Steam Engine Invention Delay

Related:The origins of the steam engine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38463195 - Nov 2023 (44 comments)

Thanks! Macroexpanded:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32106467 - July 2022 (304 comments)

Same for steam engines: it turns out Watt spent most of his effort on getting components manufactured and having the associated manufacturing processes developed. The basic idea of the steam engine had been around for a long time prior. You can ask the same question of Romans and electricity. They had all the necessary tech: glass for insulators, acid for batteries, metallurgy for wire etc.

Another important factor was interest. It is noteworthy that fast development in the steam engine came after slavery started being outlawed everywhere. Before, moving machines powered by wind or steam were just an intellectual amusement (that was actually known since antiquity).

Fun fact: the early steam engines were abysmally inefficient, and were only adopted because the main use case was pumping water out of coal mines, so there was a large supply of fuel easily on hand.

Anton Howes, co-author of this piece, earlier wrote"Age of Invention: Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part I" at https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-..."Age of Invention: Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part II" at <a href="https://www.ageofinvention.x

Related:Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32106467 - Jul 2022 (308 comments)Why wasn’t the steam engine invented earlier? Part III - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33200864 - Oct 2022 (151 comments)

There were steam engines in antiquity:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeolipileSome argue that inventions like these at the time weren't improved upon because (slave) labour was cheap. But you are right it could be because other technology at the time didn't exist.

Just came here to link this.Tldr: There was no use case for low power steam engines in the ancient/roman world. There was no know-how on building high pressure vessels that would allow higher power steam engines (this know-how was gained by work on cannons).The key use case for the first practical engines was draining coal mines, in the ancient/roman world this was not a big problem because most of their energy was from wood not coal.

You need machine tools capable of tight tolerances and quality metals/alloys to make useable (for work) steam engines. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Abbasid, Persians, Europeans, etc all lacked these, thus no usable steam engines in antiquity/Middle Ages. Usable engines followed consistent quality metal production and machine tools pretty closely, it’s not like older people were just stupid, they didn’t have the technology necessary to create steam engines capable of real work.It’s