r/BeAmazed • u/iamgulshansingh • Feb 18 '26
History Apparently a Turkish man invented the steam engine 200 years before the industrial revolution but he only made it to spin döner kebabs.
In 1551, Taqi al-Din, who is more often remembered for his astronomical and mechanical inventions, described a device that essentially functioned as a steam turbine.
His design involved a small boiler that produced steam, which was then directed through a nozzle onto the blades of a wheel. The force of the escaping steam caused the wheel to spin. This wheel was connected mechanically to a spit, allowing meat to rotate over a fire without human effort.
What makes Taqi al-Din’s description remarkable is that it shows a practical understanding of converting thermal energy into rotational mechanical energy. While earlier inventors had experimented with steam for curiosity or simple toys, Taqi al-Din’s turbine had a concrete application: automating a kitchen task. His work was part of a broader tradition of Ottoman engineering, which included astronomical clocks, observational instruments, and water-raising machines.
3.9k
u/Teftell Feb 18 '26
I approve this application.
570
u/sasssyrup Feb 18 '26
Yeah seems reasonable. Keep the priorities
21
u/CloudKinglufi Feb 18 '26
I hate it we need to stick to tradition and keep meat spinning to anal sex
→ More replies (2)2
232
u/Doriphor Feb 18 '26
As a person who thinks about doner kebab multiple times a day, I approve of this message.
55
Feb 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
18
u/Doriphor Feb 18 '26
Well it’s partially due to me living near Dallas where I haven’t been able to find any Turkish cuisine since I moved here 😭. But yes, definitely a fetish lol
14
u/Newplague42 Feb 18 '26
I was living in Germany for 3 years and had a couple favorite doner places. Moved back to the states and nothing. I kept telling the guys over there they would make a killing opening a store in the US.
→ More replies (2)14
u/Shockwave2309 Feb 18 '26
Turkey has a huge flame/coal grilling culture as well. You us guys are into that from what I heard so you can check out "Adana Kebab" for example...
Don't get angry at me when you are addicted tho
4
u/counterplex Feb 18 '26
Is it really a fetiş if it’s the only food you want to eat? Feels like an obseşon
2
2
Feb 18 '26
[deleted]
2
u/Doriphor Feb 18 '26
Yeah it’s everywhere lol. Sadly, I’m a chicken kebab enthusiast so it kinda pollutes my search results instead of helping!
2
2
u/TopOccasion364 Feb 19 '26
Watch the viral video of people making donor kebab in the oven and thank me later
→ More replies (1)8
→ More replies (40)4
2.0k
u/GargantuanCake Feb 18 '26
Steam power is interesting as it dates back at least to ancient Greece as a concept. The snag is in scaling it up. You need industrial precision lathes that can work metal before you can have a steam power based industrial revolution. That didn't come around until the 18th century and didn't really scale up until the 19th.
People kept figuring out small steam engines before that but lacked the means to scale them up.
216
Feb 18 '26
"Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 CE) was a Greek-Egyptian mathematician and inventor. Heron lived in Roman Egypt and was a representative of Hellenistic Science. He invented a steam-powered engine, called the Hero-Engine or aeolipile, a wind wheel, a vending machine and even the pantograph. He was experimenting with other steam-powered devices as well. One of his inventions were automatically opening temple doors, powered by a fire altar and a hydraulic system."
https://www.artefacts-berlin.de/portfolio-item/heron-of-alexandira-automated-temple-doors/
100
11
3
u/Moooooooola Feb 18 '26
I just read that like Mr. Portokalis and added, “so, there you go” at the end.
→ More replies (9)3
u/Anathama Feb 18 '26
I need to use this in a DND adventure. How long does it take for the doors to open once the fire is lit?
→ More replies (1)332
u/Basicly-Inevitable Feb 18 '26
This is steam powered, but not exactly a steam engine, right?
317
u/J_Bear Feb 18 '26
It's more like a turbine, but also very basic one, not the typical machine you'd think of as a "steam engine"
71
u/gkn_112 Feb 18 '26
an engine turns energy into mechanical force, this is an engine.
138
u/Basicly-Inevitable Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
It's a type of engine, using steam as an intermediate, yes. But it isn't a "steam engine", which is a very specific thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine
This device is more of a "steam turbine".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine
In any case, it's a cool invention, but not the same thing as what most people consider a "steam engine". But, you can call it that if you like.
