Quote Originally Posted by CBR View Post
The Hero Engine is far away from being a proper steam engine so it would not be worth much. It took a long list of inventions and discoveries to get something useful.

Maybe someone could have invented the printing press a lot earlier than Gutenberg. That would have changed a lot IMO.
I heard of an attempt at a printing press that worked with clay tablets. Phaisto's Disk I believe. However, there were a lot of problems which prevented it from taking off in the same way that Gutenberg could.