Great people are often preoccupied, really great thinkers may be so preoccupied that they even forget to eat or bathe. Archimedes is said to have been this type of person. There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest geniuses ever born and it is believed that from about 287 B.C, when he was born, to 1452 A.D., when da Vinci was born, he was the smartest person to have lived on the earth. The question of who was smarter, da Vinci or Archimedes can not really be answered. da Vinci had one thing to build on that Archimedes didn't and that was on Archimedes' theories. When confronted by such monumental genius and especially such genius that is in two different fields, it is almost impossible to decide who had the greater intellect. If both people were alive today, I guess we could give them an I.Q. test, but since they are both long dead, that is impossible. Were da Vinci and Archimedes really that different? While Archimedes was a great mathematician, it turns out that he was also a great inventor of weapons. Da Vinci was also very interested in inventing weapons, so in that respect the two men were much alike.

It is believed that Archimedes was born somewhere near 287 B.C. in Syracuse in Sicily. The exact date is lost in history. Ancient historians have said that he lived for 75 years. It is said that his father was an astronomer, but nothing is known about him. It is a shame, but we really don't know much about Archimedes' personal life. Even the facts that are readily detectable for most people, such as if they were married or had children, or who their relatives were, are not available for him. What we know about him are legends and whatever facts have survived about his professional life. Too bad that such an intellectual giant should have so little known about him. One thing is common knowledge however and that is that the Romans feared him. They should have, because it was mainly his weapons that kept the Romans at bay for so many years, as they tried over and over to invade Sicily. I remember seeing a model of one of his defensive inventions that was quite impressive. It was a ship crusher, known as the claw. In a way, it operated like a scoop, only this scoop had a deadly side to it. Once it scooped up a ship, it was sort of like a trash compactor. A huge beam came down and broke the ship in half. This was not very pleasant for the Roman sailors that were aboard. It is never mentioned anywhere that I can find, but I have to think that a lot of Romans became slaves in Sicily. Those would have been the survivors of the attacks.

Unfortunately, it is believed that many of Archimedes' documents were in the library at Alexandria and we all know what happened there. It was burnt to the ground by Caesar in 48 B.C. Oh those Romans, they were the world's greatest builders and soldiers and even society builders, but they contributed nothing to mathematics and destroyed some things that should have never have been touched. When the library at Alexandria was burnt by the Romans, the world lost some of the greatest ancient works. We will really never know all the great things that the library contained. By the way, it was burnt several times over the centuries. It makes you wonder why, with all the great Roman accomplishments, they never really concentrated on math? Could it be that they felt it was a waste of time since they felt that they had no use for more math than they already knew? By the way, some people believe that the library might have contained the secret to moving huge blocks of stone such as those used to build the pyramids.

Archimedes Using A Lever To Move The World

So what are some of the most famous things that we give Archimedes credit for? One of the most famous is the principle of buoyancy. There is a story that goes along with this principle. It was said that King Hieron was given a crown in the shape of a laurel wreath and Archimedes was asked to determine if it was solid gold or not and the crown was not to be damaged. He noticed that when he got into a tub to bathe the water would rise being displaced by the volume of his body. He would weigh it and then place it in water. Since gold is dense it would displace more water than cheaper less dense metals. The story goes on to say that he got so excited over his discovery, that he ran into the street shouting Eureka and that he had forgotten to put clothes on. Since we are talking about his inventions, no talk would be complete without the mention of the Archimedes' Screw. It was a machine that had screw shaped blades inside of a cylindrical device. It was used to pump water out of a ship or to drain water from any flooded area. It could even be used to lower water levels so that ships might be able to transport from a higher level to a lower, such as they do in some canals. The screw is still in use today, in some places.

One of the things, that it is said that Archimedes built was a ship. Oh this was no ordinary ship, but the biggest ship ever built to that point, in ancient times. The king had wanted it built and asked Archimedes to design it. There were certain parameters that had to be used, however. This was to be a luxury liner and also a war ship. Although the ship doesn't exist anymore, it is said that it was capable of holding over 600 people and contained a temple, gym and gardens. Ships of that time were not completely watertight and Archimedes knew the bilge would receive a lot of water. This is the reason, it is said, that he developed the screw, to keep the bilge relatively dry. The ship must have been some sight. It would have seemed like the Titanic to those who saw it at the time. The name of it was the Syracusia. This is not the only story connected with the ship. The ship was commissioned by King Hieron and because of its 55 meter length and extreme bulk, proved impossible to launch. Even with all the available men pulling on ropes, nothing was happening. This upset the King who told Archimedes about this. He brushed it off and said, give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. The king was astonished and challenged him to launch the ship. Archimedes built a device by the ship and was able to activate it from a distance. It launched the ship with the entire crew aboard. It is said that so much material was used in the Syracusia, that it could have been used to build over 60 conventional ships of the time. Looking at the ship a little closer we find that it supported 400 soldiers on the upper deck and had 142 first class cabins on the 2nd deck. It had a library with reading room, gymnasium, chapel, dinning room and bath . The lower deck was the cargo area and could transport over 10 times the amount of cargo that any other ship could have hauled. Its weapons included 8 towers set on the deck and an 18 foot arrow and 180 pound stone catapult. Bigger ships were built immediately by other nations. Ptolemy Philopator built a 130 meter by 18 meter ship. It was over half the length of the Titanic. Yipes! Caligula built two ships that were 70 meters by 18 meters.

We can not forget that Archimedes was a mathematical genius. He discovered the first law of hydrostatics, the law of levers and pulleys, plotted the value of Pi and discovered how to calculate the area of a circle, upon other things. Archimedes developed geometry. It is impossible to reckon what effect that he had on math. Without him, mathematics might have remained in the stone age, since much of today's math was based on his.

Here is what happened to the Roman ships that tried to invade Sicily. Archimedes first hit them with with adjustable range catapults that could hurl 500 pound stones. The ships that survived and reached the walls had heavy stones dropped on them by a pole like gadget. Large grappling hook like devices would grab a ship, lift it and then drop it. Polished shields were used to focus the sun's rays on a ship and set it on fire. I didn't believe that this was possible until I saw an actual demonstration of this on tv and it worked. On some ships the claw was used, that is the device I spoke of previously that crushed ships.

In the Second Punic War the Romans managed to conquer Sicily and the story goes that a Roman soldier was walking along the beach when he encountered an old man carrying some instruments and drawing circles in the sand. It is said that he told the soldier not to disturb his drawing and at that point, the soldier killed him. When the commanding Roman general found out what had happened, he was very angry, since he had ordered that Archimedes be captured alive and unharmed. The Romans were certainly not stupid and would have loved to get a hold of Archimedes, so that they could force him to design advanced weapons for them. That was just not to be.