How come the steam engine wasn't invented earlier? It's a pretty simple concept which was known to the Greeks and Romans who actually built some working models but they just seem to have been novelties or proof of concept. Imagine where we would be by now if the Romans had an Industrial Revolution.
>>18761017Holy shitFor the last time you foolsThe Hero's Engine was not a useful steam engine. In fact it's not a steam engine at all, since the gauge pressure of the steam coming off of it is 0psi. It's a primitive reaction engine, but water is not as dense as traditional propellants, which limits its potential reaction energy (black powder is nearly twice as dense as water in atmosphere and has roughly the same expansion factor)What later steam engines did was add an exhaust valve to its operating cycle, allowing you to leverage vacuum, that's why the earliest proper steam engines were called Atmospheric Engines. The Greeks and Romans were no where close to this level of understanding of pressure and thermodynamics.
>>18761017You arguably need Euler's, Gauß' and Newton's achievements in mechanics to actually understand how to make a proper, efficient steam engine that's worth a damn. You also need metallurgy skill and infrastructure capapable of making pressurized cylinders and precise gears than can withstand immense mechanical stress without breaking or bending. You also need an economic system where there is a large demand for horsepower and where human labor is relatively expensive.Rome had none of those. They had a "steam engine" where you make a ball spin by having steam shoot out of it. That's not really a modern steam engine in any sense, since there was no understanding of temperature differentials creating pressure differentials and suction, just >muh hot steam go woosh. Also, Romans could not have made pressurized cylinders as they lacked coke ovens to make weldable, pure steel. They would've had to use bronze cylinders which would've exploded a ton without the ancients having half a clue about what to do about it, since they lacked both the math and the metalworking tech. Imagine it like early cannons that loved blowing up after just a few shots. Also, the Principate had extremely cheap labor, while the Dominate, which had a labor shortage, didn't have the sort of capital or enterprizing mechant class to finance steam engines.
>>18761017The Ottoman Turks or 17th century Spain were far closer to industrial steam engine usage btw (both countries had primitive steam engines, the Turks used it to turn döner lmao)
>>18761017I read an interesting article a while ago talking about how the agricultural revolution occurred in multiple places independent of one another, so we know the conditions required, but the industrial revolution happened only once in history then spread from England, so its less clear to what degree those precise conditions were required, but they probably were.Those conditions being>a society that has invested heavily in advanced metallurgical processes for building the strongest hollow metal tubes possible for cannons, which can be repurposed for boilers>mass exploitation of coal from coal beds in areas that have to deal with flooding, since the first application for steam engines was powering pumps for coal mines. The first steam engines were extremely inefficient, so needed to be sited at their fuel source, and at a coal mine there was enough coal to always be shoveling more in. It took a while before they were efficient and portable enough to be used for other things>a stable society and government with robust independent courts and rule of law that respects intellectual property rights, so investors and inventors know they won't have their investments stolen by a local potentate or warlord and are actually incentivized to invent and invest>sophisticated enough finance to make capital intensive investing possible, particularly by banks enabling landowners to mortgage their estates to invest, and joint stock companies to spread out the risk of lossAncient Greeks and Romans knew about steam powered toys, but it was on the verge of an industrial revolution because it had none of the actual important stuff to go from a steam toy to a steam engine.
Another issue is that the Greeks and Romans had an informal economy. Coinage was struck mostly for soldiers so they wouldn't bicker or fight amongst themselves while bartering. The average plebeian in Rome still very much used a traditional barter economy, although by the Imperial era, most merchants were more than happy to accept secondhand coinage in their market.The reason this is an issue is because it gave the Greco-Romans very little reason to invent a proper steam engine. The steam engine was originally invented to power water pumps, which was used to extract more coal from natural deposits, which gave steam engines more fuel to run themselves and allowed steam to become a self-sustaining industry (Say's Law), but the initial demand for coal happened because Britain was in a state of formal economy that promoted regular industry. Because people saw a market opportunity to supply more homes with a source of warmth
>>18761054I agree, but there were certain commercialized industries in Rome, with one actually related to heating: In the process of making olive oil, the husks of the pressed olives were dried and turned into rather potent charcoal called 'pummace'. The trade in pummace became so large that it supplanted wood as the dominant fuel source in Roman Africa and pottery manufacturies began cropping up clove to olive oil presses. I'd argue the steam engine as a tool in coal mining could sustain itself in ancient Rome, if they somehow got the tech and initial funding.
>>18761034One could argue that the eolipile was very close to a Steam turbine, but the motive power from a steam turbine doesn't come directly from a reaction force but rather via shaft power, with the shaft in question being driven by fans that maximize reaction surface area. But turbines also utilize vacuum pressure by essentially creating a vacuum inside the turbine itself, once again, something the Romans just would not have understood.
>>18761017making a big boiler that doesnt just fucking explode requires some very important math and metallurgy, and we did not have the steel production to justify such massive amounts of steel for a long timeit wasnt until the bessmer converter was built, 150 years after the first steam engines, that we see the industrial revolution happen.Before then steam engines were an expensive and fragile curiosity.
>>18761017Yes. you needed coal. Mediterraneans didn´t have the means to build an industrial society until electricy and oil arrived.Moreover Romans had slaves. It was a society based on slaves (which is not exactly the same as racism). They didn't need machinery.By the way, a locomotive is a very different device, not easy to make it work due to its low efficiency.
romans didn't even have windmills, they were pretty far from an industrial revolution
>>18762724They did though.
>>18762724retard
>>18762702you are also a fucking retardthey would happily have transitioned over