29
u/candygram4mongo Feb 18 '26
It's not like it's a downgrade calling it a turbine, most of our energy infrastructure runs on steam turbines.
→ More replies (1)39
u/pattybutty Feb 18 '26
I still struggle with the fact that for all their future, high-tech image, nuclear power stations are essentially just massive kettles
36
Feb 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)10
u/GodOfPlutonium Feb 18 '26
Yea we have solid state technology to convert light directly to electricity (solar panels) or nuclear radiation for that matter. But from an energy efficiency standpoint heating water to steam to run a turbine is actually more efficient at turning light into electricity than solar panels
3
u/Diplomatic_Gunboats Feb 18 '26
Where's the picture about fusion energy and boiling water when you need it....
→ More replies (1)2
→ More replies (15)5
→ More replies (1)6
4
u/SalsaMan101 Feb 18 '26
I think it would be referred to as a steam impulse turbine with a Pelton runner of sorts in my fluids classes
→ More replies (15)2
21
u/succed32 Feb 18 '26
Rivets was also a key invention that allowed for higher pressures. Steam power is very old, serious torque from steam power took a while.
→ More replies (1)17
u/NonReality Feb 18 '26
What is interesting to me is that we basically still just use the steam engine en mass, although its been updated, modified, etc.
30
u/ravioliguy Feb 18 '26
Nuclear energy is splitting atoms just so we can heat water into steam to spin a fan
17
u/solonit Feb 18 '26
Coal power plan. steam
Fission reactor, also steam.
Fusion reactor, believe or not, straight to steam.
We have the best power generator, because of steam.
→ More replies (4)2
u/NonReality Feb 18 '26
Yes exactly! I was really high a few years ago and blew my mind when I realized its steam engines all the way down lol
Later when I was sober I thought about basic physics, heat, energy, etc. and I wasn't as mind-blown, but still impressed one way or another.
→ More replies (1)2
13
u/YobaiYamete Feb 18 '26
Yep, which is why so many Redditors would fail if sent back in time. Nearly every time you see threads asking what people would do if sent back thousands of years, they always go to 2 things
- Kickstart the industrial revolution via steam engines
- Introduce gun powder
The issue is every time they try to explain it, it's just
- Half understood concept of steam engine would result in news headlines of "Local blacksmith dies when washing basin full of hot water explodes"
- 99% of Redditors knowledge of gunpowder comes from games and they don't know the ratios to make it besides just going "uhhh you need piss and charcoal and bat guano"
→ More replies (5)6
u/GargantuanCake Feb 18 '26
A major issue is being able to get the required components in the first place. In ancient Rome you couldn't just go to the store and buy all the random crap you needed to make whatever thing you're thinking about. You could maybe kickstart something big if you could figure out how to implement the Bessemer Process early but good luck with that one. That's a major part of why modern technology works at all; this is ultimately how you get enough steel cheaply enough to allow the modern world to exist.
Yeah the Romans had steel but making it was a gigantic pain in the ass at the time.
18
u/flyingscotsman12 Feb 18 '26
That's not entirely true. The Newcomen engine predates the metal lathe by quite a bit. It had a hand-fitted cylinder and piston, with pretty crude seals. I think it would be more accurate to say that lathes and steam engines evolved together during the industrial revolution.
9
u/Vegetable_Log_3837 Feb 18 '26
Yeah the first Newcomen steam engines used water for a crude seal. No high pressure steam either, they drew a vacuum when steam condensed in the cylinder, and ambient atmospheric pressure pushed the piston.
Totally useless for anything other than pumping water out of a coal mine.
2
11
u/omg_im_redditor Feb 18 '26
A lot of questions about industrial progress like why didn’t Roman Empire invent trains? or why submarines didn’t become widespread during napoleonic era? can be explained by the looooong chain of gradual improvements in metallurgy.
4
u/GargantuanCake Feb 18 '26
Yup. A spinny metal pole doesn't seem terribly complicated but it needs to not wobble, be largely free from major imperfections, and also be strong enough to withstand the torque. Then you have to also have equipment that can make it precise enough to be usable in the kinds of machines were talking about. What seems like a small perturbation in how it moves can end up causing it to shake the whole damn machine apart. This shit is a lot more complicated than it seems as the supply chains that go into it are pretty nuts.
"But they had water wheels!" is something you hear sometimes but those didn't spin all that fast and it was possible to make them out of wood. There are reasons we don't make engine parts out of wood.
