When an inventor has a unit of measurement named after him, it's clear his work had more than a small impact on scientific and industrial progress. So it was for James Watt, whose Watt engine is often ...

But sometimes, his inventions took on a more playful bent. Not for nothing was the classical Arabic term for mechanics and engineering “Ilm al-Hiyal” (the “science of tricks”); in a 1551 treatise by ...

Heron, the great inventor of Alexandria, described in detail what is thought to be the first working steam engine. He called it an aeolipile, or "wind ball". His design was a sealed caldron of water ...