The Amazing Steam Engines Of The First Century

The Physics arXiv Blog ^ | January 20, 2011 | kfc

[decimon]

Ask a person in the street who invented the steam engine and you're more than likely to hear the names of various Renaissance inventors such as Denis Papin or James Watt.

Less well known is the fact that steam engines were in use at least 2000 years ago. Our knowledge of these devices is largely the result of a text called Pneumatica written in the first century by the Greek mathematician, engineer and inventor Hero of Alexandria.

Today, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy, talks us through some of these devices as they are described in an online translation of Hero's work.

[decimon]

Via SunkenCiv

[decimon]

Ping

[the invisib1e hand]

inventor hero.

Hunh.

[ClearCase_guy]

The Greeks had impressive gears as well. I suppose one could write a steampunk novel of a Hellenistic Age with fully developed power sources (steam) and computers (differential engines).

[Jemian]

There should have been a comma after inventor and hero should have been capitalized. It was the person's name.

Thusly, ... inventor, Hero...

There is a reason grammar is important.

[Yardstick]

*bump for later*

[SunkenCiv]

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[wendy1946]

First steam powered vehicle as I’ve read it was in France, early 1700s.

[beebuster2000]

intersting !! although the device pictured doesnt really look like it qualifies as a “steam engine” in the modern sense.

[21twelve]

Perhaps there is some truth to the saying that the world was set back a thousand(?) years by the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

The link goes to a good quality video of the rock group RUSH’s 2011 concert and new song “Caravan”. Steam punk time machine, steam powered ballons, and gears. Saw on your profile that you had a high “nerd and weirdness quotient” and perhaps you might enjoy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3JAAPIFhwM

[ApplegateRanch]

Nice! I haven’t looked at those drawings, in years. First time I came across them was reading the descriptions & seeing those illustrations in grammar school, back about 1957-59. Always loved Hero & his singing birds, whirling spheres, and other goodies.

[wildbill]

Yas, we are about to loose our ability to writ clerly.

[MileHi]

I’d like to find a small (5-10 hp) wood fired steam engine that could drive a generator. All the ones I can find are toys.

[Eye of Unk]

http://www.smokstak.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7

[MileHi]

Thanks. I’ll look around.

[Eye of Unk]

A person can make a crude steam powered generator using a large pneumatic air hammer like for truck tires attached to a PTO driven generator. All you need is a minimum 90psi high volumne steam source.

The idea came to me from watching a Mythbusters episode where they used a pair of steam powered truck impact guns to rotate their Confederate steam cannon.

[MileHi]

That might work to replace the gas motor on a small gen set.

With a wood fired boiler you could make power with without petroleum. Have to manage that pressure vessel pretty carefully though...

[MileHi]

The 5 hp setup on this page

http://www.tinytechindia.com/steampowerplan.htm

looks about right. Not cheap though. It does seem to have all the boiler safety devices.

[TheCause]

Bump

[Eye of Unk]

Steam generation and regulation is almost a lost art for the single person, and a PTO generator needs 540RPM of upwards of 10hp. Would almost be better to have an old tractor engine converted to run on natural gas or ethanol.

Depends on what is a natural resource, myself if I were to build a totally steam powered engine it would be fueld by pellets, pellets can be fed by an auger tube as per demand, pellets can be made from an extruded cellulose mixture of ground up garbage that has been sorted so its all materials that can be shredded, mixed into a slurry in a portable concrete mixer, fed through a large grinder identical to a meat grinder and the pellets looking like rabbit feed are then dried and used as fuel. Or to be used in a still for ethanol, or both.

That is just off the top of my head.