Ancient Impossible

"Is it possible the ancient world had geniuses greater than ours today? The greatest scientific discoveries involve huge leaps of imagination, but you have to leap from somewhere."

"His [Ctesibius's] goal was to invent for the first time something that would accurately tell the time. Sundials were useless at night or when it was cloudy. And for the Greeks, it was most important to measure time inside, especially in the law courts. Justice depended on giving lawyers equal amounts of time."

"Many consider this man to be the father of robotics. His name was Philon of Byzantium. He was also known as Philo, or Philo Mechanicus, because when it came to mechanics, he was thousands of years ahead of the game."

"Now we are on a quest to find the ancient Einsteins, and this journey takes us straight to the amazing library of Alexandria in Egypt. It wasn't just a library with books. It was a center of innovation and technology. It was the silicon valley of the ancient world. The ancient Greeks weren't so constrained by religion, so philosophers and inventors were free to think about how the world works. And it's because of this that what we now call science was born. So they weren't just inventing things. They were inventing the actual processes of science itself."

"So Heron was very much like a modern-day stage magician in Las Vegas, achieving what was seemingly impossible."

"We may attribute the invention of steam power to the industrial revolution a couple of hundred years ago. But like many modern inventions, it's really more of a rediscovery."

"Archimedes was a brilliant inventor and a mathematician. He says to the people around him, "Don't just live in the lap of the gods. Don't be dominated by Mother Nature. You, as a man, can take control of your own destiny.""

"According to legend, nothing could get between him [Archimedes] and his work, and sometimes he would even forget to eat. Ideas would come to him at any moment, and he would scribble them on any available surface. Famously, he was in the bath when he discovered the laws of buoyancy, leading him to run naked through the streets shouting "Eureka!" … Eureka means "I have found it," and it could be argued that Archimedes found out more than anyone else before or since."

"Tragically for all of us, he [Archimedes] was cut down by a Roman soldier because he refused to stop working. … If Archimedes hadn't been killed before his time, what could have he achieved? The industrial revolution could have happened two thousand years earlier. He might have kick-started the modern age."

"In 48 B.C., when Julius Caesar was attacking the city, it's thought that much of the great library was destroyed by fire. What other works of genius were destroyed? We'll never know. There may even have been ancient geniuses of whom we know nothing. Is it possible that one day we'll discover a new ancient Einstein? From what we do know, it's clear that the ancient Greek inventors were all extraordinary men. They began modern science over two thousand years ago. They were truly ancient Einsteins."