A heat engine really can only be exploited if you have many more development behind it. Hero was a fucking genius, but his tine didn't had the infrastructure to use his ideas.

They didn't want an industrial revolution. Steam engines and machines in general were well known and widespread in the antiquities as toys. They saw no point in putting them to use as tools.

>>1271371
People have known about steam power for thousands of years but it was an incredibly impractical and expensive technology until the industrial revolution.


However, to be fair, if anyone in the ancient world stood a chance of developing steam power it was certainly the Romans. Not even the Chinese at their peak could match the Eternal Italic.

>>1271371
Steam engines need a certain level of precision engineering for their pistons and valves which was only accomplished after centuries of gradual development in other ways like the manufacture of cannons. Had Rome not fallen it might have sped up the process, but they were far from an industrial revolution.

>>1271522
>Not even the Chinese at their peak could match the Eternal Italic.
You mean besides surviving and overthrowing barbarian rule?

>>1271371
no, since the IR's causes were mainly related to society and agricultural techniques

>>1271371
What can you do with low pressure steam? A Newcomen engine? Wow, you can mine a bit deeper, muh revolution, great job.

>>1271371
Ancient Greece/ the Roman Empire simply didn't go through the agricultural revolution like much of England during the 18th century. An industrial revolution can't happen without a market for industrial products, and if the overwhelming majority of all people are subsistence farmers the market simply isn't there.