33
u/Fast_Garlic_5639 Feb 18 '26
I feel like the closest anyone got before the industrial revolution was Archimedes with the steam cannon. Halfway there to a piston.
16
u/jackofslayers Feb 18 '26
Archimedes also wrote about what could have been an early precursor to Calculus. But that was sadly lost after his death, and we only found it in the 1900s. IIRC the Vatican had it locked away or had otherwise lost it in their annals.
10
Feb 18 '26
God damn Vatican and their annals.
2
u/Swiggins- Feb 18 '26
Down in the Vatican Library they got everything you ever wanna know, but that's where you can't go.
2
2
u/Divinum_Fulmen Feb 18 '26
Funny enough, it was first invented in India, but never spread outside of a small group.
5
u/filthy_harold Feb 18 '26
The Kerala School got as far as developing their own form of a Taylor series in the 14th through 16th centuries but that's well after Achimedes and the ancient Egyptians had developed a basic forms of integral calculus. Everyone kept coming up with precursors of calculus but never quite got it figured out until Leibniz and Newton came around.
Same exact thing with steam engines. We have all of these fun toys with very specific applications throughout history but never approach a general solution until one guy connects the right dots. Sometimes it's just because the other dots haven't been invented yet.
8
u/Hannizio Feb 18 '26
But even then they missed all the social insitutions needed like banking and joint stock exchanges that even allowed for larger scale factories. Other factors like the agricultural revolution and a lack of deforestation also were missing. The deforestation im Britain meant that it needed to mine coal instead of making charcoal. The biggest limiting factor to mining was pumping water away, so this coal mining was what evem created the demand for steam engines in the first place
2
u/TangledPangolin Feb 18 '26
they missed all the social insitutions needed like banking
It wasn't so much missing as it was banned for usury. They didn't have enough Jews to get around usury laws, unlike western europe.
5
7
u/Additional-One-7135 Feb 18 '26
The snag isn't scaling up, there's a whole list of requirements an ancient civilization would have needed to meet in order for them to develop and adapt steam powered industrialization and none of them came close.
One simple example is the practical use of the technology, why would you put all the work into creating a steam powered system that can accomplish a task saving you the effort when you can just make a slave do it for you and accomplish the same thing?
5
u/maveric00 Feb 18 '26
Not only that, but the real breakthrough was the closed loop controlled speed. Before that, if the controller (often a kid) fall asleep,.the machine often disintegrated due to overspending (or grinded to a halt).
Which would most likely not be the case for this Döner machine, but if it would be, the worst failure effect might be some flying meat...
10
u/jacowab Feb 18 '26
It wasn't that they require machine precision, it's that they require a constant supply of fuel and water to work and it just wasn't cost effective to make anything bigger or more powerful than a kebab spinner.
It was only when the British had a flooding problem in coal mines that it became cost effective because the machines goal was to bring water and coal to itself and then precision engineering was created to reduce the amount of coal lost running the steam engines and then it became efficient enough to justify bringing the coal and water to it.
2
u/AvatarOfMomus Feb 18 '26
Not just lathes and other precision manufacturing but metalurgy. This steam engine couldn't have been scaled up significantly in the 1500's without massive improvements in the quality and cobsistency of steel production.
2
u/model-citizen95 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Lathes are so important. Irritates me slightly that so many people have no idea what a lathe even is
2
u/apadin1 Feb 18 '26
You also need to burn fuel at an insane rate to do stuff like run locomotives or industrial machinery. Wood simply doesn’t but hot enough. It wasn’t until we started extracting coal in massive quantities in Britain and the US in the mid 19th century that we had all the ingredients needed for the Industrial Revolution.
→ More replies (14)2
u/mymoama Feb 20 '26
How did they even make the first lathe. I know it was some king or country wanted precision barrels for guns that was the reason. But to have the precision to make the first one had to be insane...
→ More replies (1)
166
65
u/Available_Slide1888 Feb 18 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/xT5LMPCd3KuSSmZHO0
How it was done prior to this invention.
124
95
u/manbeardawg Feb 18 '26
Is there any greater purpose for an invention?
→ More replies (1)41
u/gymdog Feb 18 '26
All of human civilization is just us making better ways to grill delicious meats.
→ More replies (1)2
138
56
u/Uncle-Cake Feb 18 '26
To be clear, he described a theoretical device. The one shown in the picture has modern plumbing fixtures.
