There are few houses in London that do not have a boiler, and particularly during bitter winters and the crispness of early spring, many people need their boiler to be reliable in order to keep warm.
The key to this is expert installation, regular inspection, preventative maintenance and the precise manufacture of a technology that has evolved in great leaps and bounds over the several centuries since the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was only made possible thanks to the boiler, and technologies that derived from it such as the steam turbine and the steam engine, powered by coal and later by natural gas once it became easier to acquire and transport.
However, the origins of the boiler are several thousand years older than this, with an origin that dates back to the earliest civilisations, as well as a dispute as to its exact invention and the process from an ancient toy to the backbone of modern industry.
The Two Jets Of History
Before the development of the boiler as a practical device, open flames were used for heating water for cooking or bathing, with the obvious practical issues caused by keeping an open flame running.
However, even early in history the potential for heating water and using controlled steam to transfer heat energy from one place to another was being actively explored, and the first person who is cited in the long, winding history of boilers is Ctesibius of Alexandria (285 BC – 222 BC).
Alexandria, now Egypt’s second-largest city, was at the time under the occupation of the Ptolemaic Empire, an Ancient Greek state ruled by the descendants of a friend of Alexander the Great.
Because of this, for nearly three centuries Alexandria was a cultural, economic and academic centre of Ancient Greece, and by extension the ancient world by association.
Ctesibius was a key figure in this, albeit one whose achievements have only been preserved by succeeding architects and engineers who cited and chronicled his history.
He was believed to be the first head of the Museum of Alexandria, a collection of educational institutes that includes the infamous Library of Alexandria, working as a barber before pursuing a passion for exploring the physics of water.
Whilst his most famous achievements are the hydraulis water organ and the water clock, considered up until the 17th century the most accurate clock ever made, he has also been credited for developing the very first theories on compressed air.
This led to the invention of the aeolipile, named after the Greek god of wind, although its exact inventor is the subject of historical dispute, due to the existence of two accounts of its existence.
None of Ctesibius’ own writings have survived, and by some accounts, he died in abject poverty.
Whilst both cite Ctesibius as the source of the theories, one existed at least a century before the other.
The first account of the aeolipile, the first boiler ever made, comes from Vitruvius, the Roman engineer best known for De Architectura, the first book on architecture ever made.
He describes it as a hollow vessel made of brazed copper which, when heated, emits what is described as a “violent wind”, something that can to modern observers be clearly interpreted to be steam.
There is a lot that is unknown about this, not least whether such a device was ever made or whether this was the expression of a principle, describing a potential experiment based on the theory of Ctesibius and not a machine made either by Vitruvius or anyone else.
However, a much more elaborate, vivid and constructive description comes from Pneumatica, a collection of writings by the engineer of antiquity Heron of Alexandria.
Heron, sometimes written as Hero, was one of the last ancient engineers, sometimes considered the greatest inventor and experimenter of this period and was one of the last Ancient Greek engineers after Alexandria had been conquered by the Romans.
His version of the aeolipile, sometimes known as Heron’s Engine, is a much more elaborate boiler system where water is poured into a brazen copper container which has pipes that feed into a spherical vessel.
This sphere has pipes bent on opposite sides, and when the water is heated, the steam gases shoot out of the pipes on the sphere, causing it to spin at quite a rapid rate.
Whilst no original version has survived and potentially may have never existed, working models and replicas have been made, and the principle is remarkably prescient, effectively being a conceptual steam boiler thousands of years before the concept was practically manufactured.
At the time, however, Heron merely saw it as a temple wonder, a gadget or party trick reminiscent more of a Newton’s Cradle or a fidget spinner than the world-changing technology it most closely resembles.
Vitruvius saw a little more in the concept, believing it could be used as an educational tool to explain how the weather functions. This did turn out to be the case, with several classrooms and science fairs creating rudimentary versions of the invention to show the mechanics of steam power.
A common myth is that the system was used in another machine that could actually cause water to collect and pull a rope down, opening the doors of a temple. These are two separate inventions and as far as historical knowledge goes, Heron’s engine never proved capable of any work.
What it did do, however, was demonstrate the concept of boilers and steam power, and over 1600 years after Heron, the French engineer Denis Papin developed the steam digester, an early pressure cooker with a safety valve which formed the basis of the boiler and the steam engine.
After another century of active development, the boiler was ready to not only change how we heat our homes but also how we move, how industry functions and set in motion so many of the developments that shape the modern world.
It is surreal to consider that the modern combination boiler can trace its origins back to ancient antiquity, and perhaps it makes the continued development of boilers even more extraordinary.