Were Greeks 1,400 years ahead of their time?

The Scotsman ^ | June 7, 2006 | EBEN HARRELL

[supercat]

One of my professors way back used the example of the ancient Greek steam engine as an argument against slavery.

Was it capable of doing an amount of work at least comparable to that required to harvest and transport the necessary fuel? The first steam engines in Europe were used to pump water out of mines; they were so horrendously inefficient that if they weren't directly adjacent to the mines it would have taken more work to haul the fuel than could be done by the engines. Did the Greeks have sufficient understanding of the underlying physics to make a steam engine that could operate efficiently?

[MHGinTN]

A gateway? Hmmm ... I wonder if such a gateway could connect to the flooded subterranean passages found under Obiados(sp?)?

[SunkenCiv]

:') Uh, no. Here's some wild little graphics, source unknown:

• westelevation.gif
  
  
• HalfSection.gif
  
  
• HalfSection2.gif

[SunkenCiv]

The "Campbell's Tomb" shown in those goofy drawings can be seen here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1442529/posts?page=25#25

[MHGinTN]

Thanks so much! I find this stuff very interesting, especially the 'ancient ruins' category, like the site off Okinawa. Graham Hancock's beautiful wife took some great pix of that underwater site.

[Erasmus]

Any body yet figure out what's in the chamber under the front paws of the Sphinx?

A big stone mouse.

[warchild9]

I've seen a diagram of the steam engine in question. They had only begun to realize that contained pressure associated with a mechanism could rotate a shaft; they already had thorough knowledge of pulleys, gears, etc. But the apparatus never proceeded past the point of being an intellectual curiosity.

[bwteim]

Covenantor, you were obviously in an advanced office, bypassing the DMP stage ;)

PS another reason for DPWs: the carbon-based "life" paper forms that would not work in DMPs. Like the Greeks, we were slaves to forms. Now, today, of course, we no longer use paper, everything is automated....

;)

[Covenantor]

LOL!

Covenantor, you were obviously in an advanced office, bypassing the DMP stage ;) ,/i>

Advanced officc indeed. No, it was an Arch/Eng firm. very slick presentations, etc. Before the WPs, the only computers we used were the early desktop HP's that used mag cards for storage. These were reserved for senior engineers, accessed by appointment. I had to use the original cut and paste interface to produce specification and proposal drafts.

Carbons! We doan need no steekin' carbons! We be Madison Ave. design professionals from Ivy League schools, not merchants.

And for more mundane calcs we used graph paper, steel manuals and slide rules. Feet and inch arithmatic was aided by one of these:

Heck, we weren't even allowed to operate the huge copier, we had to submit an internal work order and hope for delivery within the week.

yup, we leap frogged a lot of tech...eventually.

BTW I did realize the need for DMP for forms after I posted, but, back in the day, in mid-town Manhattan Arch. firms they ignored that sort of thing. I had a Leading Edge computer with a 9 pin DMP that I used for calcs and DB work that I took home. Sometimes one just had to go guerilla tech to get work done on time and on budget. ;>)

[SunkenCiv]

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