Heron was a jack of all trades from 1st century AD Alexandria, who in all likelihood had access to the books of the greatest library of the ancient world and therefore the works of scientists who had come before him. He was also the inventor of a truly special automatic machine. We could even call it the world’s first automobile prototype, although it did not have any seats. It was, however, “green” and “self-driving”.

The machine is described in the first part of the book on Automatic Theatre, which survived in the original Greek and can be read along with the treatise on Pneumatics in an 1899 edition. The device is essentially a puppet theatre which could roll out in front of an audience. On the top was a circular Greek temple with a statue of Dionysus in the middle and a leopard, his favourite creature, lying next to him. An altar stood in front of the temple, which was surrounded by the statuettes of Bacchantes.

A fire flared up on the altar, Dionysus squirted milk from his thyrsus staff and poured wine from his cup as Bacchantes danced around the temple to the sound of drums and bells. Then Dionysus and the statue of Nike atop the temple, too, turned around and the same scene was repeated as a sacrificial fire flared up on the altar on the other side of the temple. The machine, which may look kitschy to the modern observer, involved countless minute devices and experiments based on the study of the laws of pneumatics and mechanics. Of these, we will be concentrating only on the “vehicle” at the base of the machine.

The base consisted of a box, in which two wheels were attached to an axle which could easily rotate in a socket. On the other, short, side of the box was a third wheel, on a small, also easily-rotating axle. A reel was placed around the larger axle, with which it would rotate together, and a piece of thread was wound around the reel. On top of the box was another one, with a weight at the top.

The thread from the reel was brought to the top of the second crate through a pulley and then tied to the weight. The weight was held in place by millet or mustard seeds which filled the top box. If a flap at the bottom of the box was opened the millet or mustard seed fell into a container below, causing the counterweight to descend, which in turn pulled the thread tied to it. The thread wound off the axle, turning the wheels connected to the axle. A more sophisticated way of winding the thread around the axle – half one way, half the other way – could also make the machine go backwards. Heron, furthermore, even came up with a variant which could also turn around.

The Movable Automatic Theatre of Heron Video