Mind-Benders of Islamic History
He spun a roast with a jet of steam — in 1551
The Ottoman polymath Taqi al-Din described, in a book written in 1551, how to turn a roasting spit by aiming steam from a boiling pot at a bladed wheel — an application of the same principle behind the steam turbine. Decades later he built a great observatory in Istanbul, around the same time as Tycho Brahe's in Denmark; it was torn down in 1580, only about three years after it was finished.
How we know
Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf, 1526–1585. His 1551 book describes a steam-driven self-rotating spit (impulse-turbine principle). His Istanbul observatory was begun 1575, completed 1577 (near-contemporary with Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg from 1576), and razed 1580.
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.