Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria was an engineer who lived in Alexandria around 10 – 70 AD and was the first person to experiment with steam power and to use programmable self regulating feedback systems to control his devices.
The picture shows his “aeolipile” which was a steam powered toy invented by him. More information on it can be found at the museum of ancient inventions. Unfortunately he was not able to make the leap from toy to steam engine and so the industrial revolution had to wait another 1,600 or so years. I guess the abundance of free slave labour meant that labour saving devices were not that important so he just did not think of it. Imagine what might have happened if the steam engine was invented in the year 50AD?
Some of his other inventions included automatic temple doors and automatic scenery change for theatre.
More information on Heron can be found at:
The technology musuem of Thessaloniki
Wikipedia entry
Information on Heron
Heron’s automatic temple doors
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