Solomon de Cause was ap-parently sentenced to the madhouse by a cardinal who was irritated by de Cause's constant attempts to get him to listen to his ideas. It took another 200 years to actually turn the technology into something practical. Imagine how the world might have been different if Hero of Alexandria had understood the potential of his knowledge. The future develops from an iterative cycle of imagination, invention and expectation. It all begins with someone's crazy idea.
Someone tries to build it and succeeds or fails.
Solomon de Cause had the crazy idea. Marquis of Worchester, James Watt and many others tried to build it with few successes and many failures. Those successes set people's expectations to be able to travel across sea and land without dependence on wind and horses. An entire industry was born. People's expectations are the most powerful predictors of the future.