What if the hero engine was commercialized?

What if the hero engine was commercialized?
Would rome have gone through a industrial revolution?

They would have ended up using their entire stockpile of fire to fuel them and thus enter a dark age earlier than in our timeline

It didn't generate enough torque to be particularly useful on its own, but if the museum of Alexandria had continued working on steam power, they could have created something actually useful for granaries and shit.

Roman agriculture wasn't really efficient enough for a massive industrial revolution, but there was certainly enough surplus population in the cities for some degree of mechanization in industries like textiles.

Also, they didn't have Newtonian physics or Darby style blast furnaces, which made industrial design way easier.

>stockpile of fire

There were gold, silver, copper, and lead mines in ancient times, is it conceivable that they could have discovered coal?

Whoild that not make the empire not want to kick forest niggers out of the rhine or think of head and start planting forest to help supply

It was not practically useful in that form and they didn't have the theoretical / formal tools to build useful abstractions of the principles at work which would allow them to design more practical steam engines.

A whirly steam toy is far from a practical steam engine.

The steam engine, while a strong indicator of progress, was only a small part of the industrial revolution.

It is difficult to conceptualize how it would trigger an industrial revolution. At best it might inspire further experiments, though it would have little economic value itself and the Romans would need many more innovations which took centuries to develop in renaissance Europe.

greeks were using coal in metallurgy in 300bc

Lmao running water alone powered an industrial revolution in the Ancient world.

Just look at the mass production mills present in Rome and China

Due to a huge over abundance of free labor (slaves) and military hegemony there was no incentive to innovate labor saving devices or technologies.

Didn't amount to much, though, did it.

Maybe our idea of the industrial revolution fixates too much on machines and sources of power.

>sociological explanations

I know that feel senpai. I fucking hate when i run out of fire. I've been considering going to California to replenish my supply.

Really, it makes the most sense to describe the Industrial Revolution as a series of new technological and social systems.

If it hadn't been for corporate law, patents, Newtonian physics, thermodynamics, chemistry, and a bunch of other shit that the Romans didn't really have, steam engines don't mean as much as you'd think.

>The steam engine [...] was only a small part of the industrial revolution.

Why o why is Veeky Forums so filled with absolutists? Even on a topic that's inherently nonpolitical?

>Due to a huge over abundance of free labor (slaves)

This.

>>sociological explanations
>Dingbat. You're not much for underlying explanations, innit guv.

Am I being absolutist? Or do you mean OP is absolutist? I don't think I am very absolutist.

>I don't think I am very absolutist.

I don't mean to be a dickhole, and with all due respect, but to minimize the importance of the steam engine seems absolutist, and very contrarian... it was the only significant source of power for about 3 zillion years. Not just to move locos and ships, but other types of machines, including and power stations. Even today it has more than a slew of applications.

It's of huge significance.

the whole point of having slaves is that you minimise cost of production, that way you dont need to invest in expensive machinery untill it becomes unavoidable, like a new oil press or a set of weaving looms, but a steam engine... they wouldnt even get how thats a good idea, maybe they would use it to power ships or war machines sooner than use it in industry

>discovered coal

they didnt arrive from mars yesterday

>only a small part
I understand that as "only one prequisite" and in that, he's absolutely right. As others have pointed out,
there's a ton of other knowledge early modern europe had and the romans didn't. Physics, chemistry, mathematics... perhaps the most important one would be metallurgy.

>>only a small part
>I understand that as "only one prequisite"

Could be taken that way. I just take it as "only a small part."

we have 2 of these threads , but the history of technology is severely underrated so that's ok

>lava flows for half a kilometer
>forms some nice metamorphic rock
nice source of fire you got there

>dude lets have le industrial revolution with no functional number system, knowledge of calculus or newtonian physics.

You just need thermodynamics bruh.

>he thinks he can have the industrial revolution without the 1000 years of theology laying the base for rationalism/empiricism and the Enlightenment