Other people have mentioned that the metallurgy that was known in Britain at the time useful steam engines were developed was dramatically more advanced than wh

Other people have mentioned that the metallurgy that was known in Britain at the time useful steam engines were developed was dramatically more advanced than what the makers of ancient stuff like the Aeolipile had. A fun fact is that the reason we developed the metallurgy required to put high pressure gasses to work inside cylinders was in large part due to work on improving cannon manufacture. Early cannons exploded a lot, but a cannon which occasionally explodes is a lot better at being a cannon than a steam engine that occasionally explodes is at being a steam engine. Having a "minimal viable product" for a cannon is much simpler than for a steam engine so they were able to iterate on the technology.