Aeolipile

The Aeolipile, also called Äolsball or Heronsball, is invented by Heron of Alexandria machine that demonstrates the expansive force of steam and the reaction principle.

The Aeolipile situated in the broader sense, the first steam engine represents the invention had no practical value in the ancient world; it is the first known and documented heat engine of history, even if it is not understood as such and used, but apparently regarded only as a curiosity. Only one and a half millennia later joined France and England the steam engine to light.

The machine is a partially water-filled vessel in which a down -reaching under the water on both sides open tube is inserted airtight. The pressure of the air in the vessel is greater than the outside, the water in the tube is raised and jumps as a water jet from the upper mouth. To make the inner pressure is greater than say the one can either compress the air in the interior dilute by blowing air into the closable by a valve tube with the mouth or by means of the compression pump, and the outside air by subjecting the Heronsball the bell of the air pump brings. In most cases a water-filled metal ball is rotatably mounted on an axle. There are two nozzles, each pointing to the direction of rotation on the ball. Ignited to fire below the ball so is the water vapor exiting the ball into a rotational movement.

A Heronsball simplest form is the spray bottle, closing airtight by their double pierced cork two glass tubes are plugged in, the bent one reaching almost to the bottom of the bottle up and moved out into a fine point, during which opens other just below the cork; blowing in the latter, the water jumps in fine jet of that peak.

The so-called siphon for effervescent drinks is a Heronsball whose reaching almost to the bottom of the vessel and laterally at the top is bent over tube is closed by a tap; you open the valve, the liquid is forced out by the pressure of from their evolving carbonic acid with violence out of the tube.

The surge tank of the fire engines from the 19th century is nothing more than a big Heronsball, pressed in water in the means of two alternately acting pressure pump and thereby trapped inside the air chamber air is compressed; you then open the tap of the riser, thus driving the internal air by virtue of their increased pressure, the water in continuous powerful jet out.

Heronsbrunnen is called a type of Heronsballs, in which the air is compressed by the pressure of a water column.