What if the Ancient Greeks had developed steam power?

[Nicholas]

The Ancient Greeks certainly had their share of ingenius inventions, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they had perfected the use of steam power. Sometime around the first century the engineer Hero of Alexandria developed a spinning ball powered by steam but this seems to have been considered little more than a toy by most. The Greeks had also produced amazingly complex devices, one of the more famous being the Antikythera mechanism, but there were numerous others including automatic doors that opened with a temple fire was lit. I have to wonder what would have happened if they had taken the step from using steam power as a simple amusement to using it to as a power source?

More information on some of the Ancient Greek inventions can be found here: http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hero/index.html

[Durthorin]

The Ancient Greeks certainly had their share of ingenius inventions, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they had perfected the use of steam power. Sometime around the first century the engineer Hero of Alexandria developed a spinning ball powered by steam but this seems to have been considered little more than a toy by most. The Greeks had also produced amazingly complex devices, one of the more famous being the Antikythera mechanism, but there were numerous others including automatic doors that opened with a temple fire was lit. I have to wonder what would have happened if they had taken the step from using steam power as a simple amusement to using it to as a power source?

More information on some of the Ancient Greek inventions can be found here: http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hero/index.html

Developing it and deploying it...the two initial uses of Steam power are

Ships (Steam powerered Galleys) Greece would have owned the Med in short order.

Railroads. This one has far far more wide reaching effects on trade and troop movement and communications. At the time period you might as well give them nukes, they would roll over every other civilization.

Industry, Steam allowed some of the first true mass production factories & mills.

[Nicholas]

Developing it and deploying it...the two initial uses of Steam power are

Ships (Steam powerered Galleys) Greece would have owned the Med in short order.

Railroads. This one has far far more wide reaching effects on trade and troop movement and communications. At the time period you might as well give them nukes, they would roll over every other civilization.

Industry, Steam allowed some of the first true mass production factories & mills.

And to think that this could have possibly been started by simple ball spun around by the power of steam.

[Darth Executor]

Developing it and deploying it...the two initial uses of Steam power are

Ships (Steam powerered Galleys) Greece would have owned the Med in short order.

Railroads. This one has far far more wide reaching effects on trade and troop movement and communications. At the time period you might as well give them nukes, they would roll over every other civilization.

Industry, Steam allowed some of the first true mass production factories & mills.

There are other less conventional uses for steam that we never needed or didn't develop. In particular, weapons. We had gunpowder before steam so we didn't need it, but the Greeks could have used steam power to make ballistas and catapults that reloaded automatically, giving them an insane fire rate. There was also a steam powered jet airplane first invented by Henry Coanda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermojet). Even if the Greeks didn't actually managed to make aircraft, they could certainly make primitive missiles with the concept.

[Mr. Christopher]

The Ancient Greeks certainly had their share of ingenius inventions, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if they had perfected the use of steam power. Sometime around the first century the engineer Hero of Alexandria developed a spinning ball powered by steam but this seems to have been considered little more than a toy by most. The Greeks had also produced amazingly complex devices, one of the more famous being the Antikythera mechanism, but there were numerous others including automatic doors that opened with a temple fire was lit. I have to wonder what would have happened if they had taken the step from using steam power as a simple amusement to using it to as a power source?

More information on some of the Ancient Greek inventions can be found here: http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hero/index.html

Then I guess we'd be flying cars.

[Nicholas]

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