ENGINEERING TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 76, 1 April 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

ENGINEERING TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

As a mechanician, Archimedes produced the correct theory of the lever, and invented no less than 40 interest ing devices, including the endless screw, the pump, the organ, and the 'burning glass,' with which latter novel weapon he is said to have set fire to the ships of an enemy's fleet from a considerable distance. The story is probably fabulous, but none the less interesting, as exhibiting the faith of the people in the man, and as indicating the character of his pursuits. As engineer, Archimedes (says 'Cassier's Magazine') was looked upon as hardly less than a magician. He produced catapults which threw enormous stones and heavy pikes, at long range, .into the ranks of the enemy or into, their ships; and great derricks were built by him with which to lift the attacking craft out of the water or to upset them, destroying all on board. His proposed use of the lever meant the production of then inconceivable inventions in machinery and engineering construction, and his own esti? mate of its importance was expressed by the familiar quotation: 'Give me whereon to stand, and* I will lift the earth.' Archimedes was the first, and perhaps the most inventive, and greatest of early engineers. His lever still moves the world, and his spirit is inherited by generations of the men who have made modern civilisation possible.

Hero was the most famous successor of Archimedes. His 'Pneumatica' was published to the Alexandrian world after the death of Euclid and of Archimedes, and very likely includes inventions of the latter and of Ctesibus, for nothing is said to indicate what part of the collection of inventions there described is due to the author and what to earlier scientists and engineers. In this little volume, however, are contained descriptions of the germs of the 'fire-engine,' or steam engine, of the Marquess of Worcester, of the steam-turbine, of the watertube steam-boiler, of numerous steam and air fountains, and of many other curious and, undoubtedly to the ancients, mysterious contrivances, not omitting the magician's marvellous bottle, the source of many wonders. He anticipates or supplies the germ of numbers of modern engineering apparatus and mechanisms. In one of his 'propositions' he shows how temple doors may be opened and closed by steam; in another, how birds shall be made to appear to sing; in another, he raises water in a fountain by fire; an in still another, he accomplishes the same thing by a 'solar motor.' Hero was the great mechanical engineer and scientific author of his time. Perhaps the most remarkable event.in the history of the mechanic arts and of engineering is the revival of the steam-turbine in our own time as the rival of the modern steam engine, which, with its complication of parts, its extraordinary perfection of structure and workmanship, and its summary of the inventions of thefgreat engineers and mechanics of a century and more has been considered to be the crowning effort of modern inventive and constructive genius. Two thousand years after Hero, the world now takes up his steam engine, and its modern reinventors and improvers promise that, with this instrument of the old Greek times, they will revolutionise steajn engine construction, bringing "about so, complete a turn that the cycle shall take us back to the Alexandrian and. bis toy.