"Holy Cow", Holy Water, Heron Invents the Vending Machine

 

Reposted from 2011:

When my algebra students were first introduced to Heron's (or Hero's) formula, I always told them a brief historical note about his invention of a steam-jet propelled automaton (called the æolipyle) that he created during the first century of the common era. It was just a novelty experiment and didn't do a lot, but let's put it in some historical perspective. Once Hero's aeolipyle was forgotten, we don't know of any other person inventing a steam engine until the Ottoman inventor and all-around genius Taqi al-Din in 1577 - and he was considered the greatest scientist on Earth by his contemporaries.

Over Christmas I received the little "Book of Secrets" as a gift and learned as I leafed through it that he was also the inventor of the first known vending machine. Apparently in ancient times folks were required to pay for holy water to wash themselves before entering the temples, but it seems they didn't always cough up the cash..... so... Heron invented a device to help keep them honest.

http://kotaku.com

Here is how the device operated as provided on the Smithsonian Museum web page:

How it works: A person puts a coin in a slot at the top of a box. The coin hits a metal lever, like a balance beam. On the other end of the beam is a string tied to a plug that stops a container of liquid. As the beam tilts from the weight of the coin, the string lifts the plug and dispenses the desired drink until the coin drops off the beam.
Proof of complexity: Early modern vending machines actually used a similar system, before electrical machines took over.

According to Erik Davis's book "Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism In The Age Of Information", Heron actually designed robots to perform entire plays. They would move about the stage, enter and exit on their own, and

Another staged a Dionysian mystery rite with Apollonian precision: Flames lept, thunder crashed, and miniature female Bacchantes whirled madly around the wine god on a pulley-driven turntable.

And just so you fully experienced the drama, it was complete with sound effects. Here is the machine he used to produce the effect of thunder. the Yeah, I would be lined up to see that show myself.

mlahanas

I much more recently found a site with a schematic of Heron's water fountain.  The two chambers B and C must be airtight, thus allowing the lower dish to siphon up to the upper.  More technical matter can be found here.  

He also invented a wind wheel operating a pipe organ—the first recorded instance of wind powering a machine .

"More illustrated technical treatises by Heron survived than those of any other writer from the ancient world. His Pneumatica, which described a series of apparatus for natural magic or parlor magic, was definitely the most widely read of his works during the Middle Ages; more than 100 manuscripts of it survived. However, the earliest surviving copy of this text, Codex Gr. 516 in the Bibliotheca Marciana in Venice, dates from about the thirteenth century— a later date than one might expect. Conversely, the complete text of Heron's other widely known work, the Mechanica, survived through only a single Arabic translation made by Kosta ben Luka between 862 and 866 CE. This manuscript is preserved in Leiden University Library."  *HistoryofInformation.com