Proof: The Science of Booze

by Adam Rogers

It was also home to a giant statue of the god Serapis positioned so that, on a certain day of the year, a beam of light would land right on his lips as though he were getting a kiss from the sun. The temple also had a mechanical “sunrise,” driven by magnets. Alexandrians loved these kinds of sophisticated automata, using them in temples and parades as both common decorations and to conceal and perpetuate religious mysteries. A man named Hero was the best-known maker of the devices. His clockwork designs, driven by heat, pressure, gravity, and magnets, included temple doors that opened only when a fire was lit in front of them, a holy water fountain that flowed when a supplicant dropped a coin into it, an orrery that moved by itself, a trumpet-playing robot, mechanical birds that really sang, and a theater where everything—sets, actors, curtains, and special effects—was automated. Hero also invented a device called an aeolipile, two copper tubes leading up from a sealed container and into a freely rotating sphere. The sphere had outlets on two sides; boil water in the lower container and steam would shoot out of the outlets, making the sphere spin. The aeolipile was, before anyone knew what to do with such a thing, a steam engine.