The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria

What it is

This is an English translation of Hero of Alexandria's Pneumatica, made in 1851 by Bennet Woodcroft, a professor of machinery at University College London. The original Greek text describes devices powered by air, water and steam.

This edition is a 19th-century scholarly translation, not Hero's own words in the original Greek, though it follows his text closely.

Why it matters

Woodcroft's translation made Hero's inventions accessible to English-speaking engineers during the Industrial Revolution. Victorians were fascinated by Hero because some of his devices used steam, and they saw him as an ancient forerunner of the steam engine.

This shows how later generations reinterpreted ancient science to fit their own ideas about progress and invention.

Look closer

• Why might Victorian readers have been eager to see Hero as inventing the steam engine?
• What might be lost or changed when an ancient Greek text is translated nearly two thousand years later?
• How does the title page present the book to its original readers?