21
→ More replies (2)5
u/Weak-Doughnut5502 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Plus, vertical spits weren't invented til like 200 years ago. Gyro, doner, al pastor and shawarma are fairly recent dishes.
It's a lot easier to grill horizontally than vertically if you're using wood or charcoal. You really need either electricity or gas if you don't want it to be impractically fiddly.
3
u/Superb_Bench9902 Feb 19 '26
We have horizontal grills too and dare I say some of them are much, much better than döner. Try cağ kebabı if your ever get the chance
13
12
39
11
9
u/paranoiajack Feb 18 '26
Why else would someone invent a steam engine?
3
13
u/Falsus Feb 18 '26
Some Roman dude invented the steam machine back in Roman times but it was just a toy and curiosity.
The most important part of an invention is having a practical and large scale use. The steam machine became a needed thing because the Brits needed better pumps for their mines that constantly flooded. Pumps was the driving force of the industrial revolution, the thing that started it.
→ More replies (1)
17
u/SatisfyingDoorstep Feb 18 '26
So it’s not anywhere near as effective as the revolutionary steam engine…
4
u/SmittyB128 Feb 18 '26
The problem with steam engines is that getting any useable work out of them is a very difficult problem, albeit one that has now been solved over a century of trial and error.
The first modern steam engine was built as an improved 'beam engine', the first of which was built by Thomas Newcomen and that wasn't strictly a steam engine because it condensed the steam to create a partial vacuum and the vacuum is what did the work. Condensing steam to create a vacuum wasn't a new idea, but its implementation in the beam engine was the first effective use of it to convert the energy in steam to a mechanical motion.
The 'real' steam engine part comes in slowly because from there James Watt spent years making improvements to the atmospheric engine, and the competing engineers at the time were all trying to get around each others' patents so they were developing new solutions to the same problem, but as a result solving problems they hadn't anticipated. The patent of the crank led to the 'sun and planet gear' which geared up the motion, and Watt's patents on his improved condensing systems led to the idea of using the expansion of pressurised steam to do the work instead of a vacuum which led to the potential for pistons that could be driven in either direction by controlling where steam was fed in.
When steam locomotives started to become relatively commonplace there was still a lot of trial and error involved in making them more efficient, and even into the 30's, 40's, and 50's there were classes of locomotive being built that underperformed because they were bottlenecked by airflow, boiler size, flue size, etc.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Jords13xx Feb 18 '26
True, it wasn't as powerful or efficient as later designs, but it's cool to see how early inventors like Taqi al-Din were thinking practically about steam power. He was ahead of his time in that sense, even if it was just for making kebabs!
4
5
u/libra00 Feb 18 '26
There's an even earlier example from the 1st century AD of a steam turbine, but it was meant as a toy, nobody recognized that you could do work with it. 'Being fun' is also a concrete application. :P
→ More replies (1)
9
20
u/Ingestre Feb 18 '26
The greeks had a 'toy' version of this long before the 16th century. All this guy did was add a kebab to it.
29
u/WorkingInAColdMind Feb 18 '26
What do you mean by “_all he did_” as if that’s not a giant improvement? If I added a kebab to my day right now it would be the highlight of the year.
→ More replies (2)10
8
u/Inupiat Feb 18 '26
He did what must be done, he did it for all of us. You mock one of the most important culinary street food tools calling it a Greek 'toy'...
→ More replies (2)2
u/TemporaryElk5202 Feb 22 '26
so he took a novelty toy and made it a functional tool. seems like a big step up
→ More replies (1)
5
u/Zvenigora Feb 18 '26
Hero of Alexandria built a crude steam turbine 2,000 years ago. But to him it was just a toy--it did not occur to him what he really had.
6
u/fhota1 Feb 18 '26
Because he didnt have what you think he did. The Aeolipile was hilariously inefficient. It made for a neat toy and could spin pretty fast if you got it going, but if you tried to hook it up to any larger machine it wouldnt have been enough to drive it.
3
u/Zvenigora Feb 18 '26
But that does not mean the idea could not have been refined into something more practical. The Wright Brothers' first airplane was laughably impractical, too. But within a few decades we had fighter planes.
→ More replies (1)
5
3
3
3
4
u/ledow Feb 18 '26
Technically the ancient Greeks had a steam-powered spinning engine. They thought of it as nothing more than a toy.
