The ancient scientists of the Ptolemaic Era were very close to bring the Industrial Revolution 2000 years before it happened

In short

3 names are important in this research

*Ctesibius of Alexandria
*Philo of Byzantium also known as Philo Mechanicus (was living in Alexandria too)
*Hero of Alexandria


Ctesibius
lived during the period of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (284-246 bc) and Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 BC)
He was an inventor and mathematician, he is connected with all the big discoveries and inventions of the period and he is considered the founder and first head of the school of mathematicians and engineers of the Museum of Alexandria.
Among his other inventions he invented the Hydraulis, a water organ that is considered the precursor of the modern pipe organ, and improved the water clock or clepsydra.
We have lost all his books but we have informations on them from Vitruvious and others.
His main work was the book "On pneumatics" and he is considered the "father of pneumatics." which is the science of the air and its uses.
He had built devices worked by air pressure, which was used in military engineering and hydraulic. Hydraulis and wind energy was MANUALLY operated - uses air but needs a slave to operate the device.

*Philo of Byzantium
He was the disciple and successor of the previous in the school. His large work was the "Structure Mechanics" (Compendium of Mechanics) nine books. Part of his work has been saved in Arabic translations. His 5th book on "pneumatics" (on devices operated by air or water pressure) was saved only in the Arabic translation.

Hero of Alexandria
According to an eclipse described in his book (62 AC) and other details, we believe that he lived in the 1st Century AC)
Most of his work is saved, in Arabic translations.
His work is like an encyclopedia on the engineering work up to his time.
His book Pneumatica, is a description of machines working on air, steam or water pressure, including the hydraulis or water organ
Hero put a windwheel to power the ydraulis with a converter of the time of Philo. This also had chain belts.


to be continued

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 03/25/2017 05:36 PM

So, was the automotive water pump invented by the Alexandrian engineers?

Probably NOT, as we dont have any such testimony, said the professors, but all the inventions needed are already known
One would only make the combination of the inventions we discussed earlier,

The water pump of Ctesibius
The chain belts of Philo HYDRODYNAMIC
The turbine of Hero
The toothed wheels known to Aristotle and Archemedes
The converter known to Philo and Hero
and
The metal tubes which were already known (lead piping in Pergamon-Ephesos and the Hellenistic water systems)

All were there and all they needed was someone to combine them.

If someone had actually made it,they said, it would either be from Hero or the engineers coming after him, and not to be used en masse (or we would know) but in toys and small test devices, just to verify their theoretical considerations.

Nice, very short video on this

[link to youtu.be (secure)]

I will add some other interesting information about lost and saved knowledge from the lecture later.

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 03/25/2017 06:01 PM

the video

Side notes from the lecture

Lost and saved knowledge from the ancient times

In the Greco-Roman literature ONE survived page or papyrus, equates to 40 lost pages (2.5% of total)

The most usual findings in an excavation are the clay vessels. The baked clay is cheap production and durable (last in time)
From the 5th century BC in Athens, we know that the luxurious clay vases and other clay objects were in mass production. We have only found 1% of them.

Now...

We never thought the ancients could have built such a complex device like the antikythera mechanism, but they did.
We wouldnt know about it, if we hadnt found that shipwreck back in 1901.

Is it an exception or we may find more interesting objects or manuscripts in the future?

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 03/25/2017 06:23 PM

Last night the guest Randall Carlson on Coast to Coast AM discussed in length the findings that indicate that man has reached great technical heights many times on planet earth, just to be thrown back into the dark ages by a catastrophe. Be it a meteor strike, a super volcano, subduction of 2 tetanic plates, tsunamis or what have you.

Shreds of the memory of the technology were retained after each occurrence, but civilization was taken back to the dark ages with none of the actual technology left standing or attainable.

veni vidi vici" .... (we came, we saw, we conquered).

And still we live.

Notes from the lecture

The Arabic connection


The books of Philo and Hero were only saved in Arabic translations. Otherwise they would have been lost.

Between the 8th and 10th Centuries AD the Arabs translated mostly the books of science (in the Christian West most of them werent studied until the 12th century according to the professor)

The Caliph Harun al-Rashid, founded "The House of Wisdom" in Bahgdad in 830. His son Al-Ma'mun, was the one who continued his work of gothering the known knowledge and at his time is when most of the Greek literature was translated.
The Arabs interest in the Greek literature was mainly for the applied knowledge, on mathematics, engineering, astronomy, geography and medicine.

Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809–873) an Assyrian Nestorian Christian physician and scientist, translated the greatest of the greek physicians Galin, Hippocrates and Pedanius Dioscorides but also Aristotle and Plato's Republic.

The Syrian Monophysite philosopher Qusta ibn Luqa (820–912), translated in Arabic the books of Hero and Euclid among others.

