The effectiveness may have simply been exaggerated.Īrchimedes also has been credited with improving accuracy, range and power of the catapult.Īrchimedes was killed by a Roman soldier during the sack of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, despite orders from the Roman general Marcellus that he was not to be harmed. Making them hot and sweaty before primary battle may have also tired them faster. It can be argued that even if the reflections didn't induce fire, they still could have confused, and temporarily blinded the ship crews, making it hard for them to aim and steer. These unlikely conditions combined with the availability of other simpler methods, such as ballistae with flaming bolts, led the team to believe that the heat ray was far too impractical to be used, and probably just a myth. The television show Mythbusters also took on the challenge of recreating the weapon and concluded that while it was possible to light a ship on fire, it would have to be stationary at a specified distance during the hottest part of a very bright, hot day, and would require several hundred troops carefully aiming mirrors while under attack. A group at the MIT have performed their own tests and concluded that the mirror weapon was a possibility, although later tests of their system showed it to be ineffective in conditions that more closely matched the described siege. This popular legend, dubbed the "Archimedes's death ray", has been tested many times since the Renaissance and often discredited as it seemed the ships would have had to have been virtually motionless and very close to shore for them to ignite, an unlikely scenario during a battle. It is said that he prevented one Roman attack on Syracuse by using a large array of mirrors (speculated to have been highly polished shields) to reflect sunlight onto the attacking ships causing them to catch fire. He laid down the laws of flotation and developed the famous Archimedes' principle.Ī diagram showing how Archimedes may have enabled the defenders of Syracuse to aim their mirrors at approaching ships The work that has made Archimedes famous is his theory of floating bodies. He did a lot of work in geometry, which included finding the surface areas and volumes of solids accurately. He made several war machines for his patron and friend King Hiero II. He was famous for his compound pulley, a system of pulleys used to lift heavy loads such as ships. He is credited with many inventions and discoveries, some of which we still use today, like his Archimedes screw. The ship, named Syracusia, after its nation, was huge, and its construction caused stupor in the Greek world. It is rumored that the Archimedes Screw was actually an invention of happenstance, as he needed a tool to remove bilge water.
Faced with war when unable to present the promised amount, Hiero commissioned Archimedes to develop a large luxury/supply/war barge in order to serve the changing requirements of his navy.
Hiero had promised large caches of grain to the Romans in the north in return for peace. King Hiero II, who was said to be Archimedes's uncle, commissioned him to design and fabricate a new class of ships for his navy, which were crucial for the preservation of the ruling class in Syracuse. He was a relative of the Hiero monarchy, which was the ruling family of Syracuse, a seaport kingdom. Apart from his fundamental theoretical contributions to maths, Archimedes also shaped the fields of physics and practical engineering, and has been called "the greatest scientist ever". Carl Friedrich Gauss, himself frequently called the most influential mathematician of all time, modestly claimed that Archimedes was one of the three epoch-making mathematicians (the others being Isaac Newton and Ferdinand Eisenstein). Many consider him one of the greatest, if not the greatest, mathematicians in antiquity.
287 BC – 212 BC) was a Hellenistic mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher, born on the seaport colony of Syracuse, Magna Graecia, what is now Sicily.
287 BC ( Syracuse, Sicily, ancient Magna Graecia)Īrchimedes ( Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης c.