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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech

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Speaker 1: are you. It's time for a tech Stuff classic episode.

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Speaker 1: And this episode is titled tech Stuff Is Under Siege.

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Speaker 1: And I had to look it up just to make

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Speaker 1: sure that it wasn't about that one Stephen Sagal movie.

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Speaker 2: It is not.

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Speaker 3: It is about siege engines, as in the giant types

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Speaker 3: of military hardware used in the Middle Ages and thereabouts

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Speaker 3: in order to lay siege to a fortified position, typically

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Speaker 3: something like a castle or fortress. This episode originally published

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Speaker 3: on April twelfth, twenty seventeen. Hope you enjoy today.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about siege in I thought it'd

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Speaker 1: be kind of fun and sort of in the theme

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Speaker 1: of looking back on history.

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Speaker 2: Well, what is a siege engine? While it's a device meant.

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Speaker 1: To allow an attacking army to gain entry to a

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Speaker 1: fortified space, typically a fortified city or a castle, something

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Speaker 1: along those lines, they're used to penetrate or destroy fortress

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Speaker 1: walls or gates, and they tend to be enormous and

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Speaker 1: they exert tremendous force in their operation. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: focus on siege engines from ancient times to medieval history,

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Speaker 1: but you should know that siege engines continued to evolve

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Speaker 1: even after medieval era, even after the invention of gunpowder

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Speaker 1: and the distribution of gunpowder. To be fair, gunpowder had

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Speaker 1: been invented for a very long time before anyone over

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Speaker 1: in medieval Europe figured out how to use it as

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Speaker 1: a means for weaponry. And also, gunpowder ended up making

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Speaker 1: a lot of the traditional city defenses ineffective. I'll talk

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Speaker 1: about that more later on in this episode, but siege

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Speaker 1: engines were used in both world Wars, actually, but I'm

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Speaker 1: going to save that for a different episode. We're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about the old stuff, this kind of stuff

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Speaker 1: you might see in a movie about knights and royalty

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Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So siege weapons were necessary to

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Speaker 1: penetrate a fortified position, typically, like I said, a city

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Speaker 1: or a castle. So why would you lay siege to

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Speaker 1: such a place at all. Essentially, it's an effort to

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Speaker 1: make the people inside surrender to the people outside. It

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Speaker 1: seems pretty simple. Usually the people inside would include someone

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Speaker 1: of importance who kind of had the authority to hand

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Speaker 1: over the rule of law for that region to somebody else.

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Speaker 1: And the word siege comes from a Latin word sidare,

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Speaker 1: which means to sit, And that's pretty much what a

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Speaker 1: sieging force does. It sits outside a fortified area and

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Speaker 1: it waits. It also usually attempts to cut off supplies

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Speaker 1: that are heading into the foried location, both food and

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Speaker 1: water and other things, to push the people inside to

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Speaker 1: the point of desperation so that they surrender. But sometimes

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Speaker 1: a long wait just isn't convenient. You got places to go,

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Speaker 1: people to meet, lands to conquer, so you can't really

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Speaker 1: wait around for people to eat that last apple or

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Speaker 1: to draw the last water from the well. You got

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Speaker 1: to find a way to speed things up a little bit.

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Speaker 1: You got to convince them that they need to give up,

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Speaker 1: and maybe force them to give up, and that requires

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Speaker 1: getting access to the place that's fortified. Thus seize engines. Now,

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Speaker 1: archaeologists have uncovered evidence of fortified city walls from ancient

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Speaker 1: cities all around the world, and in a way, you

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Speaker 1: could say that human history is marked by innovations in

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Speaker 1: ways to keep people safe and other innovations designed to

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Speaker 1: overcome those protections. It gets a pretty grim when you

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Speaker 1: start thinking about specifics and you get down to brass tacks,

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Speaker 1: as it were. But if ancient people had fortified walls,

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Speaker 1: what did the ancient attackers use to breach those walls. Well,

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Speaker 1: there are a couple of different tactics that don't involve

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Speaker 1: seize engines at all. For example, you might try and

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Speaker 1: use fire to weaken walls. You might tunnel under walls,

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Speaker 1: either to collapse the wall so that they just fall down,

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Speaker 1: or you end up just bypassing the wall entirely in

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Speaker 1: tunnel into the place that you're trying to get access to.

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Speaker 1: Or you might just use ladders to try and access

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Speaker 1: the top of the wall and scale it. Obviously, that

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Speaker 1: could be dangerous if there are soldiers up at the

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Speaker 1: top of the wall to push the ladders down. So

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Speaker 1: you've got to hope that you can zerg rush it

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Speaker 1: use a whole bunch of people all at once. If

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Speaker 1: you don't know what a zerg rush is, you need

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Speaker 1: to go listen to the Tech Memes episode that published

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Speaker 1: not too long ago. So the ancients would start to

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Speaker 1: construct massive tools to break through barriers. These are the

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Speaker 1: siege engines. They're bigger than things like just a tunnel

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Speaker 1: or a ladder. And arguably the oldest version of the

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Speaker 1: siege engine is the battering ram. So I'm sure you're

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Speaker 1: all familiar with the concept, but just in case. A

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Speaker 1: battering ram is a large mass that can be swung

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Speaker 1: so that it has its impact against a surface and

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Speaker 1: that causes that surface to become damaged. In other words,

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Speaker 1: it's like an enormous hammer breaking through a wall or

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Speaker 1: a door. And an example could be just an enormous log,

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Speaker 1: and the earliest battering rams were held by people, but

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Speaker 1: that was problematic. People can only hold weight up to

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Speaker 1: a certain limit and then it's just too heavy to move.

