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Ae-ol′i-pile.

Was invented or first described by Hero, of Alexandria. It

Hero's steam-engine.

was a rotary engine, in which steam issued from the ends of bent arms and by reaction rotated the hollow shaft or sphere to which the arms were attached. Hero's engine revolved in the Serapion about 150 B. C., and many applications for patents in the United States and other countries have been made for the same device within a few years past. Inventors seem loth to give up this simplest form of engine, but it is not probable that it will ever prove a useful or economical one.

The above cut is copied from Hero's “Spiritalia,” edited by Woodcroft, of London. See steamengine.

Ely's Aeolipile, 1867, is adapted for rotating a toy. It is poised with its boiler on a central vertical pivot, and is connected by a band with the shaft on whose platform the toys are displayed.

A more serious attempt at applying the principle of the Aeolipile is Banta's Rotary Steam-Engine, May 28, 1867. The hollow arms rotate in closed cylinders, and their shafts are so connected as to be continuous, the packing of the series being performed at one operation. The steam passes in at the axis of each, and issues at a tangent, driving the wheel by reaction.

Ely's Aeolipile.

It is attempted to obtain the use of the steam in a number of successive chambers, in apparent forgetfulness of the loss by back-pressure. The steam enters at the left, and, issuing from one pair of arms, escapes into the first chamber; from thence it passes to the second wheel, so called, and emerges into the second chamber, and so on. The hubs of the wheels are clutched together, so that their cumu- [18]

Rotary steam-engine.

lative effect is eventually utilized upon the main shaft, on which is the pinion. See reaction steam-engine.

1877.

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