Steam engines

[tansy]

I was just having a conversation with my husband today about steam engines, and I said to him that I couldn't see why they couldn't have invented steam engines a couple of thousand years ago or more.
It seemed to me that the basic concept of steam engines is not that complicated, also they could do stuff with metal and things centuries ago, also they could boil water!

Anyhow, he said, well they probably wouldn't have been able to weld things, also in pressure guages, you have springs...I think that coiled springs (made from steell, presumably) weren't invented or at least mad 'til the 19th century, or maybe 18th?

So, anyhow, if any of you are engineers or anything, have you any thoughts on this...do you think it might have been possible for them to have made steam-engines centuries ago?

 

[Hespera]

I like thinking about stuff like that too! Imagine if you could go back to ancient Rome with some basic knowledge of chemistry! Show Chinese that gunpowder can knock down a castle.... no better not. Or show the ancient Egyptians how to use some decent numerals, and how to make a stone arch. How to make beer and grow popcorn!

Some ancient Greek I think made a kind of steam engine, totalyl impractical it worked like a garden sprinkler, but it was a steam engine.

The steam boats that used to go up and down the mississippi didnt have pressure gauges.

Im kind of guessing that the kind of precision metalwork, making cylinders etc would have made a real steam engine too hard until about the time they were being made.

When people started studying electricity, they had to make their own insulated wires, wrapping bare wire with silk.

I read somewhre about how seemingly simple things can be very very hard to make. The example was a pencil. Graphite from Brazil, mixed with a certain kind of clay; now the wood, cut just so; now mine the metals and refine and shape them, for the eraser taht is made out of what exactly. Now the paint..you will need an oil well and refinery and how many chemical engineers!! Forget the pencil Better make a quill pen and some ink from boiled walnut shells and lamp black.

 

[tansy]

I like thinking about stuff like that too! Imagine if you could go back to ancient Rome with some basic knowledge of chemistry! Show Chinese that gunpowder can knock down a castle.... no better not. Or show the ancient Egyptians how to use some decent numerals, and how to make a stone arch. How to make beer and grow popcorn!

Some ancient Greek I think made a kind of steam engine, totalyl impractical it worked like a garden sprinkler, but it was a steam engine.

The steam boats that used to go up and down the mississippi didnt have pressure gauges.

Im kind of guessing that the kind of precision metalwork, making cylinders etc would have made a real steam engine too hard until about the time they were being made.

When people started studying electricity, they had to make their own insulated wires, wrapping bare wire with silk.

I read somewhre about how seemingly simple things can be very very hard to make. The example was a pencil. Graphite from Brazil, mixed with a certain kind of clay; now the wood, cut just so; now mine the metals and refine and shape them, for the eraser taht is made out of what exactly. Now the paint..you will need an oil well and refinery and how many chemical engineers!! Forget the pencil Better make a quill pen and some ink from boiled walnut shells and lamp black.

Yeah, I find all this sort of stuff fascinating, but don't have enough time to look into all the really interesting things in the universe and from history.
Imagine that..having to wrap the wire with silk..of course, I suppose they didn't have plastic then.

Can you imagine, if a group of people with all the scientificand technical and engineering knowledge that we now have, were stranded on a desert island - they probably still wouldn'rt be able to put a lot of what they know into practice..only in a basic way. I mean..I wouldn't even be able to start a fire...I know in THEORY one can rub two sticks together..but I bet I couldn't do it..and if there's no flint on the island...what then?

 

[Hespera]

Yeah, I find all this sort of stuff fascinating, but don't have enough time to look into all the really interesting things in the universe and from history.
Imagine that..having to wrap the wire with silk..of course, I suppose they didn't have plastic then.

Can you imagine, if a group of people with all the scientificand technical and engineering knowledge that we now have, were stranded on a desert island - they probably still wouldn'rt be able to put a lot of what they know into practice..only in a basic way. I mean..I wouldn't even be able to start a fire...I know in THEORY one can rub two sticks together..but I bet I couldn't do it..and if there's no flint on the island...what then?

Read Mark Twains book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
to see how going back in time with modern technology works out.

Oh... as as for a buncha egghead engineers trying to do something practical? How about a (get this) MASTER"S degree student here who took ten minutes trying to figure out vice grips and then gave up?

Better to get stranded with a farm kid.

 

[Ectezus]

Science is kinda like evolution, it can only work in small gradual phases each one building upon previous discoveries.

Fire and steel alone won't do you any good without proper tools. Also the necessity of a discovery is important. For example, space science wasn't all that interesting before we first learned to fly on the earth itself.

As for the question; could/can it go faster?
Most definitely. The theory of evolution for example might have been discovered sooner if religion wouldn't claim to already have the answer. It's the NOT knowing that makes people investigate and discover things.

- Ectezus

 

[tansy]

Read Mark Twains book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
to see how going back in time with modern technology works out.