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Speaker 1: It slows them down and they remain unprotected and can

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Speaker 1: be picked off by archers or people with slings or

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Speaker 1: other projectiles. So you want to improve upon this idea.

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Speaker 1: So another example would be a log that is hung

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Speaker 1: from a wooden frame by various ropes, and the ropes

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Speaker 1: allow the log to swing horizontally so that the end

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Speaker 1: can crash into that vertical surface like a.

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Speaker 2: Wall or a gate.

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Speaker 1: This would allow you to have a much heavier battering

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Speaker 1: ram than something you would have to carry by hand,

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Speaker 1: because you could put it on this rope system and

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Speaker 1: just swing it and as opposed to having to lift it.

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Speaker 2: According to ancient.

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Speaker 1: Historians, the earliest example of this technology was the brainchild

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Speaker 1: of a certain Pefrasminos of Tire, And I apologize for

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Speaker 1: absolutely butchering the pronunciation of that name, because I'm certain

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Speaker 1: I did. Anyway, This particular engineer would have lived sometime

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Speaker 1: between five hundred and three hundred and fifty BCE, and

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Speaker 1: his main invention was suspending a cross beam from a

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Speaker 1: transverse beam for the purposes of swinging it as a

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Speaker 1: battering ram. In other words, that design I was talking

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Speaker 1: about hanging a wooden beam in a frame so that

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Speaker 1: you can bash down a wall or a door. Now,

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Speaker 1: typically you would also find that the frames holding these

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Speaker 1: battering rams would be shielded by a roof, and often

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Speaker 1: that roof would be covered with dampened animal skins. That

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Speaker 1: would help cut down on the potential for fire. If

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Speaker 1: your defending city was using flaming arrows or burning oil

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Speaker 1: or something along those lines, it would reduce the possibility

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Speaker 1: that your brand new, shiny battering ram would just become kindling.

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Speaker 1: And you would also protect yourself from other just basic

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Speaker 1: projectiles and allow the operators of the battering ram to

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Speaker 1: continue hammering against the wall or the door.

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Speaker 2: Obviously, this was risky.

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Speaker 1: You had to get access to the actual wall, and

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Speaker 1: according to Vitruvius, who was an author and engineered the

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Speaker 1: first century, the first person to create a fireproofed roofed

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Speaker 1: battering ram was Keros the Carthaginian, sometimes called Geros with

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Speaker 1: a G the Carthaginian. Modern historians believe this person was

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Speaker 1: alive sometime around the fifth century BCE, and this was

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Speaker 1: after the Iron Age that had happened several hundred years earlier.

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Speaker 1: So it was very common for the attacking party to

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Speaker 1: cap a battering ram with a large iron or otherwise

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Speaker 1: metal cap, often shaped in the form of a battering

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Speaker 1: ram like a literal ram, like a goat's head with horns.

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Speaker 1: The iron would give the battering ram even more weight

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Speaker 1: and resilience, and it would make it more effective. The

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Speaker 1: animals would, you know, forms made it look more interesting,

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Speaker 1: but they also could help with bashing through the material,

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Speaker 1: depending upon the shapes you were using. And yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was a pretty effective means of knocking down your basic

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Speaker 1: city walls. You also would see other improvements like pulley

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Speaker 1: systems that would allow the battering ram to remain horizontal

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Speaker 1: as it swung instead of tilting upward. So imagine a

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Speaker 1: swing set swing. You know, when you're swinging on a swing,

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Speaker 1: your feet tilt up in the air instead of staying

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Speaker 1: horizontal unless you're actively moving your legs down, and the

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Speaker 1: pulley system would counteract that tendency so that way you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be hitting the wall or door on an upward swing.

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Speaker 1: It would be translated into a horizontal motion, so that

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Speaker 1: that momentum that you're transferring would be in the proper direction.

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Speaker 1: And that's what we're talking about. The working principle behind

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Speaker 1: the battering ram is the transfer of momentum. Momentum quick

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Speaker 1: recap for people who don't remember their physics. It's the

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Speaker 1: quantity of motion and a moving body. And the way

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Speaker 1: you arrive at the quantity of momentum is by multiplying

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Speaker 1: the mass of a moving body by its velocity, So

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Speaker 1: that means momentum of a small object that's moving very

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Speaker 1: very very fast can be the same as a large

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Speaker 1: object moving much more slowly if the numbers work out

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Speaker 1: the right way. But if something is really big and

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Speaker 1: really fast. It has a whole lot of momentum to it,

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Speaker 1: and I've got some funny stories about momentum. I had

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Speaker 1: to explain this to a friend of mine at the

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Speaker 1: Renaissance Festival. There was a moment in a dance, a

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Speaker 1: dance in which it is possible to steal the partner

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Speaker 1: of another person, in which I was trying to steal

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Speaker 1: the queen from the king. The king being played by

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Speaker 1: a guy who looked an awful lot like Henry the Eighth,

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Speaker 1: including Henry the Eighth's impressive mass. Fellow collided with me.

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Speaker 1: He gave me a little hip check, and he wasn't

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Speaker 1: moving fast, but he did outweigh me by a significant amount,

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Speaker 1: and so I went flying, And thus the transfer of

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Speaker 1: momentum was demonstrated in a very real and ultimately painful way.

