The start of analytical thought or comforting repetitive ritual regurgitation?

Christmas Day, many children receive books of discovery and invention and plenty have the well known illustration of Hero's steam turbine. I certainly knew of it aged ten. We are expected to believe this thing was 2,000 years before anything we consider part of Industrial Development. The picture shows two bearings on a horizontal axis with the hollow sphere spinning between the two, it being driven by reaction to the two exhausts normal to the outside diameter of the plane of rotation. Aged 10 I had a small steam engine so I questioned the likelihood of the illustration being of a working toy.

Consider the starting position, sphere holding approximately 3/4 air, 1/4 water, exhaust pipes horizontal and flame heating sphere. Eventually steam ejected so sphere rotates till one exhaust goes under water... That water now driven out until exhaust pipe traverses from 4 till 8 o'clock, then the other arrives down towards 5 o'clock and the rest of the water ejected. Now there will be a rapid falling off of steam and the sphere will begin to be overheated and I expect the solder melts and it falls to pieces.

Priests needed more durable and convincing toys with which to bamboozle congregations. Ur of the Chaldees and other towns in the Fertile Crescent had temples and the clever trick was an automatic door obedient to the magic words "Abracadabra" or "Open Sesame". Normally doors or gates have eyes rotating on pintles fixed to the post or frame. This door had a long heel post which extended upwards through the ceiling and its top fastened to the moving board of a large bellows. There was no inlet port, the other board was fixed and the nozzle was connected to a large air tight iron box. At the appropriate moment a minion ignited a swiftly flareing hazel sticks fire heating the box.

Rome, before Christianity had various gods, temples had dancing dolls on vertical spindles which extended down to the crypt. There cord wrapped a turn round the spindle and stretched taught horizontal to a pulley from which was suspended a vessel containing water. The other end of cord also reeved through a pulley from which another vessel hung. The first vessel was a retort with a lengthy spout ending above the second vessel. At the signal from priest the minion set flame under the retort leading to vapour condensing and falling into number 2. You can see that after a bit the receiving vessel will descend pulling cord, rotating doll and lifting the retort vessel. Now that was a steam winch but of course the Clerks in Holy Orders never thought of making anything useful with it. Clerks came in two varieties priests or lawyers and neither makes, maintains or mends anything. Of course in modern life there are many other types of clerk but they never solve mechanisms or chemistry.

Happy Christmas and New Year to any reader.