[upupandup]

Doesn't make sense, Roman engineers discovered steam power but it was cheaper and easier to use slaves. It's more of a problem of demand. Why would I need a loud clunky steam engine when I can hire a dozen slaves who will not only row my boat but clean, and perform whole bunch of auxillary tasks?

[notahacker]

Roman "steam power" worked nothing like a condensing engine and was nowhere near adequate to power a ship.

Ironically, rowing vessels was one of the tasks Romans preferred to use freemen where possible. And even the best galleys with the most motivated, coordinated and healthy rowers were vastly inferior in speed and endurance to steamships (or indeed sail powered tea-clippers). But you needed a lot of intermediate inventions to get from a lightweight device that rotated by blowing out hot air to a steamship that could cross oceans. Or from a trireme to a tea clipper that would travel faster relying on just the wind, for that matter

[ghaff]

I wonder what the Romans could have done with designs for "modern" sailing ships? Though I also wonder how relatively useful they would be as warships absent cannons.

[jononor]

Robotics has the same problem today: Human labor is cheaper and more flexible. In the future we might see this as having been as stupid and inhumane as we today see slavery in the Roman times.

[baja_blast]

> Roman engineers discovered steam power but it was cheaper and easier to use slaves.

I think the key reason why is not because the Roman Greeks did some type of cost benefit analysis, it's the fact that the idea of applying automation of labor using the Aeolipile(which was regarded as a novelty rather than a tool) never even occurred to them. The concept of industrial production did not really exist yet, even when there was some forms of it in existence, the very idea of applying it to everything is not something anyone even thought about.