"There were also Heron of Alexandria, inventor of gear trains and steam engines and the author of Automata, the first book on robots; Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician who demonstrated the forms of the conic sections; Archimedes, the greatest mechanical genius until Leonardo da Vinci; and the astronomer and geographer Ptolemy, who compiled much of what is the pseudoscience of astrology: his Earth-centered universe held sway for 1,500 years, a reminder that intellectual capacity is no guarantee against being dead wrong." Carpe Ventum (seize the wind)
By the way, it's my understanding that Heron of Alexandria was dead right. The only problem was that he never thought of connecting his "steam engine" to a gear train. Of course, that would have messed up an economy based on slave labor, but it sure would have helped in pumping out the mines. That was the first use of the steam engine, by the way.GeoM[ Parent ]
