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Archimedes of Syracuse was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems. These include the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.
A burning glass or burning lens is a large convex lens that can concentrate the sun's rays onto a small area, heating up the area and thus resulting in ignition of the exposed surface. Burning mirrors achieve a similar effect by using reflecting surfaces to focus the light. They were used in 18th-century chemical studies for burning materials in closed glass vessels where the products of combustion could be trapped for analysis. The burning glass was a useful contrivance in the days before electrical ignition was easily achieved.
Syracuse is a historic city on the Italian island of Sicily, the capital of the Italian province of Syracuse. The city is notable for its rich Greek and Roman history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture, and as the birthplace and home of the pre-eminent mathematician and engineer Archimedes. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in ancient times, when it was one of the major powers of the Mediterranean world. Syracuse is located in the southeast corner of the island of Sicily, next to the Gulf of Syracuse beside the Ionian Sea. It is situated in a drastic rise of land with 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) depths being close to the city offshore although the city itself is generally not so hilly in comparison.
Major innovations in materials technology
Year 212 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Flaccus and Pulcher. The denomination 212 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Experimental archaeology is a field of study which attempts to generate and test archaeological hypotheses, usually by replicating or approximating the feasibility of ancient cultures performing various tasks or feats. It employs a number of methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches, based upon archaeological source material such as ancient structures or artifacts.
The Claw of Archimedes was an ancient weapon devised by Archimedes to defend the seaward portion of Syracuse's city wall against amphibious assault. Although its exact nature is unclear, the accounts of ancient historians seem to describe it as a sort of crane equipped with a grappling hook that was able to drop and partly submerge an attacking ship down into the water, then either cause the ship to capsize or suddenly let it go altogether. It was dropped onto enemy ships, which would then swing on to defensive forces and destroy them.
During the growth of the ancient civilizations, ancient technology was the result from advances in engineering in ancient times. These advances in the history of technology stimulated societies to adopt new ways of living and governance.
The siege of Syracuse by the Roman Republic took place in 213–212 BC. The Romans successfully stormed the Hellenistic city of Syracuse after a protracted siege, giving them control of the entire island of Sicily. During the siege, the city was protected by weapons developed by Archimedes. Archimedes, the prominent inventor and polymath, was slain at the conclusion of the siege by a Roman soldier, in contravention of the Roman proconsul Marcellus's instructions to spare his life.
The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants is a collection of highly realistic glass botanical models at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A lithobolos refers to any mechanical artillery weapon used and/or referred to as a stone thrower in ancient warfare. Typically this referred to engines that propel a stone along a flat track with two rigid bow arms powered by torsion, in particular all sizes of palintonon.
What the Ancients Did for Us is a 2005 BBC documentary series presented by Adam Hart-Davis that examines the impact of ancient civilizations on modern society.
Syracusia was an ancient Greek ship sometimes claimed to be the largest transport ship of antiquity. She was reportedly too big for any port in Sicily, and thus only sailed once from Syracuse in Sicily to Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, whereupon she was given as a present to Ptolemy III Euergetes. The exact dimension of Syracusia is unknown; Michael Lahanas put it at 55 m long, 14 m wide, and 13 m high.
The sambuca was a ship-borne siege engine which was invented by Heracleides of Tarentum and was first used unsuccessfully by Marcus Claudius Marcellus during the Roman siege of Syracuse in 213 BC.
Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf Blaschka were glass artists from Dresden, Germany. They were known for their production of biological and botanical models, including glass sea creatures and Harvard University's Glass Flowers.
Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware.
The Greeks and Romans both made extensive use of artillery for shooting large arrows, bolts or spherical stones or metal balls. Occasionally they also used ranged early thermal weapons. There was heavy siege artillery, but more mobile and lighter field artillery was already known and used in pitched battles, especially in Roman imperial period.
The iron pillar of Delhi is a structure 7.21 metres high with a 41-centimetre (16 in) diameter that was constructed by Chandragupta II, and now stands in the Qutb complex at Mehrauli in Delhi, India. The metals used in its construction have a rust-resistant composition. The pillar weighs more than six tonnes and is thought to have been erected elsewhere, perhaps outside the Udayagiri Caves, and moved to its present location by Anangpal Tomar in the 11th century.
Archimedes' heat ray is a device that Archimedes is purported to have used to burn attacking Roman ships during the Siege of Syracuse. It does not appear in the surviving works of Archimedes and is described by historians writing many years after the siege.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 "The biggest inventions lost to time". Grunge . 13 January 2022.
- ↑ Farrokh, Kaveh; Maksymiuk, Katarzyna; Garcia, Javier Sanchez (2018). The Siege of Amida (359 CE). Archeobooks. pp. 44–45. ISBN 978-83-7051-887-5.
- ↑ Young, C. K. (December 2004). "Archimedes's iron hand or claw – a new interpretation of an old mystery". Centaurus. 46 (3): 189–207. Bibcode:2004Cent...46..189Y. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0498.2004.00009.x.
- ↑ Alan Wilkins (2003). Roman Artillery. Osprey Publishing. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-7478-0575-5.
- ↑ Episode 152: Arrow Machine Gun. mythresults.com, November 3, 2010.
- 1 2 Miley, Jessica (22 August 2018). "9 Potentially World-Changing Inventions That Never Came to Be". Interesting Engineering.
- ↑ "The Sloot Digital Coding System is not about compression". September 17, 2006.
- ↑ Beamen, John (2000). The Violin Explained: Components, Mechanism, and Sound. Oxford University Press. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-0-19-816739-6 . Retrieved 2009-01-23.
- ↑ Miller, Roman; Perrin, Pat; Coleman, Wim (2015). 10 Lost Inventions that Might Have Changed the World as we Know it. pp. 20–23.
- ↑ Yan, Hong-sen (2007). Reconstruction Designs of Lost Ancient Chinese Machinery. History of Mechanism and Machine Science. Vol. 3. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6460-9. ISBN 978-1-4020-6459-3.
- ↑ "Sea Creatures in Glass". Harvard Museum of Natural History.
- ↑ "Glass Flowers: The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants". Harvard Museum of Natural History.
- ↑ "How We Lost The Ability To Travel To The Moon".
- ↑ On the Corrosion Resistance of the Delhi Iron Pillar, R. Balasubramaniam, Corrosion Science, Volume 42 (2000) pp. 2103–2129.