ARCHIMEDES, THE INGENIOUS ENGINEER

Archimedes, the greatest mathematician and engineer of antiquity, remains virtually unknown despite his vastly important inventions. Most of his original works have been lost and this is the reason we are unaware of a number of discoveries and constructions, many of which have become the stuff of legends: his burning mirrors with which he set the Roman fleet on fire, his giant catapults, his colossal cranes that lifted ships into the air and then released them, sending them crashing, or his famous hydraulic clock. Archimedes was the first to discover the use of steam and built the steam cannon, invented the odometer for marking distances, the telescope for observing the sky, the planetarium (celestial sphere), the famous water-pumping propeller, a mechanism still in use today. It is the first time in Greek literature that a complete reference is made to Archimedes’ mechanical constructions based on the reconstructions of his works by Leonardo da Vinci and the Greek scientist Ioannis Sakkas.