Heron of Alexandria

If I asked you when steam power was invented, what would you guess?

If you’re like most educated folks I know, you’ll probably go to the Victorian era, or maybe a little earlier… something about someone named Watts, maybe?

Now, what if I told you that a Greek polymath named Heron of Alexandria designed the first known device to transform steam into rotary motion, and that he did this 2000 years ago?

That’s right: around the same time Rome was transitioning from republic to empire, the intellectual capitol of the world had shifted from Athens to Alexandria. This time was a golden age for innovative thinking, as ideas from all over the known world constantly butted up against one another.

Dynamic and cosmopolitan, Alexandria was a vibrant hub that attracted scholars and inventors from across the Mediterranean world and beyond. It was the Silicon Valley of its day, with lots of little idea factories.

Greek philosophy met directly with Egyptian mathematics and construction. Babylonian astr…