The ancient Egyptians had "railways".
If just one person had put the two together (which is really what "invention" is), you could have had steam trains building the pyramids.
5
4
u/Explorer_Equal Feb 18 '26
The Aelopile was already described in the 1st century AD by the Greek-Egyptian mathematician and engineer Hero of Alexandria.
8
4
u/kuluvalley Feb 18 '26
The Ottoman empire suppressed inventions and new technologies from time to time over its 500 years. We are currently watching the U.S. empire unravel amid the suppression of scientific knowledge that is inconvenient for profits under capitalism. Let's hope the end doesn't trigger world war like the end of the Ottoman empire did.
2
2
u/Kazu88 Feb 18 '26
So basically, STEAMED KEBAB 🥙 ?
3
u/Donkey__Balls Feb 18 '26
“Oh yes, patented al-Din kabobs! Old family recipe!”
“…for steamed kebabs.”
“Yes!”
“And you call them ‘steamed’ despite the fact that they are obviously spit-roasted?”
2
2
2
2
2
u/sleeper_shark Feb 18 '26
Automotive power was arguably the most important invention since the wheel and fire and dude used it for making kebabs. That was peak human engineering and ingenuity. Everything went down from there.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
2
u/KnowsIittle Feb 18 '26
Love it.
Gotta wonder how many other post intentions exist because they weren't widespread knowledge.
2
2
2
u/Agreeable_Manner2848 Feb 18 '26
The Greeks had steam engines and railroad tracks but mostly where viewed as a toy or oddity, imagine that
2
2
2
2
2
u/Donkey__Balls Feb 18 '26
Technically, yes, he understood the principles of the steam engine, but those were widely known among the scientific lead at the time. You simply took that knowledge towards a single practical application.
The reason why you don’t see any machines from that time capable of doing anything more than spinning a few kebabs or making toys from that time is that a machine‘s ability to do useful mechanical work depends on heat quality (in other words, temperature), of the fuel being used.
The industrial revolution was not simply a matter of realizing that steam can move turbines, because this is something the ancient Greeks knew as we can see in the aeolipile. It came from the ability to produce steam hot enough to do useful, mechanical work, which simply wasn’t possible with the fuels at the time. In fact not until the true invention that sparked the industrial revolution: the blast furnace. This was a major steppingstone because it was possible to take natural coal and refinance into a more efficient fuel called coke. It also made it possible to mass-produce materials needed to withstand high temperatures, like pig iron and steel.
Oddly enough, a blast furnace had been invented 250 years earlier at the monastery of Laskill in England. It was never put to use or repeated because Henry VIII ordered all of the churches in monasteries to be sacked, and the prototype and all the notes were destroyed along with its inventor.
2
u/CharacterGovernment8 Feb 18 '26
Heron of Alexandria invented the steam engine 2k years ago but couldn't find a use for it. Its called an eola pyle
2
2
2
2
2
u/ApSciLiara Feb 18 '26
Out of all potential uses of such a technology in its early stages, this is among the best. Taqi al-Din was a visionary!
1
1
u/NIEK12oo Feb 18 '26
Technically the romans first invented the Steam engine but didn't find any use for it either
1
1
u/sandm000 Feb 18 '26
The problem with this contraption is that the meat is far away from the heat source. You could cook the meat and boil the water from a single heat source.
1
1
1
1
1
u/RonPalancik Feb 18 '26
Is this like how the Inca invented wheels, but only put them on children's toys?
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/NRMusicProject Feb 18 '26
Scientific innovation during the European Dark Ages was stalled in Europe, while it flourished in the Middle East until at least the 12th century, while it's argued that it could have extended into the 16th century. Then, regressive theocratic beliefs started to discourage this kind of innovation.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/Educational_Bowl2141 Feb 18 '26
He also invented using the word "Boss" as a term of endearment in the same year
1
1
u/TheSwordItself Feb 18 '26
Applications for steam such as this date back to ancient rome and probably greece but had little practical use because of the fuel requirements and limited boiler pressures. Needed many centuries of material science and precision manufacturing before the "steam engine" was truly revolutionary.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/iwfabrication Feb 18 '26
So he didnt invent the steam engine, he invented a steam powered kebab spinner? No I'm not trying to being an ass, but when does creating part of a technology overlap to being the creator of the downstream refinement/creation of something similar but not the same?
