Go back to previous page
Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: Featured Documents
Topic ID: 222
Message ID: 16
#16, RE: Preliminary Report: Operation TRIDENT
Posted by Gryphon on May-02-09 at 01:47 PM
In response to message #15
>>>And here I was thinking they were all named after trains...
>>
>>Not all, no. Some are also named after other steam-related things;
>>there are Steamrunners named Thomas Newcomen and
>>James Watt as well, for instance, and one called Le
>>Napoléon
(after the first steam-powered line-of-battle
>>ship).
>>
>One would have to assume, then, that the Demologos is named
>after an experiment of Hero of Alexandria, who devised what was
>basically the first steam engine to disprove the Aristotelian notion
>of the Prime Mover.

Not directly, at least; she's named for the Demologos, the first steam-powered warship. The original Demologos was a floating battery built (by no less a figure in early steam navigation than Robert Fulton of North River Steamboat fame) to defend New York harbor during the War of 1812, but was completed too late to see action. She was a paddle steamer and not a particularly handy sort of craft - that would have to wait until the invention of the screw propeller, which led to the development of ships like Le Napoléon - but she was first.

I've always seen Heron of Alexandria's invention referred to as an aeolipile, and there's probably a Steamrunner named after that as well.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.