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Speaker 1: I have since forgiven him. It actually was pretty funny,

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Speaker 1: but I did sprain both my wrist and my ankle

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Speaker 1: in that incident. So with battering rams, your desired outcome

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Speaker 1: is to have a very large mass, and you want

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Speaker 1: it to move really quickly so that you can result

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Speaker 1: in this large amount of momentum that you transfer to

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Speaker 1: a stationary object like the wall or the gate and

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Speaker 1: thus cause.

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Speaker 2: Damage to it.

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Speaker 1: So once battering rams started getting better, obviously cities needed

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Speaker 1: to respond and they began to reinforce their walls, making

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Speaker 1: them thicker at the base and trying to create new

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Speaker 1: strategies to repel battering ram assaults. My favorite battering ram

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Speaker 1: is actually a fictional one, like Grand Grand was the

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Speaker 1: battering ram in Lord of the Rings. It was from

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Speaker 1: Sauron's army. They used it in the siege on Minas Tirith,

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Speaker 1: and it was one hundred feet long and had a

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Speaker 1: metal cap that was shaped like a wolf, and in

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Speaker 1: most of the depictions I've seen, the wolf has also

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Speaker 1: got some sort of fire or lava coming out of

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Speaker 1: its mouth, making it pretty intimidating.

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Speaker 2: Awesome image. Really.

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Speaker 1: Another ancient siege engine similar to this in the sense

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Speaker 1: that you had to get super close to your target,

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Speaker 1: was the siege tower. This is a pretty simple concept.

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Speaker 1: It's usually it's like a tower that's on wheels, and

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Speaker 1: you push this tower up against the city wall that

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Speaker 1: you want to you want to get past, and you

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Speaker 1: have a gang plank at the top of the tower

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Speaker 1: that you lower so that it rests on the city wall,

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Speaker 1: and then your force just goes through the siege tower,

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Speaker 1: across the gang plank and into the city and you

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Speaker 1: bipe past the wall. Entirely very basic idea. Obviously, things

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Speaker 1: could go wrong. The tower if it were set on fire,

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Speaker 1: could end up causing you to lose quite a few

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Speaker 1: of your men.

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Speaker 2: And also there.

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Speaker 1: Are lots of different ways to create obstacles to make

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Speaker 1: it more difficult to get the tower up against a

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Speaker 1: city wall.

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Speaker 2: One of those would be.

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Speaker 1: Moats, So your basic moat around a castle was really

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Speaker 1: a defense against siege engines. Like this, it meant that

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Speaker 1: it was much harder to get something like a siege

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Speaker 1: tower up against the castle walls because you had to

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Speaker 1: get across the moat first, and the moat might either

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Speaker 1: be dry or it could be filled with water. Not

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Speaker 1: all moats were water. In fact, most of them weren't.

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Speaker 1: Most of them were essentially just a very big ditch

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Speaker 1: around the fortified area, so you would have to find

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Speaker 1: a way to bridge that gap if you were an

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Speaker 1: attacker to allow your siege engine to roll over the moat,

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Speaker 1: So you had to build like essentially a temporary bridge

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Speaker 1: to allow the siege engine to roll over it and

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Speaker 1: get access to the city wall, and another defense was

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Speaker 1: to redesign city walls. In the first place, Engineers began

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Speaker 1: to make walls that were very thick at the base

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Speaker 1: and would slope from the top down to the base,

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Speaker 1: and that slope meant that the top of the wall

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Speaker 1: would be further away from a tower than the base

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Speaker 1: of the wall because it sloped away from the outside.

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Speaker 1: So that meant that your gang plank had to be

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Speaker 1: longer in order to reach from the siege tower to

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Speaker 1: the top of the city wall. And gang planks were

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Speaker 1: really the weak points of the siege towers. Assuming that

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Speaker 1: you've major siege tower as fireproof as you can manage,

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Speaker 1: which again mostly involved putting the hides of animals on

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Speaker 1: the outside of the tower and wetting them down, drenching

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Speaker 1: them in water as much as you possibly can. Then,

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Speaker 1: once you set down the gang plank and you have

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Speaker 1: attackers going across, their most vulnerable when they are on

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Speaker 1: that gang plank. They're standing over the height of the wall.

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Speaker 1: There's probably a moat below them. The gang plank's probably

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Speaker 1: not incredibly sturdy or stable. So the further away the

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Speaker 1: top of the siege tower is from the top of

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Speaker 1: the wall, the harder it is for the attackers to

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Speaker 1: get over. So that was just a basic defense mechanism,

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Speaker 1: was to build these sloping walls for cities to help

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Speaker 1: protect against siege engines. Now, both siege towers and battering

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Speaker 1: rams were made obsolete by the invention of cannons later on.

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Speaker 1: I'll talk about cannons toward the end of this episode.

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Speaker 1: Cannons actually made those high city walls obsolete in the

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Speaker 1: first place. Higher walls were more vulnerable to cannon fire,

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Speaker 1: and so the design of city fortifications had to completely

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Speaker 1: change once those became a major element in warfare. At

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Speaker 1: that point, those siege engines began to fade into history.

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Speaker 1: You didn't really see them anymore. But I'll get more

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Speaker 1: into cannons a little bit later in the episode. And

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you've already noted that the major disadvantage to

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Speaker 1: both battering rams and siege towers is that you have

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Speaker 1: to get close to your target for them to work.

