Could Rome have invented the steam engine?
One of the greatest what-ifs in history
General Julius Jiang again looked to the Eagle above him, then towards the column of triremes that followed in his wake, the thick smoke rising to heaven in an endless line of columns. His grandfather had fought against just such an armada, futilely but honorably, and was astonished to find that the conquerors had treated him with respect. They had shared the secret of the steam, on land and on water. His grandson was honored to lead the legions to conquer the last place on Earth, bringing the land of the Rising Sun in under Rome.
Rome was the city that conquered most of the known world and established one of the most long-lasting and influential empires the world has ever seen. For comparison, the British empire dominated for a little more that two centuries. Rome dominated its world for more than five. Yet, when reading the magnificent story about the Roman empire, it’s hard not to be somewhat underwhelmed, especially in light of what happened during the industrial revolution, about the technological advances in this time span.
The child of practice and theory
The classical era was after all a time of great ideas. Democritus famously taught the world was made by atoms. Aristarchus, though losing the popular debate for many centuries, believed the sun was the center of the solar system. The geometry you learned in school was almost completely elaborated by Euclid — many modern textbooks even follow the same format and use the same examples as his Elements. Eratosthenes measured the size of the Earth to great precision.
Technology also advanced in many key areas. The steam engine, so instrumental to the explosion of technological and economic progress during the industrial revolution, was in many ways tantalizingly close to being realized.
There is the actual first recorded steam engine in history, Hero of Alexandria’s Aeolipile. Widely published and noted in the Roman world, this device demonstrated that steam could be used to convert heat into work. There is little evidence of it actually being used for practical purposes, however. It continued to be seen as a technological wonder for amusement, much like magnetism centuries later.
There are certainly technological hurdles between Hero’s apparatus and the early working steam engines of Henry Newcomen (1712) and James Watt (1774), which brings us to the status of engineering in the Roman world. What we today call engineers, and the Romans called architects, enjoyed a high status in their world. The army, obviously, greatly benefited from siege engines, roads and bridges. The growing cities depended on aqueducts to transport the population’s increasing need for water over unprecedented distances. Improved mining, buildings, roads and the world’s first indoor sanitation systems were all prerequisites for meeting the needs of the empire.
Vitrivius was perhaps the most famous of his days’ architects (read: civil engineers), and he expressed his ideal in a way that sounds tantalizingly modern:
“The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory.”
Even up to modern times, theorists were often reluctant to be involved in practical applications of their work. Joseph Henry, the noted 19th century American scientist, contributed greatly to our understanding of electricity. He was certainly not unable to find practical applications of his knowledge — he made the world’s first electric doorbell, with a mile-long wire, to alert his wife when he would be home for dinner. Yet it fell to inventors like Samuel Morse to bring out a practical application that literally would change the world. Vitrivius, in the 1st century, strived to unite practice and theory, crafts and philosophy.
A 1st century BC analog computer
Many of the greatest thinkers of the classical era were also doers, in this spirit. Famously, Archimedes could apply his theoretical knowledge to many practical problems of his day. He, more than any character of the classical era, was the hero of Galileo and Newton.
Two millennia buries many facts of history that we may never learn, but one particular discovery from 1901 certainly brings to light the classical world’s advanced state of technology, though its importance was not understood until a century later.
It came to be called the Antikythera mechanism, named after the 1st century BC shipwreck where it was found. This unprecedented wonder, consisting of at least 30 bronze gears, is a mechanical astronomical clock that very accurately describes the movement of celestial bodies with a precision that would not be surpassed for at least 1500 years. The level of craftsmanship demonstrated by the unknown makers of this device (perhaps associated with Archimedes’ students) surprised every scholar involved with its careful reconstruction. This begs the question: if its makers had been that dedicated to solving the practical application of steam power, how far could they have come?
We know the Roman world had solved many of the hurdles offered by the steam engine, like pistons, gears, cylinders and valves. Milling and water-pumps used many similar mechanisms. The Romans also knew about coal.
The step not taken
The missing component, perhaps, was the will to find a source of greater power than what was offered by domesticated animals, the wind or water streams. The Roman world was a slave economy, employing abundant and cheap muscle power provided by human captives. Practically none of the great thinkers of the classical age, no matter how thought out their perspectives on other ethical issues, dared question the legitimacy of slavery.
Still, great technological ideas can have their own momentum. If one of the thinkers and doers in that age had enjoyed a great eureka and pursued the practical application of steam power to mining, mills or transportation, the world would undoubtedly look vastly different. Today people speak a form of Rome’s language, Latin, spanning from Chile to Quebec, from Portugal to Romania. If trains and steamships were available to transport and feed the legions, who knows if any city in our world would not have the remains of an ancient amphitheater in its center.
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