This is the difference between the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates and what we see today, he concluded.

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 03/25/2017 07:14 PM

It depends on how long it needs for a civilization to reach such a technological level, but i dont reject the idea. We have at least 3 known almost total catastrophs and at least in two of them most human population was lost.

yep you can thank gews and christianity for setting us back hundreds of years in terms of science & technology

thank you! i thought it was interesting too!

I have a feeling we would have seen some CRAZY war machines.

I guess its not easy to discuss on the reasons, they are probably multiple and some people (inventors, philosophers etc) lived beyond their time.

Archimedes lived in Syracuse, Sicely, Italy.
They say he studied in Alexandria and then when he went back home, he used to contact his tutors in Alexandria to get feed back on his work (this is what the professor said and people laughed, as it is like today).

The idea is that most of the advanced technology was used for the benefit of the religion, rather than the state or the society.
We know that in some greek temples they used technological tricks to impress the people (their own and the emenies alike).
They used mirrors and other tricks for the gods to "appear" (this includes the theatre as we have the "deus ex machina" using wooden cranes to lift the god on the air), steam mechanism to open the temple doors, other tricks to bring them in touch with the dead people (there are studies on how they used tricks in the acheron necromancy and the oracles).
But we do have a couple of mentions on advanced war technology eg at Delphi.
Most advanced technological references we have them in the myths and in Homer eg. we have the Phaeacian ships.

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 03/25/2017 07:53 PM

I'm sure they did have steam pumps.
They were also playing with harnessing electricity to do things like creating arcs of voltage from rods attached to temples. That's what I remember reading.

They had so much slave labor it wouldn't have occurred to them to create work machines, but I'm surprised they didn't take this stuff further just for the fascination.

"We never thought the ancients could have built such a complex device like the antikythera mechanism, but they did..."

The most striking thing, to me, was that isn't a one-off or prototype, but is many mechanical generations ahead of what it appears on first glance.

You will be surprised


If every instrument (machine) could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet (these are automata), “of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods; ”if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.

Aristotle
Politics

They should have had an emperor with enough brains to support this kind of scientific research.

yes they say it is probably not common but also not a unique object. But read about the Phaeacians ships (this is supposed to be the island of Corfu) from Homer.


“For the Phaeacians have no pilots; their vessels have no rudders as those of other nations have, but the ships themselves understand what it is that we are thinking about and want; they know all the cities and countries in the whole world, and can traverse the sea just as well even when it is covered with mist and cloud, so that there is no danger of being wrecked or coming to any harm.” Homer, The Odyssey, Book VIII, 800 BC -

Dont you ask too much? lol

thank you!

double post

Last Edited by Ostria1 on 03/25/2017 08:34 PM

This is a clip from an episode about inventions in ancient greece and rome that were used to trick people into believing that the gods were making things happen. The truth is that hydraulics, magnetism, and other things were used to cause machines to move.

Ancient temple inventions meant to fool people
(i would say to amaze them not always to fool them)

Old news, but yes it's true.

The plague that hit Europe wiped out a vast majority of the ruling elites that were suppressing ancient technologies. The industrial revolution that started arguably with the printing press was the pivotal point of our coming out of the Dark Ages.

Those years are called the Dark Ages due to the lack of progress and innovation. There were advancements but they generally were not universally adopted nor were they occurring at a pace that would impact the general populace in any meaningful way.

Basically something would be invented and only a tiny fraction, usually the ruling class, would enjoy it's benefits while the unwashed masses continued their daily lifestyles in the same way as their ancestors a dozen generations did.

In this way the ruling class stayed in power by hording the knowledge and technologies.

The printing press spread knowledge and encouraged a resurgence in literacy and math among the peasantry. Much in the same way the internet is sparking a global awakening today.

Tech is still being suppressed on a massive scale, we are literally 50 to 100 years behind in our daily lives in terms of what has been discovered and invented. Old money, old regimes and special interests are directly responsible for our lagging behind.

One could cite all the new gadgets and tech but I can tell you it is all based off of 20 to 100 year old discoveries.

There was a massive grain mill on a hill in ancient Spain during the Roman empire. It ran off of water wheels turning 3 massive stones using a system of weights and gears. he capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, enough to supply bread for as many as 10,000 of perhaps 30-40,000 inhabitants of Arelate at that time.provided all the flour to Rome.

We are talking a full fledged factory. Scroll down in the link to see the size of it.

[link to waterhistory.org]



[link to kotsanas.com]

Do you mean thousands?

Bingo.

Yep one of many inventions since the fall of Atlantis.

Are you better than the populous Alexandria, which dwells along the rivers? Waters encircle it: the sea, with its riches. The waters are its walls. - Nahum 3:8