Harvesting the Elements – Part 4: The Untapped Revolution: Heron’s Aeolipile and the First Steam Turbine
Harvesting the Elements: Pre-Industrial Energy & Extraction 1 Harvesting the Elements – Part 1: The Deep Earth Blueprint: Chinese Gas Extraction and the 1,000m Well 2 Harvesting the Elements – Part 2: Focused Fire: Re-examining the Reality of Archimedes’ Solar Weapon 3 Harvesting the Elements – Part 3: The Automated Current: How Water and Tide Mills Revolutionized Labor 4 Harvesting the Elements – Part 4: The Untapped Revolution: Heron’s Aeolipile and the First Steam Turbine ← Series Home The Spinning Sphere of Alexandria In the first century CE, the brilliant Greek inventor Heron of Alexandria documented a device that seemed to defy its era: the Aeolipile. Often dismissed as a curious novelty or philosophical plaything, this deceptively simple machine was, in its purest form, the world’s first recorded steam turbine. This invention provided a working demonstration of a fundamental law of physics that would not be formally defined until Sir Isaac Newton developed his principles 1,600 years later. ...