Hephaestus, the Greek god of the blacksmith’s fire and the mythological progenitor of all engineers and tinkerers, was something of a nerd. He was, wrote Homer, extremely intelligent, diligent, and friendly toward mortals, but he was quite unlike the other gods up on Olympus—he did not have much in the way of elegance or style.

Hephaestus was the only non-perfect immortal since he was crippled when Zeus threw him from the mountain after an argument. According to the mythological texts, Hephaestus fell for nine days and nine nights, until he landed on the island of Lemnos. With his leg smashed and mangled, he consoled himself by building a palace next to a volcano. For nine years he worked there, perfecting his engineering and fabricating skills before ascending Olympus again to take his rightful place among the Olympians.

A great craftsman, Hephaestus was the first being, mortal or immortal, to understand how useful technology could be. As we saw in the first book in this series, ReMaking History Volume 1: Early Makers, the Hephaestus-inspired ancient Greeks were extraordinarily good at inventing things. But when classical Greece fell, metaphorically speaking, this god fell into a long slumber from which he did not rouse until the 19th century’s Golden Age of Invention. Once awake, though, he taught the inventors of the time what he long knew—that technology could turn mortals into gods, at least of a sort.

During this great century of invention, Sir George Cayley invented a machine that would give humans a chance to fly with Nike and Hermes. Joseph McKibben built machines that were, like Hercules, strong enough to move immense weights. And like Hephaestus himself, Hans Goldschmidt found he could command the power of fire.