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Speaker 1: If the defending city has set up other defenses like

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Speaker 1: those trenches or pits or spikes, and they have stuff

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Speaker 1: like hot oil or flaming weapons, getting close isn't terribly attractive.

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Speaker 1: You would much prefer to batter the city from a distance,

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Speaker 1: and so attackers began to design new engines, things that

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Speaker 1: could allow attacks for much further away.

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Speaker 2: So next I'll.

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Speaker 1: Talk about some of the massive projectile weapons that were used,

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Speaker 1: and they relied purely on mechanical physics to hurl objects

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Speaker 1: at walls.

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Speaker 2: They're pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: Before I do that, let's take a quick break to

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Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. So the first project al seize engine

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Speaker 1: I really want to talk about is the ballista. And

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Speaker 1: if you were to take a casual glance at a blista,

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Speaker 1: you might think it's an enormous crossbow, and it does

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Speaker 1: resemble a crossbow. But they crossbow and the ballista work

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Speaker 1: on two different principles, two different types of tension. The

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Speaker 1: operation of the ballista depends upon two torsion springs, whereas

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Speaker 1: the crossbow depends upon the natural tension of the bow itself.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about torsion springs. Torsion springs work by twisting.

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Speaker 1: They store mechanical energy when you twist the torsion spring,

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Speaker 1: and when you release the spring, it unleashes that mechanical

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Speaker 1: energy through untwisting, So it's winding and unwinding when you

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Speaker 1: wind it up. You've got the mechanical energy, and when

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Speaker 1: you let it go, it unwinds itself and releases that

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Speaker 1: mechanical energy.

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Speaker 2: To make a.

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Speaker 1: Ballista, you need a pair of torsion springs that you

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Speaker 1: can twist tightly so that when you release them, they

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Speaker 1: unleash that mechanical force in such a way as to

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Speaker 1: throw a projectile, typically a large dart with an iron

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Speaker 1: tip at a target. Now, in ancient times, a torsion

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Speaker 1: spring might look like a loop of some stretchy elastic material.

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Speaker 1: That material was often either hair from animals sometimes humans,

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Speaker 1: all woven together to make really strong ropes, or sometimes

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Speaker 1: it was ligaments and other tissue that was turned into

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Speaker 1: this kind of elastic material and then looped around a

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Speaker 1: frame like a skein that's inside a frame. So imagine

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Speaker 1: a loop of material. In fact, just imagine a rubber band,

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Speaker 1: and imagine that you've got two pegs that are a

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Speaker 1: few inches apart from each other. They're further apart than

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Speaker 1: the length of the rubber band, so you have to

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Speaker 1: stretch the rubber band a little bit to loop either

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Speaker 1: end over the two pegs. Put more rubber bands that

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Speaker 1: are the same length over those two pegs, so you've

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Speaker 1: got a few of them, maybe four or five. These

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Speaker 1: rubber bands represent an unwound torsion spring. If you then

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Speaker 1: inserted a throwing arm, what would be considered like the

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Speaker 1: shaft of a throwing arm, into that gap the middle

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Speaker 1: of all those rubber bands, and then use it to

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Speaker 1: twist the rubber bands in a circle, either clockwise or counterclockwise,

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Speaker 1: you would create the torsion. This twisted tension. You loop

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Speaker 1: them over and over again. You can do this with

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Speaker 1: a pencil, so again, just have a rubber band. You

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Speaker 1: can even have maybe someone stand in front of you

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Speaker 1: putting their two thumbs up, and you loop the rubber

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Speaker 1: bands around their two thumbs so that they're stretching them together.

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Speaker 1: You put a pencil in there. You twist the pencil

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Speaker 1: around a few times so that it's twisting the rubber bands,

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Speaker 1: and you'll start building up that tension. If you let

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Speaker 1: go of the pencil, then it will unleash all that

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Speaker 1: mechanical energy and it'll make the pencil flip around like crazy.

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Speaker 1: Make sure you use an unsharpened pencil, and be very

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Speaker 1: careful with this sort of stuff because it might fly

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Speaker 1: up and hit you in the face. But this is

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Speaker 1: the basic principle of the ballista. Now, with the ballista,

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Speaker 1: you have two of these torsion springs, and that meant

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Speaker 1: that they're actually vertically aligned, not horizontally aligned. In other words,

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Speaker 1: you would have imagine you have one thumb higher than

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Speaker 1: the other thumb directly in front of you, and you

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Speaker 1: put the rubber bands on so that you were holding

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Speaker 1: the loop that way.

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Speaker 2: That's the way the ballista.

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Speaker 1: Torsion springs are aligned. You have to have those that

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Speaker 1: vertical alignment, and they're parallel to each other. And between

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Speaker 1: the two torsion springs you have your stock or channel.

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Speaker 1: That's where the projectile moves through. So with a crossbow,

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Speaker 1: this would be where the bolt would slide through as

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Speaker 1: it's being launched from the crossbow. Same sort of thing

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Speaker 1: with a ballista. It's got that stock with a channel

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Speaker 1: in it. That's where the projectile moves through it, and

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Speaker 1: it's between these two vertically aligned torsion springs. So you've

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Speaker 1: got your enormous dart loaded into your blista, and you've

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Speaker 1: got your two vertically aligned torsion springs. In each torsion spring,

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Speaker 1: you have a throwing arm. Now the torsion spring on

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Speaker 1: the left side is wound counterclockwise if you were looking

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Speaker 1: at it from above. That means that when the tension releases,

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Speaker 1: it's going to spin its throwing arm in a clockwise direction.

