Greek and Hellenistic engineers invented many technologies and improved upon pre-existing technologies, particularly during the Hellenistic period. Heron of Alexandria invented a basic steam engine and demonstrated knowledge of mechanic and pneumatic systems. Archimedes invented several machines. The Greeks were unique in pre-industrial times in their ability to combine scientific research with the development of new technologies. One example is the Archimedean screw; this technology was first conceptualized in mathematics, then built. Other technologies invented by Greek scientists include the ballistae, and primitive analog computers like the Antikythera mechanism and the piston pump. Greek architects were responsible for the first true domes, and were the first to explore the Golden ratio and its relationship with geometry and architecture.
Apart from Hero of Alexandria's steam aeolipile, Hellenistic technicians were the first to invent watermills and windwheels, making them global pioneers in three of the four known means of non-human propulsion prior to the Industrial Revolution (the fourth being sails). However, only water power became extensively used in antiquity.
Other Greek inventions include torsion catapults, pneumatic catapults, crossbows, cranes, rutways, organs, the keyboard mechanism, gears, differential gears, screws, refined parchment, showers, dry docks, diving bells, odometer and astrolabes. In architecture, Greek engineers constructed monumental lighthouses such as the Pharos and devised the first central heating systems. The Tunnel of Eupalinos is the earliest tunnel in history which has been excavated with a scientific approach from both ends.
Automata like vending machines, automatic doors and many other ingenious devices were first built by Hellenistic engineers as Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium and Heron. Greek technological treatises were scrupuously studied and copied by later Byzantine, Arabic Latin European scholars and provided much of the foundation for further technological advances in these civilizations.
