The Steam Engine Paradox

Huh?  The steam engine paradox?  Is this some kind of joke?

No.  It’s not.  In about the year 90 AD, more than two thousand years ago, a prototype steam turbine engine was invented and put on display by a man named Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria, Egypt.

You may wonder, what happened to it?  At the time, it enabled what would have been one of the most dramatic technological advances in the history of humanity.  Indeed, in later centuries, it did become that.  Yet, despite the prototype being displayed in the year 90, the actual useful steam engine was not produced until the 1600s, about 1500 years after the proof of concept.

The more one thinks about it, the stranger this fact begins to appear.  Consider the following.

 

There were many ingenious inventions throughout history, many of them in ancient times.  Although taken for granted today, the bow and arrow represent a complex combination of different technologies which had to be coordinated into a single functional unit.  Copper mining and forging are known to have existed at least five thousand years ago.  Megalithic structures at places like Göbekli Tepe and Stonehenge reach their zenith in the famous pyramids of Egypt, an engineering feat which even today might be impossible.  The Antikythera Device is perhaps the world’s first mechanical analog computer.  Greek temples used sophisticated hydraulics that appeared to worshippers to be magical.

Given all of that, along with the possibility of lost and forgotten ancient achievements, it is very curious that the steam engine went nowhere for a millennium and a half, after it had been demonstrated to educated and imaginative people who had a high level of engineering skills.  How could this have happened?

During the centuries after Heron, nearly the entire world population observed boiling water, usually in their own homes and kitchens.  The lids and covers of cauldrons and pots rattled unceasingly, showing everyone that steam is a powerful force.  Yet, not until the 1600s, apparently, did anyone take the time and trouble to put together even a primitive steam engine which could be put to practical use.

Nor is this the only such paradox.  

Consider that the pre-Columbian tribes of North America never invented the wheel.  Not until Europeans arrived in the 1500s was the wheel put to use in the Americas—and this was the case even among indigenous tribes and nations that had already constructed some of the world’s largest stone structures.

Clearly, then, the human mind, even in primitive societies, is capable of ingenious inventions, while at the same time, overlooking ones that, in retrospect, should seem obvious.  The motivation was there, for centuries before and after Heron, to apply the enormous forces and speeds which steam power makes possible.  If nothing else, curiosity, prestige and the intellectual satisfaction of inventing something new and dramatic should have prompted at least one person, at least one, to follow up on Heron’s steam turbine.  At least one.

Therein lies the paradox.  It is a strange fact of history which seems to defy explanation.  It is a strange fact of history which seems to defy explanation. 

It leaves us to wonder:  how many other world-changing, obvious inventions are we today overlooking?

.