fl. c. 62 CE · engineer · mathematician
Hero of Alexandria
Ἥρων
In Alexandria: c. 62 CE
Wrote on pneumatics, automata, surveying, war machines and measurement. His Dioptra uses a lunar eclipse to find the distance between Alexandria and Rome; the eclipse has been identified with that of 13 March 62 CE, which dates him. His Pneumatics describes a steam-driven spinning ball and temple doors that open by fire.
Their life and work
His surviving books include the Pneumatics, the Automata, the Metrica, the Dioptra, the Belopoeica on catapults, and the Mechanics, which is whole only in Arabic. They are handbooks: he collects and improves devices, many from Ctesibius, and gives measurements and rules, such as the formula for a triangle's area from its sides that bears his name (Metrica 1.8). The spinning ball driven by steam was a demonstration of what steam can do, not an engine put to work; nothing suggests it was used for labour.
Our device: Their emblem is a spinning ball on a steam kettle. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Hero of Alexandria, On Automaton-Making · c. 60 CE · Survives whole
- Hero of Alexandria, Pneumatica · c. 60 CE · Survives whole
In the show
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Sources (5)
- Hero, Dioptra 35
- S. Cuomo, Ancient Mathematics (London: Routledge, 2001)
- Hero, Metrica 1.8
- Hero, Pneumatics 2.11
- T. L. Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921) (opens in a new tab)