Oh... as as for a buncha egghead engineers trying to do something practical? How about a (get this) MASTER"S degree student here who took ten minutes trying to figure out vice grips and then gave up?

Better to get stranded with a farm kid.

Yep..it brings us back to that philosophical and ethical question as to who to chuck out of a boat, when there's not enough food or water to go round. Or the vague professor type thing (dunno if they exist in real-life), who can't do everday practical things

 

[tansy]

Science is kinda like evolution, it can only work in small gradual phases ea

(Am posting in a different colour, co sometimes I mess up the quote thingy)

Yes, granted..I undrestand that

irst learnFire and steel alone won't do you any good without proper tools. Also the necessity of a discovery is important. For example, space science wasn't all that interesting before we fed to fly on the earth itself.

Yes, but on the other hand Leonardo da Vinci worked out a load of stuff ahead of his time. They even made recently some working models of some of it...in theory at least, given the means to do it, people could have done a load of stuff centuries ago.

As for the question; could/can it go faster?
Most definitely. The theory of evolution for example might have been discovered sooner if religion wouldn't claim to already have the answer. It's the NOT knowing that makes people investigate and discover things.

I'm not sure that I agree with that..but then I'm biased

- Ectezus

.

 

[sbvera13]

Heron of Alexandria is the ancient Greek that experimented with steam power.

I don't believe his experiments got much farther than that, but the potential was certainly there. The Greeks were rapidly discovering universal laws of nature, and from their surviving writings we know they were familiar with things like density, pressure, heat expansion, force and velocity, volume, and extremely detailed measurements. They even made clockwork calculators for predicting the movements of stars. Precision metalworking was definately not a problem for them. So, given another one or two hundred years, I think it very likely that they would have developed real steam engines. A big stumbling block would have been the discovery of iron, bronze just isn't strong enough to make large boilers. I think though that if the Greeks had been able to go full speed ahead they would have figured that out pretty quickly.

The problem was Rome. Ancient Greece was at it's height for only about 150 years before they fell to invasion. The library of Alexadria was burned, and the collected research of 150 years burned with it. Rome had some definate engineering marvels of their own, it's true- but they lacked the irreverence of the Greeks and weren't as interested in de-mystifying the laws of nature. And when Rome fell- the Church took over, and that was that for the next 1000 years or so. Science didn't have a chance to progress again until the Rennaissance.

 

[tansy]

Heron of Alexandria is the ancient Greek that experimented with steam power.

I don't believe his experiments got much farther than that, but the potential was certainly there. The Greeks were rapidly discovering universal laws of nature, and from their surviving writings we know they were familiar with things like density, pressure, heat expansion, force and velocity, volume, and extremely detailed measurements. They even made clockwork calculators for predicting the movements of stars. Precision metalworking was definately not a problem for them. So, given another one or two hundred years, I think it very likely that they would have developed real steam engines. A big stumbling block would have been the discovery of iron, bronze just isn't strong enough to make large boilers. I think though that if the Greeks had been able to go full speed ahead they would have figured that out pretty quickly.

The problem was Rome. Ancient Greece was at it's height for only about 150 years before they fell to invasion. The library of Alexadria was burned, and the collected research of 150 years burned with it. Rome had some definate engineering marvels of their own, it's true- but they lacked the irreverence of the Greeks and weren't as interested in de-mystifying the laws of nature. And when Rome fell- the Church took over, and that was that for the next 1000 years or so. Science didn't have a chance to progress again until the Rennaissance.

Wow. I'll have to read up on that..thanks. But that's what I've long thought...that, maybe, if other things, whatever they were, hadn't got in the way, we could have got to todays level of technology, centuries ago.
When you think of what the ancients did and knew..look at the old astronomers nad mathematicians..it's incredible

 

[sbvera13]

The world got kicked back two thousand years when the library burned... and considering what we've done in the past 300 with modern science... just wow.

And come to think of it, 150 years is about the amount of time it took to get from Newton to steam engines today.... hmmmm.

 

[tansy]

Well. look how far we've come just in the last 150/200 years.
Or, even the last 50 years

 

[TemperateSeaIsland]

Why bother with steam engines when you have slaves. A lot of technology doesn't reach it's potential until the economic and sociological climate is right.

 

[tansy]

Why bother with steam engines when you have slaves. A lot of technology doesn't reach it's potential until the economic and sociological climate is right.

Yes, I realise that..it was rather that I thought, that given the right conditions, I couldn't see any reason why they couldn't have invented steam engines centuries ago...and in fact, another poster said that an ancient Greek actually did experiment with them, and if it hasdn't been for other factors they quite possibly would have been able to develop them centuries ago.