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Speaker 1: The torsion spring on the right side is the opposite.

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Speaker 1: It's wound clockwise, so that when you release the tension,

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Speaker 1: it will spin the throwing arm counterclockwise. And on the

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Speaker 1: opposite end of the throwing arm, you have a line

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Speaker 1: attaching the two together, a rope if you will, or

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Speaker 1: a string. This rope is looped around the end of

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Speaker 1: your projectile. This is the thing that's going to transfer

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Speaker 1: the force to the projectile and make it fly at

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Speaker 1: your target. So just imagine you've got this crossbow looking

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Speaker 1: thing in front of you. The two arms of the

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Speaker 1: ballista in its rest position you haven't wound it yet,

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Speaker 1: are extended outward to the side, so the left one

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Speaker 1: is almost parallel with the front of the ballista, the

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Speaker 1: right one is almost parallel with the ballista, and you

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Speaker 1: have a device called a windless. The windless is what

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Speaker 1: allows you to crank back those arms. It's creating tension

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Speaker 1: in those torsion springs, so it starts to twist the

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Speaker 1: torsion springs, and as a result, the two throwing arms

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Speaker 1: start tilting back towards you. It's they bend backwards, although

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Speaker 1: the torsion the throwing arms themselves are not bending, it's

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Speaker 1: just the torsion springs are rotating as you're twisting them, so.

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Speaker 2: They've bend backward.

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Speaker 1: Now that means that you start getting slack in that

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Speaker 1: rope that's between the two ends of the throwing arms.

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Speaker 1: You can use that slack to put it behind your projectile.

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Speaker 1: And when you release the tension on those torsion springs,

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Speaker 1: they untwist. That pulls the throwing arms forward, and that

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Speaker 1: pulls that rope forward as well, transferring the energy to

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Speaker 1: your projectile and shooting it at your target. It's pretty

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Speaker 1: cool to see this, I mean, it's interesting to see

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Speaker 1: this as two torsion springs as opposed to a crossbow,

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Speaker 1: which would just use the tension of the material itself,

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Speaker 1: the wood, if you will, of the bow. It's all

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Speaker 1: due to mechanical physics. You don't need any chemicals to

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Speaker 1: do this kind of seige engine, and you could also

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Speaker 1: just build this thing when you needed it. In fact,

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Speaker 1: most seiege engines were constructed at site the siege was happening.

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Speaker 1: Because they were so big and heavy that moving them

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Speaker 1: from one place across country to another place was not

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Speaker 1: really practical. So usually we just go to the closest forest,

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Speaker 1: cut down some logs, and have some workers start to

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Speaker 1: build seage engines right there on site, wheel them into

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Speaker 1: place so that they're generally pointed at the thing you

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Speaker 1: want to shoot at, and then you start firing. And

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Speaker 1: the blista was an early version of that. The earliest

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Speaker 1: ones were in the BCE era. You would later see

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Speaker 1: them go all the way up through the Middle Ages.

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Speaker 1: They were, however, not terribly mobile. You could put wheels

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Speaker 1: on the cart for a ballista so that you could

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Speaker 1: at least wheel them into place, but it wasn't It's

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Speaker 1: not like you could easily move them once you planted them.

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Speaker 1: They were pretty much stationary once you were firing, and

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Speaker 1: that meant that they were pretty attractive targets. They were

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Speaker 1: very accurate, but they didn't hurl things at incredible distances.

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Speaker 1: You can get a decent distance with them, but they

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Speaker 1: fired in a very low arc like. Essentially it was

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Speaker 1: a straight line from the ballista to the target. It

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Speaker 1: kind of came out horizontally that way, it didn't fire

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Speaker 1: in an arc the way catapults and tribuchatse did, and

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Speaker 1: it also did comparatively less damage than catapults and tribuchase,

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Speaker 1: largely because the projectiles it fired didn't have a lot

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Speaker 1: of mass to them compared to the rocks that you

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Speaker 1: could fire from a catapult or a tribuchet. And like

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Speaker 1: I said, crossbows or bows in general work in a

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Speaker 1: very similar way, but this case it's just tension of

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Speaker 1: the material itself as opposed to a torsion spring, So

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Speaker 1: it's your basic spring action, but it's the actual tension

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Speaker 1: of the wood itself. Torsion springs are also very important

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Speaker 1: in other types of seize engines, particularly different types of catapults. Now,

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Speaker 1: the nomenclature here it gets a little confusing because a

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Speaker 1: lot of people use the word catapult to refer to

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Speaker 1: a very specific type of siege engine, and other people

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Speaker 1: use catapult to describe an entire family of siege engines,

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Speaker 1: including ballista in some cases. But essentially, catapults were meant

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Speaker 1: to hurl massive objects through the air. So in order

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Speaker 1: to avoid confusion, I'm going to talk about the manganel

435
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: and the trebuchet, which are often both lumped under the

436
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 1: general category of catapult, but they operate in very different ways.

437
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:35,399
Speaker 1: So let's start with the manganel, which was invented before

438
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:38,560
Speaker 1: the tribuchet. The manganel was a siege engine of the

439
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, so it came into development after the ballista.

