Archimedes death ray5/17/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ** "Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object." In On Floating Bodies, he added the clarification that for the object which had been dropped in the fluid, the volume of displaced fluid was equal to the volume of the object. * Originally written in Doric Greek (for those of you experiencing Google Translate fails.) Might he instead have been something of an ancient Steve Jobs, inasmuch as both went to a technological hot spot (Xerox PARC/Egypt), beheld wonders (the WIMPS GUI/shadufs) and then brought them to the outside world in a form more elegant and functional than had yet been seen? ® The turning of the screwĪrmed with little more than an unfinished classics degree and a suspicious mind, your correspondent therefore wonders if Archimedes may not have been quite the innovator he's painted. A Roman quickly lost patience and Archimedes ended his days on the end of a gladius, the steel sword used by Rome’s infantry. Troops challenged him, but Archimedes asked for more time to complete the mental arithmetic that so consumed him, unaware of the imminent danger posed by Rome’s conquering army. Rome eventually defeated Syracuse and as legionaries roamed the streets came upon an old man who seemed rather distracted. We suggest such an exercise not to call their content or origins into question, but instead to offer a second example of ancient biography of a single person written by different authors and featuring different versions of events.Īccounts of Archimedes’ death are quite uniform and show us he was a rather unusual chap. If you doubt that assertion, consider the many variations between the four gospels. Was it real? Ancient writers did love to embellish details, or pick the best bits of a story. ![]() Remember how we said Diodorus Siculus isn't super-reliable? Plutarch's better regarded, but didn't mention the death ray. This contrivance he set to catch the full rays of the sun at noon, both summer and winter, and eventually, by the reflection of the sun's rays in this, a fearsome fiery heat was kindled in the barges, and from the distance of an arrow's flight he reduced them to ashes. The old man then devised an hexagonal mirror, and at an appropriate distance from it set small quadrangular mirrors of the same type, which could be adjusted by metal plates and small hinges. Picture source: Wikimedia CommonsĪrchimedes is also said to have devised a giant crossbow of some sort, to further harry the Roman fleet.Īnd then there’s the “death ray”, an item so intriguing Mythbusters devoted two episodes to it.ĭiodorus Siculus described it as follows: The so-called "Death Ray", illustrated on the front page of a Latin edition of Alhazen's Thesaurus opticus (click to enlarge). ![]()
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