 Sigil Developer Tracker
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The dev tracker is no longer actively scanning, however you may continue to browse the archives collected over the past several years here.
Please remember that these developer posts
are taken out of context, so beware of any silky venom being spewed forth.
Color Key:
Green - Sigil Games Online Employee
Pink - Sony Online Entertainment
Gray - Microsoft Game Studios Employee
Orange - Community Member
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mimirswell
Heron's steam engine ended in obscurity because of the method he chose to employ them. A great number of his devices were used in temples as methods to decieve the visitor into believing that automated events were the work of the divine and not man.
Temple doors that opened automatically, an omen device that made birds appear (in divination, the direction the bird flies answered yes/no questions), and even a coin operated vending machine for holy water. Had he sought a more practical use of his talents, his aeolipile might have changed the landscape. Still, the amount of knowledge possessed by the greeks is phenomenal and the subsequent loss of much of it is all the more staggering.
I absolutely agree that Heron was at worst employed as a charlatan, or at best a devout man who loved gadgets. I've always admired his single-mindedness, creating self-propelled puppets (pulley driven robots?  ), the coin operated holy water dispenser, and anything that made entertainment/religious ritual more of a spectacle.
As a member of the entertainment industry, I can hardly fault him for choosing a bad career.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Havelock
I can't begin to imagine the efforts that went into building the Helepolis used at Rhodes - Demetrius must have been (or had in his employ) a staggeringly brilliant engineer. To keep something that heavy and that tall stable, even when it was sheathed in iron and moving around, is really impressive. The 1000-man battering ram and the first helepolis are cool, but the giant pyramid on casters that eventually became (at least in part) the Colossus at Rhodes has to be one of the highest points in the history of engineering.
It was a massive undertaking. He practically bankrupted his corner of the Hellenistic world to get the bronze to build the Helepolis.
Demetrios was a master gadgeteer. He built a number of exotic war-machines including repeating ballistae (like a giant crossbow) and a multi-arm onager (swing-arm catapult). With most of the innovations, he had a direct hand in the design. His ideas on sapping (undermining large walls) would not be topped throughout the entire era of walled cities.
As for the Colossus, that's why I'm so fascinated by this story. It's the ultimate in "swords to plowshares." It's a shame that the man who built the Colossus had a nervous breakdown, though. 
To this day, I marvel at the fact that we came very close to industrialization in the Hellenistic period. Sciences were at their peak, economies were flourishing across Alexander's former kingdom, and in Alexandria (one of the cultural centers of the Med) steam power was invented by Heron, a brilliant engineer... and then cast away as a toy.
That ONE invention, if the right person had looked at it...
Rome would have been a very, very different place a hundred years later.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shayalyn
Wow, a link within the original link finally answers the age-old question Noah posed in Bill Cosby's old comedy routine:
God: Noah! I want you to build me an ark.
Noah: Riiiight. What's an ark?
God: It's a boat. And you shall make it 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.
Noah: Riiiigggght. What's a cubit?
God: Lets see a cubit...I used to know what a cubit was...Well don't worry about that Noah.
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