Heron of Alexandria was an ancient engineer way before his time. His creations astonish me, that someone from the first century C.E. could create these works of technology. Heron of Alexandria was credited to making the first steam engine! Shown below, steam shoots out two ends of a circle, creating torque with just steam.
As the story goes, he showed this engine to the king, who replied to the effect of, “This would make a nice toy, but doesn’t really serve any practical value. We have all these slaves to do this work for us, why would we need a machine to?” Just imagine where we’d be today if steam power would have perfected in 70 C.E. as opposed to the 1800s C.E.!
Another invention of Heron’s was the first “vending machine”, where dropping a coin would lift a weight, dispensing a certain amount of holy water. Additionally, here is a mechanism of his where lighting a fire on an altar would open a temple door. Imagine the shock and wonder to a layperson that sees a door open because of a lit fire. Clearly, it was the work of the gods! Arthur Clarke’s law that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” certainly comes to mind.