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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Keener, joined as always by staff writer

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Speaker 1: Jane McGrath. Hey, Jane, you didn't have to salute me,

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Speaker 1: but thank you very nice. I'm just fixing my hair,

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Speaker 1: my mistakes and mixed messages. So we get a lot

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Speaker 1: of emails asking questions about early American history and different

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Speaker 1: parts of European history, and you guys are also seemingly

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Speaker 1: really curious about people of the past. And we actually

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Speaker 1: had this great classic, no pun intended, article on Archimedes

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Speaker 1: that had been languishing in our que for a while,

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Speaker 1: so we thought it was time to talk about one

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Speaker 1: of the most legendary weapons of warfare and all of

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Speaker 1: the ancient world. So we have this great article in

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Speaker 1: the cycle. What was our comedies Death Ring by Collague

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Speaker 1: Josh Clark to give you some background or comedies, lived

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Speaker 1: in about the third century BC in Syracuse, and this

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Speaker 1: was basically modern day Sicily. It was a part of

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Speaker 1: modern day Sicily, but it was a part of the Greece.

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Speaker 1: It was under attack during his life by the Romans.

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Speaker 1: So just to give you guys sort of a visual

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Speaker 1: map of where Syracuse was. If you visualize Italy's boot,

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Speaker 1: you all pretty much know where Rome is. And a

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Speaker 1: little stone that the Buddhists kicking, well, that's about where

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Speaker 1: Syracuse wise. And at the other end of that stone

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Speaker 1: was the northernmost tip of Africa, and that's where the

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Speaker 1: ancient city of Carthage wise. And so we see an

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Speaker 1: ancient world that there was this huge conflict in which

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Speaker 1: Syracuse was embroiled, and it was sort of the monkey

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Speaker 1: in the middle between Carthage and Rome. And Egypt is

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Speaker 1: important as well. I know you and Josh did a

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Speaker 1: podcast before my time about Egypt's influence on Greek thinkers

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Speaker 1: and Archimedes, like many of his great thinkers, great Greek

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Speaker 1: thinkers of the time, traveled to Egypt and did a

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Speaker 1: lot of studying there, and that's where he learned a

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Speaker 1: lot of things to make him the brilliant mathematician inventor

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Speaker 1: that he became. He was most known for determining about

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Speaker 1: the approximate value of pie, as well as the fact

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Speaker 1: that the service area of the sphere is about four

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Speaker 1: times exactly the four times the area of the circle

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Speaker 1: that passes through the center of the sphere and things

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Speaker 1: like this. And in addition to all these things, he

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Speaker 1: made a lot of war machines. But he was actually

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Speaker 1: he was most proud of his geometric theories. And he

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Speaker 1: was interesting is that he requested it on his tomb

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Speaker 1: that it feature a cylinder object with a sphere and side,

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Speaker 1: so you can see how proud he was of his

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Speaker 1: geometric And here is sort of one of those incredibly

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Speaker 1: dumb geniuses. And I say that not to be rude,

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Speaker 1: but because he was often so absorbed in what he

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Speaker 1: was doing, whether it was calculus or some sort of

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Speaker 1: geometric theorem or something with the principle of hydrostatics, that

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Speaker 1: he would become so involved in his task at hand

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Speaker 1: that he would forget that his public behavior was seen

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Speaker 1: as a little bit ludicrous. Supposedly, when he discovered the

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Speaker 1: principle of hydrostatics, he was getting into the bathtub. And

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Speaker 1: basically what that principle says is that the amount of

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Speaker 1: water and object displaces it is equal to the weight

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Speaker 1: of that object in the water. Does that make sense. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: What he was trying to do at that point was

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Speaker 1: he was good friends with the king King Huron and

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Speaker 1: he had a wreath crown made of gold, but he's

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Speaker 1: the king suspected that it wasn't pure gold, but it

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Speaker 1: had some silver impurities, and he asked Archimedes to find

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Speaker 1: a way to figure out is this pure gold or not?

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Speaker 1: And this, uh, the displacement of water as you thought

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Speaker 1: we're talking about. Was he finally figured it out when

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Speaker 1: he got in the bath. Yeah, so that would have

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Speaker 1: been important to know the differences between the weight of

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Speaker 1: gold versus the weight of silver. So he would have

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Speaker 1: solved the king's dilemma, and he would have solved an

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Speaker 1: important dilemma of physical properties. And as legend go, as

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Speaker 1: when he discovered it, he said eureka, and he ran

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Speaker 1: down the straight black naked. So yeah, that's a curious

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Speaker 1: story as well, because there's another story that I hadn't

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Speaker 1: heard when I was researching for this podcast about his

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Speaker 1: bathing habits um was that Plutarch wrote that Archimedes was

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Speaker 1: so obsessed with math and geometry that his servants had

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Speaker 1: to force him to take bead this, and then even

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Speaker 1: while they were scribbing him down, he was writing geometric

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Speaker 1: figures on himself and on the walls and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: It was it was bizarre and brilliant child in a way. Gosh,

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Speaker 1: these mad geniuses, Well we degrass a little bit, but

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Speaker 1: not really, because it's all part and partial to understanding

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Speaker 1: the genius behind Archimedes. And in addition to his mathematical discoveries,

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Speaker 1: he's also known for perfecting the lever, as well as

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Speaker 1: a device called compound polly and a hydraulic screw. So

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Speaker 1: he was able to use all these different types of

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Speaker 1: simple tools to um essentially build complex but relatively simple

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Speaker 1: war machines, like, for instance, he used the principles of

