askchapo

So the thing with steam engines, is you need to contain a very large amount of pressure to get useful work out of them. Like a lot of pressure. The idea that you could make a neat toy that spun around when you heat water has been around for ages. But we didn't start making steam engines until the 19th century because the materials science wasn't there yet. The 19th century was when we started being able to crank out large amounts of high quality metal, and reliably create very strong joins on the seams of those metal objects. And that got us started, but early on all we had for seals was greased leather gaskets, and we could only contain so much pressure that way. Someone had to bring in vulkanized rubber, which could withstand immense heat and pressure, to get us the powerful steam engines we associate with the industrial rev.

These aren't new techs - i think mesoamericans were vulcanizing rubber 1kya, the steam engine in principle is 2kya, but the necessary metallurgy was 19th century, and that's where the needed technology, industry, and economy came together to produce a steam engine that could contain the immense pressures needed to produce useful work.