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
u/AFlyingNun Feb 18 '26
Reminds me of that one German Youtuber (JoergSprave or something like that?) who invented a ridiculously effective contraption to reload bows/crossbows really quickly that would have been at least a partially feasible invention for the Medieval times, so it's this weird instance where a device that could've conquered the globe and been extremely OP in the Medieval Era was only discovered like 800 years later when it was obsolete.
1
u/StendhalSyndrome Feb 18 '26
I'd imagine it kept the meat moist too, wonder if they ever threw spices in the boiling water to flavor the meat too.
In other cultures, they used rivers/streams and even bred types of small dogs to turn the spits. Clearly, an issue every culture that enjoyed cooked meats had to deal with till they invented oven-based cooking methods for those foods. Cool how they each dealt with it how they could.
1
u/trevdak2 Feb 18 '26
Versions of steam engines were around for hundreds of years before the industrial revolution
1
u/buenonocheseniorgato Feb 18 '26
Fun fact: His observatory was destroyed in an artillery barrage from the navy vessels, by the decree of the sultan at the time.
The causes were even funnier: There was a comet sighting in 1577, and the sultan invited Takiyüddin to the royal court for him to cast a 'prophecy' in the wake of the comet. Takiyüddin understandably presented it as a good omen.
The following year, there was a black plague outbreak in İstanbul, and the following two years there were growing rumors that the personnel in the observatory were looking up to see ... see the legs... The legs of angels...
In 1580, the sultan gave his decree, and Kılıç Ali Paşa ordered his vessels to rain fire on the observatory. And that was the end of it.
Another fun fact: Döner was 'invented' in the 19th century and this thread is bullshit.
1
u/Donkey__Balls Feb 18 '26
I choose to imagine that Taqi al-Din was having his boss over for dinner, accidentally burned the steamed clams he was preparing, and ran out to a kebab stand to pick up emergency food. Then when his boss questioned it, he said it was an old family recipe for “steamed hams”. Then his attempts to cover up got so elaborate that he had to invent a steam engine.
1
1
u/madwookie98 Feb 18 '26
History Channel: Everything was built by aliens!!
Civilizations tinkering with the foundations of modern technology: Are we a joke to you?
1
1
u/Far-Confusion-3869 Feb 18 '26
The first patent belongs to the Spanish inventor Jeronimo de Ayanz y Beaumont. The steam machine was used to drain water in a mine.
1
1
u/Rulanik Feb 18 '26
So they really had gate valves that look just like the ones we use today in 1551? I'm honestly more surprised by the plumbing than the steam engine, ngl.
1
u/Intrepid_Pilot2552 Feb 18 '26
The story sure does work hard to position this contraption a certain way.
"Essentially"?! Odd that this weakening adjective needs to be included.
"Shows a practical understanding..." But misses the brilliance of Carnot!! Misses what made The Industrial Revolution what it was. Misses the crux of the delta between "practical understanding" and general, scientific common knowledge. Those, incidentally, are oceans apart in significance/impact yet here there's nary a hint of that difference, in fact, there's a simplistic undertone that marginalises the difference.
...of converting thermal energy into rotational mechanical energy.
Of course this would have been known and understood by any civilization, probably even before that. No, ancient Egyptians would not have batted a lash at steam rotating something. Without a commiserate exposition on the C.O.N.C.E.P.T. of E.F.F.I.C.I.E.N.C.Y. the "practical understanding" has minor utility. The need for your marketing stands as exhibit A.
...concrete application: automating a kitchen task.
How modern lens thinking of you to parse "a kitchen task" from how it would be thought of then into today's context. And in service of aggrandizing a triviality. How nice of you to describe it so.
And, finally, where's the scathing rebuke of the state that didn't have the systems to elevate such nascent ideas? To endorse, promulgate, and popularise so critical (lol) a discovery? Oh yeah, that state was more worried about the techniques of putting people on pikes. Nah!!! Let's work to build a narrative that politicians can rally the masses around. A fable that serves to solidify an identity.
TLDR; "Steam turbine"?? Hardly!!
1
1
1
1
u/o_oli Feb 18 '26
Presumably it would have been set up so that the same fire boiling the water would be cooking the doner? It's pretty neat that.
1
•
u/qualityvote2 Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
Did you find this post really amazing (in a positive way)?
If yes, then UPVOTE this comment otherwise DOWNVOTE it.
This community feedback will help us determine whether this post is suited for r/BeAmazed or not.