440
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 1: Ballista were still being used in siegees at that time,

441
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:50,919
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like a one armed ballista but

442
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: popped on its side. So the ballista looks like a crossbow,

443
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 1: which has the horizontal bow, but if you were to

444
00:26:59,680 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 1: wheel an actual bow, like the kind you fire arrows from,

445
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: you would hold it vertically. Well, the manganel is like that.

446
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 1: It's vertical, but it only has one arm. You don't

447
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: have a lower half to it. There's just the throwing

448
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: arm and the torsion spring, and the torsion spring is

449
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 1: aligned horizontally instead of vertically, so it's like that first

450
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: example of the rubber bands I was talking about, where

451
00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: you're holding your thumbs side by side as the torsion spring.

452
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:29,360
Speaker 1: Same thing with the manganel. So the throwing arm when

453
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:32,840
Speaker 1: it's in its rest position is vertical more or less

454
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 1: there's actually typically a stop so that it can't go

455
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:40,000
Speaker 1: completely vertical. It'll usually be at a pretty high angle.

456
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:44,560
Speaker 1: When you wind the torsion spring, you pull the throwing

457
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: arm back until it's practically horizontal, and then you latch

458
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,480
Speaker 1: it in some way so that it stores that mechanical energy.

459
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: It doesn't just release it. You load your manganel, typically

460
00:27:57,040 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: with heavy stuff, and then you release the torsion spring

461
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 1: and that twists back to the rest position, which means

462
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: the throwing arm goes vertical and releases its projectile.

463
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 2: So a manganel could have this bowl like end.

464
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,640
Speaker 1: To it, and that's where you would put your various projectiles.

465
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 1: They might be rocks or fire pots, or, at least

466
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:22,000
Speaker 1: according to some accounts, dead stuff. The dead stuff was

467
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: meant to hurt defenders in two ways. First, it's pretty

468
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: psychologically devastating to have corpses thrown at you, true story. Second,

469
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: it was thought of as a way to introduce disease

470
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: into a fortified location, so it's a kind of biological warfare.

471
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: You just throw bloated corpses into a city. It's pretty gross,

472
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 1: and the whole idea was just to weaken defenses and

473
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: also increase the chance that the defenders would just give up,

474
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,320
Speaker 1: like they're throwing dead stuff at us. Let's just run

475
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: out the white flag and stop this. The Manganel fired

476
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: projectiles at high velocity and at a low arc, so

477
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: it was a higher arc than the ballista, which again

478
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: was pretty much a straight line, so there was a

479
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: slight arc to it.

480
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 2: But it was still fairly low.

481
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: It would aim stuff at walls, not typically over walls.

482
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 1: It could hurl heavier and therefore more devastating projectiles than

483
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: the ballista, but it was also less accurate than the

484
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: ballista was it was meant to destroy defensive structures rather

485
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: than go around them. If you look at the arc

486
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 1: of projectiles from siege engines, ballista are the lowest, Manganels

487
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 1: would be next, and then tribuchetes would be nice high

488
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: arcs now. According to the resources I looked at, manganels

489
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: could hurl projectiles as far as thirteen hundred feet, which

490
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:45,800
Speaker 1: is a pretty fair distance to throw a massive stone

491
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 1: using pure mechanical power. And like other seas engines, the

492
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: real genius behind the manganel was that it was pretty

493
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: simple to construct. You could again just build it on

494
00:29:55,160 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: location next I will talk about trebuchets and then lead

495
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 1: it with some cannon talk. But before I get into

496
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: all of that, let's take another quick break to thank

497
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: our sponsors, and now to talk.

498
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 2: About the Tributet.

499
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 1: It was a very different beast than the Manganel. It

500
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: was named after a word in Old French which means

501
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 1: to throw over, and that's kind of what.

502
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 2: The tribute did.

503
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: It threw projectiles in a high arc that could be

504
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 1: used to attack defensive walls or just bypass the walls

505
00:30:34,400 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: completely and hurl payloads into fortified cities. Having massive rocks

506
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: raining down on your homes is a powerful motivator when

507
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 1: it comes time to consider surrender. The Tributeha didn't depend

508
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: upon torsion springs the way Ballista and Menganelles did. Instead,

509
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:54,920
Speaker 1: it used a massive counterweight to provide the mechanical force

510
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,719
Speaker 1: to hurl payloads. So it's essentially a lever or if

511
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: you prefer a seesaw, so think of a seesaw, but

512
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: it has a long end and a short end. The

513
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:07,960
Speaker 1: counterweight is on the short end and the long end

514
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: is what hurls the payload. So seesaws are a pretty

515
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: good analogy. If you have a seesaw balanced in the center,

516
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: two identical weights will balance out. You put two kids

517
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: on there, the weigh the same. The seesaw's right there

518
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: in the middle. They should even out and just balance

519
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 1: each other. But if you move the seesaw so that

520
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: the pivot point is off center, then the equal weights

521
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: on either end will change the actual orientation of the seesaw.

522
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: The shorter end will end up sticking up in the

523
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: air and the longer end will rest against the ground. Now,

524
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: because your typical treviche uses a short arm to hold

525
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 1: the counterweight, that means by this little experiment we just

526
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: talked about, you would actually need a lot more weight

527
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 1: in the counterweight than you're going to have in the payload. Otherwise,

528
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: your payload just is going to sit on the ground

529
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 1: and the counterweight would just dangle in the air.

530
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 2: It would not have the weight.

