I'm finally at the next obsession. It has all the elements of a good one: Excitement, danger, strong odours and rending human limbs. It has for me also, that extra twist of scientists bedecked in top hats toiling over Erlenmeyer flasks and steaming coils of copper tubing. And of course, they then attempted to ride these things.
The basic idea of hot gas escaping through an opening is as old as boiling water. The aeolipile is the first purpose made device to use hot gasses to propel something. Invented by Hero of Alexandria, (sometimes called Heron) a Greek scholar living in the first century AD. The motor was no more than a delightful toy for his and his colleague's amusement. An amazingly simple little gizmo it consists of a suspended metal ball with 2 tubes on either side to the axis. When filled with water and heated from below the escaping steam jets whizz the thing around and around.
Hero was a cool inventor. Among his other ideas were a wind wheel that powered an organ and the first coin op vending machine. It dispensed holy water. Damn. You have to admit, he had a sense of humour.
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