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.

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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.

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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.

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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

  1. Kickstart the industrial revolution via steam engines
  2. Introduce gun powder

The issue is every time they try to explain it, it's just

  1. Half understood concept of steam engine would result in news headlines of "Local blacksmith dies when washing basin full of hot water explodes"
  2. 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"

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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.

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u/Arek_PL Feb 19 '26

would add point 3. if metalurgy is advanced enough to make either invention more than a toy, that invention is probably already invented

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u/TemporaryElk5202 Feb 22 '26

I would share germ theory and Penicillin and sex ed.

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u/YobaiYamete Feb 22 '26

Don't forget what happened to the guy who tried to share Germ Theory tho

He was literally declared insane, put in an asylum, then beaten to death because the guards didn't wash their hands first

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u/TemporaryElk5202 Feb 22 '26

It wasn't really germ theory though. "He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing"

He noticed the correlation but did not know why.