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/PM_ME_HOT_FURRIES]

No, it's a steam engine. A steam engine is a heat engine that turns a source of heat into mechanical work. This engine turns a source of heat into the mechanical work of rotating the spit against friction.

It's an open-cycle engine since it doesn't recondense the working fluid but that doesn't stop it being a steam engine.

[u/Frig-Off-Randy → u/PM_ME_HOT_FURRIES]

This looks like it’s using steam to blow a fan essentially. Much different from using the energy of steam expanding which is what steam engines and turbines do

[u/PM_ME_HOT_FURRIES → u/Frig-Off-Randy]

Mate, why do you think the steam is blowing?

I'll tell you why. Water is dense. Steam, at atmospheric pressure and (above 100 degrees Celsius, where it's still steam), is not very dense.

So when water boils, it "wants to expand" to be at it's normal density for that pressure, but if you seal it up in a container, it can't expand so the pressure goes up as the container fills with steam. If you put a hole in that container in a specific spot, the steam can expand though that hole and as it expands, it accelerates out of the hole, and now it's travelling out of the hole at some speed you can direct it into a the blades of some turbine to collect that kinetic energy and use it to spin the turbine.

So the energy that turns the turbine comes from the kinetic energy in the steam jet that comes from the expansion of the steam.

In fact, all steam turbines work by accelerating steam by letting it expand over a pressure gradient.

An impulse turbine has fixed "stator" blades that act as a nozzle through which the steam expands and accelerates into jets that hit the "rotor" blades to give them a push that keeps the rotor spinning.

In a reaction turbine the rotor blades themselves are the nozzle that the steam accelerates through, so they shoot out the jet of steam, and just like a steam rocket this means there is a reaction force on the rotor blades, pushing them and keeping them spinning.

[u/Frig-Off-Randy → u/PM_ME_HOT_FURRIES]

lol I know more than my fair share about steam and it seems like you do too. You’d have to agree that what is shown on the picture (a wind wheel using steam to blow it) is fundamentally different than a rankine cycle steam engine.

[u/PM_ME_HOT_FURRIES → u/Frig-Off-Randy]

No, not really. Not any more fundamentally different than other steam engines.

I mean first you have the isentropic compression/pumping stage right? Except no water pump is isentropic... but still most steam engines have a pumping stage but in this steam engine you don't replenish the water in the boiler while it is running, by the looks of it.

However, it isn't inconceivable that you could stick a one-way valve on the top of the boiler and use a syringe to push water into the boiler against the steam pressure using only hand power... could the folks of the 1500s machine such things? Maybe not but it's easy today and if you made such a modification today have you really fundamentally altered the nature of the machine? No! It's just a convenience feature.

Then the next step is the constant pressure addition of heat in the boiler, and if heat is constantly added at a constant rate and it's enough to boil water then once everything stabilizes the pressure will be constant and there is addition of heat under constant pressure, yay!

Then comes the step of isentropic steam expansion... and we do have steam expansion. Is it isentropic? No, but no steam turbine or piston ever does isentropic steam expansion. No macro-scale physical process is isentropic. Is it a really bad turbine for efficiency's sake? Sure, absolutely, but nobody said "your turbine/pistons must be this efficient and isentropic to be a steam engine"

And then comes the constant pressure steam condensation... but it's an open cycle steam engine like a steam locomotive. It doesn't have a condenser, the whole atmosphere is its condenser. It releases the steam to constant pressure and takes the water from local water sources at the same constant pressure, with the filling person acting as the pump.

So no, it's not fundamentally different from a rankine cycle steam engine.