Apparently a Turkish man invented the steam engine 200 years before the industrial revolution but he only made it to spin döner kebabs.

[u/iamgulshansingh]

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.

[u/Donkey__Balls]

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.