 

[rahmiyn]

I'm not an engineer, but I worked for an engineering company that built them, and I think the main reason steam engines weren't built before has something to do with being able to properly contain the steam enough for it to have any real power to work with. I do know that the engineering that goes into making a steam turbine focuses a lot on the pressures inside the sealed areas that both contain and control the release of the steam. The steam then can propel blades, that are also designed to withstand both the pressures and the tremendous heat the steam must reach for it to effectively turn them. They in turn rotate a generator (I know the wire coil is bare copper) with enough power to produce the electricity.

But, before Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse we really didn't know how to both contain and deliver the electricity safely to individual homes.

It always seemed to me that the process of making electricity combined a lot of technologies that took much longer to perfect (beginning it would seem with the ancient Greeks. )

 

[tansy]

I'm not an engineer, but I worked for an engineering company that built them, and I think the main reason steam engines weren't built before has something to do with being able to properly contain the steam enough for it to have any real power to work with. I do know that the engineering that goes into making a steam turbine focuses a lot on the pressures inside the sealed areas that both contain and control the release of the steam. The steam then can propel blades, that are also designed to withstand both the pressures and the tremendous heat the steam must reach for it to effectively turn them. They in turn rotate a generator (I know the wire coil is bare copper) with enough power to produce the electricity.

But, before Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse we really didn't know how to both contain and deliver the electricity safely to individual homes.

It always seemed to me that the process of making electricity combined a lot of technologies that took much longer to perfect (beginning it would seem with the ancient Greeks. )

Thanks for your reply...actually, I wasn't initially thinking of generating electricity, but of course, that would give extra problems. What started me off wondering about it was, that I was thinkimg about steam trains. And actually, I was trying to puzzle out how the pressure of the steam could be forced into whatever moves the pistons, but of course, there may be a lot of componebnt parts which may have been difficult to make prior to the 18th or 19th century.

 

[juvenissun]

I was just having a conversation with my husband today about steam engines, and I said to him that I couldn't see why they couldn't have invented steam engines a couple of thousand years ago or more.
It seemed to me that the basic concept of steam engines is not that complicated, also they could do stuff with metal and things centuries ago, also they could boil water!

Anyhow, he said, well they probably wouldn't have been able to weld things, also in pressure guages, you have springs...I think that coiled springs (made from steell, presumably) weren't invented or at least mad 'til the 19th century, or maybe 18th?

So, anyhow, if any of you are engineers or anything, have you any thoughts on this...do you think it might have been possible for them to have made steam-engines centuries ago?

There is no reason that the Industrial Revolution could not happen 2000 years earlier. But it did not. The reason? Atheists don't have a clue. But Christians know better:

Dan 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

 

[TemperateSeaIsland]

There is no reason that the Industrial Revolution could not happen 2000 years earlier. But it did not. The reason? Atheists don't have a clue. But Christians know better:

Dan 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

lol

 

[LightHorseman]

Heron of Alexandria is the ancient Greek that experimented with steam power.

I don't believe his experiments got much farther than that, but the potential was certainly there. The Greeks were rapidly discovering universal laws of nature, and from their surviving writings we know they were familiar with things like density, pressure, heat expansion, force and velocity, volume, and extremely detailed measurements. They even made clockwork calculators for predicting the movements of stars. Precision metalworking was definately not a problem for them. So, given another one or two hundred years, I think it very likely that they would have developed real steam engines. A big stumbling block would have been the discovery of iron, bronze just isn't strong enough to make large boilers. I think though that if the Greeks had been able to go full speed ahead they would have figured that out pretty quickly.

The problem was Rome. Ancient Greece was at it's height for only about 150 years before they fell to invasion. The library of Alexadria was burned, and the collected research of 150 years burned with it. Rome had some definate engineering marvels of their own, it's true- but they lacked the irreverence of the Greeks and weren't as interested in de-mystifying the laws of nature. And when Rome fell- the Church took over, and that was that for the next 1000 years or so. Science didn't have a chance to progress again until the Rennaissance.

Darn! Beat me to it. See also http://library.thinkquest.org/C006011/english/sites/steam_first_experiments.php3?v=2 for other examples of ancient steam power.

Minor point, materials technology is a significant precursor to efficient effective steam power. That is, you can't have mainstream widespread steam engines before you have the technology to build efficient effective boilers.

 

[juvenissun]

Minor point, materials technology is a significant precursor to efficient effective steam power. That is, you can't have mainstream widespread steam engines before you have the technology to build efficient effective boilers.

No. In fact, this is the major point.

A steam engine could appear in bronze age. The engine may not last long. But the application would be an excellent reason for people to seek the improvement of material. May be the iron age would arrive thousands years earlier.

 

[Radagast]

Why bother with steam engines when you have slaves. A lot of technology doesn't reach it's potential until the economic and sociological climate is right.

Exactly. The Romans didn't need the steam engine.

The developments that led to the steam engine began in the Middle Ages with improved water wheels, trade guilds, and other things that led up to the industrial revolution.