531
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: Sufficient enough to pull the lever so that it flings

532
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:15,240
Speaker 1: your payload at your enemy. The counterweight was also typically hinged,

533
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: meaning that it could swing around on the end of

534
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: this short side of the tribute shay beam.

535
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 2: That allows it.

536
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: To swing around so it doesn't risk hitting the ground

537
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: and mucking everything up. It's kind of like a ferris

538
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:33,959
Speaker 1: wheel ride. The compartments on a farris wheel are hinged

539
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: so that people inside the ride are always in an

540
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: upright orientation with regard to the ground. The same is

541
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 1: true for tribute shay counterweights, at least with most of them.

542
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 3: Anyway.

543
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: Now, the huge throwing arm hurls payloads that are placed

544
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: in a sling, so it's not like it has a

545
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 1: bowl at the end of it, the way a manganel did,

546
00:32:54,960 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: at least not your typical tribute shay.

547
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 2: Typically you would.

548
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: Use a sling instead. So if you don't know what

549
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: a sling is, imagine a pocket and you have two

550
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: sides of this pocket with chords coming from those two sides,

551
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: one cord on each side, and typically the way you

552
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: would use a sling, As you put a rock in

553
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: the sling, you swing the sling around your head, you

554
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: let go of one of the chords while holding on

555
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 1: to the other one, and that releases the rock, slinging

556
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:31,640
Speaker 1: it at your target, hopefully and not behind you unless

557
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: you're me, in which case it goes wherever it wants

558
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: to go. Because I can't use a sling in.

559
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 2: A tribute shay.

560
00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: One of those two chords is permanently attached to the

561
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: long end of the arm, so you've got one end

562
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 1: of the sling permanently affixed to the tribute shay the

563
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: other cord. The other end has a large ring at

564
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 1: the very end of it, and on the very end

565
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: of the throwing arm itself there's a little projection called

566
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:06,160
Speaker 1: the finger that extends outward at a certain angle from

567
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: the end of the beam. And by a certain angle,

568
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: I mean you determine what the angle is when you

569
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 1: build the tribute shape, so if you like it, you

570
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: should have put a ring on it.

571
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 2: So that's what you do with the tribute shay.

572
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: You slide the sling's ring over the finger.

573
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 2: So when you want to.

574
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: Fire a payload, you have to raise the counterweight into

575
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: the upright position and lock it in place, as typically

576
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: you have a mechanism there to keep it from sliding

577
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 1: back down or to swinging back down is the better

578
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: way to say it. And then you load your sling

579
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,359
Speaker 1: with whatever your payload is, like a giant rock.

580
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 2: You then take.

581
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 1: The ring that's on one end and you slide it

582
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:51,720
Speaker 1: over the finger of the throwing arm. When you fire

583
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 1: the tribute shay, you remove the block that allows the

584
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: counterweight to or locks the counterweight in place. I should

585
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 1: say this allows the counterweight to fall. It forces the

586
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: short end of the lever down. The long end is

587
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:13,960
Speaker 1: forced upward, and as it moves upward, centrifugal force, which

588
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:16,760
Speaker 1: is not really a force, but never mind that centri

589
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: centrifugal force pushes the sling outward. And so then as

590
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: the arm moves through this arc, the ring on the

591
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:31,480
Speaker 1: end of that finger slips free once it hits the

592
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,480
Speaker 1: proper angle as you determined when you were building the

593
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 1: tribu shape. When it slips free of the finger, it

594
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 1: releases the payload, throwing it in that high arc, and

595
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: it sails majestically overhead toward your target. And because the

596
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:50,799
Speaker 1: counterweight is heavy enough, it descends very quickly. So this

597
00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: means there's a very high increase in linear velocity for

598
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 1: the throwing arm and thus the payload. The release angle

599
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: of the payload is dependent upon the angle of the finger.

600
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: That little projection, relatively little projection at the end of

601
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 1: your tribute shap. So if you want to change the

602
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,560
Speaker 1: release angle, you changed the angle of the finger, and

603
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: then the ring will come off at a different point

604
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: in that arc, and thus the payload will fly in

605
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 1: a different arc towards your target. Of course, you're probably

606
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:25,720
Speaker 1: not using perfectly uniform stones, so it's not an exact science.

607
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: You might be using stones of slightly different weights, which

608
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: means that that's gonna change the arc as well, but

609
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:37,240
Speaker 1: still the principle is fairly sound. And then we get

610
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: to the invention, and more importantly, the employment of gunpowder

611
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 1: in siege weaponry. Gunpowder was actually invented in Asia centuries

612
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:50,839
Speaker 1: before it became a useful tool in warfare, but it

613
00:36:50,920 --> 00:36:53,439
Speaker 1: really wasn't until about the fifteenth century that you would

614
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:57,360
Speaker 1: see massive artillery guns regularly utilized in medieval Europe.

615
00:36:57,400 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 2: There were a lot of earlier.

616
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: Examples and a lot of historical accounts that at least

617
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: say that canons were in use, although the definition of

618
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: canon has changed dramatically over the centuries, so some of

619
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: those accounts are difficult to verify, simply because the canon

620
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 1: that's being referred to in one battle maybe a significantly

621
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:24,120
Speaker 1: different kind of weapon than one from another battle.

622
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 2: There's definitely some.

