Book Description

Ever increasing research evidence continues to mount. Having started my research on the connection of the Hydraulis to the roots of the more recent Industrial Revolution at the University of St. Gallen in 1989 over 30 years ago, I continue to identify additional support for it. We do not know whether the beginnings of an Industrial Revolution in Hellenistic Greece would have continued if not cut off by the Roman Empire's conquests. Neither do we know whether the more recent (latent) Industrial Revolution could have risen up again in the 17th-century without Vitruvius or Hero of Alexander's preserved writings. The point of this book is to emphasize with new findings that had the Romans not stopped the growth of science and technology in the Hellenistic Period that it would have likely continued to develop into a full-fledged Industrial Revolution. Secondly, the more recent Industrial Revolution borrowed heavily on the technology and science of the Hellenistic Period. In the true sense of the "Renaissance" 17th-century industrial progress largely picked up the written remnants of Antiquity to be able to continue on after a centuries long caesura.