![]() ![]() ![]() While the aforementioned Archimedes’ Screw possibly played its part in ship-safety measures, the Claw of Archimedes fulfilled quite an opposite purpose. So, as an ingenious solution, the Archimedes’ Screw could remove the bilge water against gravity to keep the ship safely afloat. This massive marine-based craft (also designed by Archimedes himself) could hold over 600 people, and additionally boasted of onboard facilities like garden decorations, a gymnasium and an Aphrodite temple! The predicament however related to how the gargantuan ship still leaked water through the hull. Interestingly, from the literary perspective, Greek writer Athenaeus of Naucratis had mentioned how the Archimedes’ Screw was built out of necessity to drain water from what was possibly the largest ship in the ancient world – Syracusia. There also must have been scenarios where the entire contraption was created as a collective whole, with the singular piece being made of bronze. In either case, the screw was mostly probably connected to the inner section of the shell with the use of pitch resin. Now in terms of engineering, there could have been two variants to the design of the Archimedes’ Screw, with one entailing a movable screw within a fixed casing, and the other encompassing a rotating screw that moved along with a rotating casing. In other words, no extant specimens of Archimedes’ work remain – and, as such all these ‘inventions’ are based on history-based hypotheses. *We use the term PROBABLE because very few details of Archimedes’ life is actually known to historians, with most sources pertaining to literary evidences that were written after the genius’s lifetime. Suffice it to say, we as curators of history and science are more interested in these mechanized contraptions – and so without further ado, let us talk about the four probable (and fascinating) inventions of Archimedes that still impress us with their scope of ‘modernity’. These brilliant ‘concoctions’ are complemented on the engineering level by a bevy of mechanical inventions that range from screw pumps to war machines. An Ancient Greek engineer, inventor, astronomer and a mathematician, he is known for devising a range of mathematical concepts, including – infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion (for determining famous geometrical theorems, like area of a circle), the approximation of the value of pi, and a system of exponentiation for defining very large numbers. And, speaking of being ‘ahead of times’ very few can surpass the sheer ingenuity possessed by the great Archimedes. Last month, we talked about the ten ‘hi-tech’ weapons from history, and how these crafty designs were far ahead of their times. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |