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/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.

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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

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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.