“There was a wonderful contrivance due to Archimedes inside,” he wrote. The Roman historian Cicero described the Archimedes sphere as uninteresting at first glance until it was explained. Others had already made celestial spheres, globes that show the positions of the constellations. Although it is described in historical writings, no pieces or even drawings of it have survived. Michael Wright, a researcher at Imperial College London, has been trying to decipher how the Archimedes sphere showed the night sky. For thousands of years, farmers have used this simple machine for irrigation: Placed at an angle with one end submerged in a river or a lake, the screw is turned by a handle, lifting water upward and out at the other end. Rather, it is a mundane contraption attributed to the great Greek mathematician, inventor, engineer and military planner - the Archimedes screw, a corkscrew inside a cylinder - that has a new use in the 21st century. It has been debunked no fewer than three times on the television show “Mythbusters” (the third time at the behest of President Obama). The death ray legend has Archimedes using mirrors to concentrate sunlight to incinerate Roman ships attacking his home of Syracuse, the ancient city-state in the southeast Sicily. For the last time: Archimedes did not invent a death ray.īut more than 2,200 years after his death, his inventions are still driving technological innovations - so much so that experts from around the world gathered recently for a conference at New York University on his continuing influence.
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