Modern mankind tends to think of itself as pretty sophisticated. We are truly the masters of our environment, and our sophistication and control over the world around is unsurpassed in human history.
We have conquered the skies and the seas. We have spread to the furthest corners of our natural environment, and we have made our first tentative steps into a wider cosmos.
Much of this seems to have come with extraordinary rapidity. The advances made in the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution have catapulted ourselves into the modern world the blink of an eye. Humans have changed the world, and we have done so suddenly, comprehensively, and irreversibly.
At least, that is generally true. However some of the inventions which we see as tools of the modern world are much older than you would think, and some of the credit must in fact go to civilizations who have existed long before the modern world.
The ancient Greeks, for example, can claim credit for the creation of democracy, that most transformative of social constructs. This idea, the defining concept behind the progressive modern world, is in fact thousands of years old.
And in fact it would seem that the Greeks didn’t stop there. Many of the things we associate with modern life were in fact originally Greek ideas.
Here are five more “modern” inventions that they thought up two millennia ago.
1. The Odometer
Of course, the ancient Greeks didn’t invent the automobile. But the odometer, that useful tool which exists in every modern car and which allows the owner to track its mileage, both over its lifetime and for specific distances, was first used in ancient Greece.
We are still hazy as to its first inventor. Some historians attribute it to Archimedes, some to Heron of Alexandria. But we do know that some time around the 3rd century BC in the late Hellenistic period the Greeks were using odometers to measure the distance between points along their roads.
This allowed for the introduction of “milestones” demarking distance, an idea which was seized on by the later Romans in their famous road network. The use of the odometer allowed for better network planning, more efficient trade routes, and a revolution in road building.
2. The Shower
Many would see regular bathing as a modern concept, holding on to ideas about smelly medieval peasants with faint distaste. Showering as a concept would seem more recent still, an offshoot of personal cleanliness made necessary by a combination of the general shift from outdoor to indoor life, combined with the time pressures of a modern working week.
But once again the Greeks got there first. A scene of female athletes showering together can be found on an ancient Greek vase from Athens; it would seem the Greeks also invented titillation.
We have even discovered the remains of an entire shower complex in the Greek city of Pergamum, in modern day Turkey. The shower rooms were part of a larger gymnasium and were clearly well used: nobody wants to do to the gym if you can’t have a shower straight afterwards.
3. The Alarm Clock
We have the Greeks to thank for that most hated device of modern life, too. The alarm clock, and the cruel reality check it brings every morning, has apparently been a thing since the 3rd century BC.
Specifically it was the late Hellenistic inventor Ctesibius who is credited with its creation. His extensive adjustments to his clepsydras (a clock which allowed water to escape at a known and steady rate, allowing the time to be told by the level of the remaining water) included a face with a dial pointing to the elapsed time, and “alarm systems” which dropped pebbles onto a gong when the water level reached a certain point.
As a result these alarms could be set the night before, allowing the user to be alerted when it was time to get up again by an intrusive clanging. Thanks, Ctesibius.
4. The Vending Machine
The vending machine can surely not be that old, right? That mainstay of offices and life line for stressed office workers in need of a sugar fix would seem entirely out of place, not to mention unworkable, in the ancient world.
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But the first vending machine does seem to have existed back in the ancient Greek period. As described once again by Heron of Alexandria, it was used to dispense measurements of holy water.
The mechanism was quite simple. When a coin was inserted into the machine it fell on a pressure plate, which sank and tilted under the weight and opened a channel. Water then flowed out to be collected by the user, until the pressure plate had tilted so much that the coin slipped off into the innards of the machine, resetting it.
5. Automatic Doors
Surely not, right? But it would seem that automatic doors also come from Greek ingenuity, and this time it was definitely Heron of Alexandria who can be said to have invented them.
His schematics and designs were for the doors to a temple, and they were intended not as a device of convenience as in the modern day, but rather as a way to move doors which would otherwise be too heavy for humans to open. His approach was to use steam power.
Hidden fires would create pressurized steam which would force the doors open or closed, dependent on which fire was being fed. The doors would appear to open magically, and the illusion of unearthly power this created was doubtless a big selling point to the temple priests as well.
Top Image: Heron of Alexandria, poster child for coming up with things thousands of years before they are needed. That’s probably a lunar lander behind him or something. Source: Unknown Author / Public Domain.
By Joseph Green
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