they just had slaves carry water hurr
>>1288664
But the romans did use water mills, pic is is the flour mill complex in Barbegal, dated to the 4th century AD
>>1288664
I think the Romans actually had a shitload of ironworking.
If memory serves, climate data (because smelting metal produces pollution which you can find in ice cores) indicates that metal production in Europe didn't catch up to 100 AD levels until the 1700s.
I could honestly see a world in which the Romans used the watt steam engine for specific applications like pumping out flooded mines and grinding flour.
>>1291492
I remember hearing about that, but it was about lead deposits on ice, which indicated silver mining, since the Roman silver mines in Iberia were rich in lead.
>>1291049
You guys are getting ahead of yourselves with Roman steam power.
There was no market for labor saving devices in general, as the Romans had an unlimited source of manual human labor via slaves and the huge number of unemployed Roman citizens.
The desire for a something more efficient like a horse drawn reaper, doesn't happen in a society where you can just thrown more slaves at the job.
>>1291476
The thing is, flour is just not valuable enough to warrant investment into industrialisation. Flour is generally a plentiful, low-cost commodity, and most importantly, it is perishable. There is no need to mechanise production of goods like flour if you are already able to meet demand, as the demand will always be relatively static, and the product is of low value. Cloth on the other hand is expensive, non-perishable, and has a massive demand (people can only eat so much bread, but given the opportunity will buy far more clothes than they can ever wear).
The Romans also had water driven saw mills (as this anon pointed out >>1289696 ), but again, machined wood is a relatively low value commodity with limited applications, so they also could not supply the economic incentive to mechanise even if mechanisation was technologically possible.
Remember that the practical steam engine pre-dates the industrial revolution by almost a century. It may have been an important fuel for the revolution, but it was not the catalyst. When invented, they were used for things like powering mines, and it wasn't until the invention of the mechanical spinner and loom that the industrial revolution begun.
>>1291492
They had the quantity but lacked the quality. In general Roman ironworking was of varying quality, as while they could extract vast quantities from the ground, they didn't have the processing infrastructure needed to create reliable, large scale supply of good metal.
One BIG thing that the Romans lacked in terms of metal working was the ability to cast large and complex pieces of iron, which did not reach Europe until the renaissance and the advent of cast iron cannon. Cast iron being absolutely vital for constructing any large object from solid metal, and in ensuring the uniformity and quality of components.
They also lacked precision machining tools, which, again, are vital for things as complex as large steam engines, and most importantly, piston drive systems.
>>1292621
Continued because FUCK the character limit.
One other thing that I'd like to point out is that there is a HUGE leap between the design of the aeolipile and the design of the central part of the steam engine, without which it is useless, the piston. While one might marvel at a ball propelling itself around by the force of steam pressure, and one might even be able to understand that it is heat and pressure that causes this motion, without knowledge of how to turn this into a working drive shaft, the curiosity of motion is worthless as a practical instrument.
In fact, steam engines in early modern Europe were common as well, predating the industrial revolution by centuries. They were just never useful/efficient as tools of mechanisation until the advent of the piston.
And of course, as the other anons have said, there were a million other small things that the Romans lacked that had been developed in the middle ages, the renaissance and the enlightenment that prevented them from making the leap of discovery. Chief among these is no doubt their lack of scientific and mathematical knowledge, which, while the Greeks especially made giant leaps, was primitive in the extreme compared to the knowledge of physics and mathematics developed by people like Galileo, Newton, and Leibnitz.
