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Archimedes Contributions

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Archimedes was a greek scientist, mathematician and inventor. He was best known for shouting ‘Eureka’ naked across the street when he understood the principal that the volume of water displaced is equal to the water that rose. His inventions spanned across many different industries and has helped sped up the pace of innovation in those following industries. However, one of the most impressive aspect about him was that his inventions completely altered the way warfare was fought. Firstly, to defend the Romans off when Syracuse was fighting the second punic war, Archimedes invented war machines that were effective and require significantly lesser amount of work. Next, his inventions were ahead of its time and many of his inventions are still …show more content…

The grappling hook would hook the enemy ship when they approach and grab them up the air only to toss them down back to the sea, destroying and sinking the ship. The enemies of Archimedes had no chance to respond to a huge hand shaped hook as it came as a surprise to them. “Archimedes’ simply set the defence of Syracuse in motion, as if it were a simple complex machine, as operable by one man, as a triple pulley drawing up a ship.” (Jaeger, pg. 110) Only requiring one man, Archimedes’ claw allowed for a single man to sink an entire ship in the matter of minutes. It is no wonder that the small port city of Syracuse was able to defend themselves off the Roman army twice. Next, Archimedes’ death ray was another of Archimedes’ brilliant invention that is designed to destroy ships using little work. Archimedes’ death ray was a mirror that reflects off sunlight and the mirror would direct that energy onto the enemy ship to burn it. With just mirrors, Syracuse’s soldiers were able to burn off ships from far away using Archimedes’ death ray, as opposed to arrows which are ineffective when attacking enemies from far away, or catapults which are hard to aim, Archimedes’ death ray allowed for the soldiers to aim the weapon at a faraway

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