623
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:32,000
Speaker 1: Evidence of canons being used in sieges, though, and in

624
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:36,800
Speaker 1: the One Hundred Years War in Northern France. England employed

625
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 1: some canons in a battle in thirteen forty six. How

626
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:42,800
Speaker 1: many canons, Well, that kind of depends upon which historical

627
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,840
Speaker 1: account you believe. It's somewhere between five and twenty six.

628
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 1: And the English won the battle. So was that because

629
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 1: of the devastating power of their fully operational deaths I'm

630
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: sorry canons. Probably not. In fact, the English canons likely

631
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:01,319
Speaker 1: did very little actual damage against the Genoese mercenaries they

632
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 1: were fighting. The Genoese mercenaries were fighting on behalf of France,

633
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:08,359
Speaker 1: but it really scared the pantaloons off those guys, because

634
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 1: the Genoese were really rattled by those loud, smoky weapons,

635
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: and they were soundly defeated. But the actual defeat came

636
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: at the hands of traditional English soldiers wielding stuff like

637
00:38:19,920 --> 00:38:24,280
Speaker 1: swords and axes and bows, rather than the canons. And besides,

638
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 1: that's not even really a siege, so I'm not really

639
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:30,240
Speaker 1: going to talk any more about it. By sixteen seventy

640
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:32,880
Speaker 1: you'd actually see the word canon being used to describe

641
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:38,279
Speaker 1: specific types of guns. Mounted guns, typically stationary ones like

642
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:40,560
Speaker 1: you could roll them into place, but they weren't meant

643
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: to be moved around rapidly. The biggest one at that

644
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 1: time was called the Canon Royal, and typically a Canon

645
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:52,239
Speaker 1: Royal would weigh around eight thousand pounds or three six

646
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty kilograms if you prefer and it could

647
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: fire cannon balls weighing at around sixty three pounds or

648
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: twenty eight kilograms. That's SIEV. Then you had whole Canon

649
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 1: and Dimi cannon guns. Those were of decreasing size and

650
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 1: weight and could fire smaller cannon balls, And by smaller

651
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:13,240
Speaker 1: I mean that the smallest got down to be about

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00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 1: twenty eight pounds. They're still really heavy, particularly if you

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00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 1: compare them to the types of Canon you'd find on

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00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 1: sailing ships a century later.

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00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:24,080
Speaker 2: Eventually we would refer.

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00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: To canon by the weight of the shot they fired.

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00:39:29,120 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 1: What kind of cannon ball would they fire? So if

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00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:34,759
Speaker 1: you hear about a ten pound gun, it meant that

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00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: the shot it fired weighed ten pounds. The gun itself

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00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 1: didn't weigh ten pounds, it weighed weigh more than that,

661
00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 1: but the cannon balls weighed ten pounds. So if you

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00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:47,040
Speaker 1: hear about a twenty pounder, that meant that the cannon

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00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:48,240
Speaker 1: balls weighed twenty pounds.

664
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 2: So the bigger, the poundage.

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00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 1: That just means the heavier the shot, and thus the

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00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 1: more damage the canon would do if you hit what

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00:39:56,360 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: you were aiming at. Well, the canon made early your

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00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: city defenses completely useless. High walls were not good protection

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00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: against cannon fire, which typically fire in a pretty low

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00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:12,400
Speaker 1: arc at a very high velocity, so instead new defenses

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00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: were invented. Essentially, new walls were built, and these were

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00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:18,960
Speaker 1: lower walls and thicker walls. Defensive walls were made to

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00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 1: withstand high impacts from cannon fire, and because defenders would

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00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 1: often have guns of their own, traditional methods of breaching

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00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 1: walls were pretty bad choices. It doesn't make a whole

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00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: lot of sense to wheel a siege engine slowly toward

677
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: a wall if you're being fired upon by cannon, you'd

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00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: be a sitting duck. So it completely changed warfare from

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00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: that moment forward. You also saw other changes as well,

680
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: from armor to swords and all sorts of stuff, all

681
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:55,040
Speaker 1: because gunpowder had entered the scene. Canons themselves are fascinating

682
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: all the way, from the early bronze guns to the

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00:40:57,560 --> 00:41:00,320
Speaker 1: steel guns that redefined warfare yet again, But that warrants

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00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: it's own episode. That was tech stuff is under Siege,

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00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: which originally published April twelfth, twenty seventeen.

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00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed that.

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00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 3: Hope you learned.

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00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 1: Something about, you know, sort of an old kind of technology.

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00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:15,759
Speaker 1: I really enjoy doing those kinds of episodes, Like I

690
00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: love doing the stuff that's cutting edge and bleeding edge tech.

691
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:21,759
Speaker 1: I really like learning about that and talking about it.

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00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:26,719
Speaker 1: But I also like looking back on old technologies. It

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00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: is unfortunate that a lot of old technologies were mostly

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00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: dedicated to how to, you know, make someone else not

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00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 1: be alive anymore. But you know, not all of them

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00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:39,280
Speaker 1: were like that, just a lot of them. So maybe

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00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,640
Speaker 1: I will look back and see if I can find

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00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:45,360
Speaker 1: some interesting technologies that were not meant to just hurt

699
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 1: or may more kill people, but to do other things

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00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:52,319
Speaker 1: as well or instead, I guess I should say. And

701
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: that would be fun to kind of look up some

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00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 1: other old technologies because I'm missdoing those. It's been a

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00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: while since I've done one. Hope you are all well,

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00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff

705
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

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00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 1: your favorite shows,