|
|
-Archimedes, The Nile, The Water Wheel
Archimedes knew he was being rewarded with a scholarship coveted by many ambitious youth of his day. Alexandria was the most cosmopolitan city around the Mediterranean basin, and many students competed for entry examinations. In one of his classes the professer gave the class the same question he gave each year, as an example of putting pure science to practical life. It was Archimedes who worked out a solution: the Archimedes Screw, which twisted the water upward. It was the model of the ferris wheel.
This invention was an enormous boon to Egypt and the region. Frost free Egypt could produce four crops a year, and with the application of the Archimedes Screw the amount of area under irrigation and farming was made possible. This played into geo politics two centuries later when emerging Rome sent forces to capture Egypt for Rome. Egypot was so valuable to Athens and Rome, and it had been for Athens and Greece that Alexander had originally founded the city named after him.
Many of the crop items were tropical, which could never grow in Greece or Italy, and Egypt was held in awe at the vast and wide array of foodstuffs which seemed to pour out of there, and the expanding Rome was approaching. But in the time of Archimedes there were three major powers in the Mediterranean: Greece, Egypt and Rome. It was only in his old age that Archimedes was killed on the beach near his Syracuse home, but until then Siciliy had been governed by Greece but had fought for and gained its independent.
During the youth of Archimedes there was an extended period of time when all the empires were at peace with one another.In his later years it was Archimedes who coined the phrase of the absent minded professor. Raising himself in and out of the tub at the baths, he noticed that his body replaced some of the water. He realized this could lead to a question the king of Sicily had put to him, how to prove whether the goldsmith had adulterated the kings crown with impurities.
Rising from the bath, Archimedes neglected to dress or even grab a towel, and ran through the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka, eureka, I have found it. But in his early years Archimedes enjoyed the cosmopolitan life and the recognitioin he received for his very important achievement for Egypt and the known world. Never againn should Italy or Greece suffer a winter without food, as had happened many times prior to this. It was Alexander realizing that Africa's heat could ensured that crops could always grow next to a source of water, the Nile.
But it was Archimedes who really gave a precious gift to the world. Modern copies of the water wheel effect can be found, in which a bucket fills and then lift in a circle to empty above, with an equal weight of water in the second bucket. In this way, the fields beside the Nile, but now going more inland was the life giving river water from the Nile. And, in contrast to Rome or Athens, Egypt never gets a frost, so itss ability to produce foodstuffs was legendary in those days, it was a grainery of the known world.
About the Author Derek Dashwood finds history fascinating and how enemies at one time are friends another time Egyption antiques
|
 |
Please Rate: |
|
Rating: |
 Processing ... |
(Average: Not rated) |
| Views: | 24 | |
|
| More Articles from Society and Culture | | |
| Top Articles in Society and Culture | | |
|