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Speaker 1: a lever to construct a claw that could reach outside

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Speaker 1: the walls that bound Syracuse and actually pick up Roman

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Speaker 1: ships and destroy them. And he famously once said, give

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Speaker 1: me a lever long enough and a place to stand,

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Speaker 1: and I will move the world. And he wasn't just

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Speaker 1: talking out of his other end. He really meant that

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Speaker 1: he could use these very complex theorems develop practical wartime

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Speaker 1: devices that the city of Syracuse could use. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: historians like to point out that it's hard to distinguish

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Speaker 1: fact from fiction in his life, like the stories we

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Speaker 1: told you about the Eureka and the Bass story and

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Speaker 1: the quotes that he said that people remember they might

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Speaker 1: not have been true. Historians usually dismiss them. But some

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Speaker 1: things about his inventions and his life are really hard

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Speaker 1: to distinguish, even for historians. And that is especially true

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Speaker 1: when it comes to his historic death ray, which I

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Speaker 1: guess we can hear that it sort of sounds like

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Speaker 1: an ancient laser, like somehow our Comedies was able to

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Speaker 1: create a big laser that destroyed things in its path.

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Speaker 1: But it wasn't exactly like that. It was a much

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Speaker 1: a simpler machine that worked on basic roles of light

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Speaker 1: and heat. Yeah, and I think principles of of what

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Speaker 1: is concave versus what is convacts And according to Galen,

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Speaker 1: who wrote about the death ray some three d fifty

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Speaker 1: years after archimedes death, it worked like this. He would

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Speaker 1: position a series of people to hold a series of mirrors,

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Speaker 1: and he would instruct them very specifically which angle to

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Speaker 1: hold them at, and by concentrating a beam of light,

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Speaker 1: he could actually set Roman ships aflame. And we're talking

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Speaker 1: ships anywhere from I think two hundred to a thousand

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Speaker 1: feet away that were sort of undulating in the waves

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Speaker 1: of the Mediterranean. And it sounds a little bit suspect

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Speaker 1: for several reasons. First of all the fact that it

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Speaker 1: was first written about that many years after his death. Secondly,

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Speaker 1: another point being, this type of mirror warfare never became

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Speaker 1: part of the main arsenal. Why wouldn't anyone else used it?

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Speaker 1: If it was so effective, why didn't they take the

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Speaker 1: idea and use it for then on? Exactly? And I

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Speaker 1: guess my response to that would be just playing Devil's advocate.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it was so complex and so mathematically dense, how

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Speaker 1: one had to hold this complex series of mirrors that

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Speaker 1: no one got it except for Archimedes. Like that theory,

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Speaker 1: that's just a thought. Yeah, But I think, um, everyone

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Speaker 1: deserved so put in their two cents about whether this

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Speaker 1: could have happened, because they really don't know, and many

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Speaker 1: many people have tried, most notably um the myth Busters.

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Speaker 1: If you ever watched that show on the Discovery Channel.

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Speaker 1: They tried twice. They actually did it one time and

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Speaker 1: I think their first season, and they busted the myth.

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Speaker 1: They the way they set it up, they couldn't get

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Speaker 1: it to work, and they said it was implausible for

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Speaker 1: that Archimedes did and they got so many complaints after

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Speaker 1: this show aired They got a lot of complaints from

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Speaker 1: viewers emailing them saying, you're like, oh, what about this situation.

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Speaker 1: You ignored these possibilities that would have made it plausible.

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Speaker 1: And so they got so many complaints that they actually

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Speaker 1: did another show about it, and they challenged the viewers

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Speaker 1: to try to come up with a way that it

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Speaker 1: could be plausible, and they busted the myth even then,

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Speaker 1: and a grip of M I T students got together

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Speaker 1: and they were able to successfully set a ship on fire.

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Speaker 1: Granted it with a model ship. It was much much smaller.

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Speaker 1: It was only like, I think, a couple of hundred

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Speaker 1: feet away. It was stationary on a rooftop, and perhaps

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Speaker 1: that's the big clinker there. It wasn't undulating in the

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Speaker 1: way you know, if an object is sitting that still

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Speaker 1: and you're concentrating that much light on it, yeah, you

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Speaker 1: probably could set it on fire, but you have taken

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Speaker 1: to account the distance that it is away from you,

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Speaker 1: plus the fact that it's bobbing up and down. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they had a particularly cloudless day. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: possible that our comedies had that. And the M I T.

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Speaker 1: To give them credit, they did use like an oak

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Speaker 1: replica of the ship, which was probably what the Romans

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Speaker 1: would have used, and like you said that they undulating

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Speaker 1: waves would have made it, so it's definitely not a

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Speaker 1: stationary object. But there was another earlier experiment in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy three, a Greek engineer did use a boat that

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Speaker 1: was actually on the water as a rowboat. Um probably

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Speaker 1: not the same material the Romans would have used, but

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Speaker 1: he was able to get it on fire using an

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Speaker 1: array of mirrors. So in different, like different experiments, different

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Speaker 1: parts of it have been seen to be plausible. So

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Speaker 1: there's still no definite answer, right, And I think that

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Speaker 1: the engineer used as many as seventy different people to

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Speaker 1: hold mirrors that were pretty big, I think five ft

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Speaker 1: by three feet. So until there's a really uniform experiment

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Speaker 1: where the same number of people are used, the same

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Speaker 1: number of controls are set on it, I think it's

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Speaker 1: gonna be hard to say whether or not it was true.

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Speaker 1: But I will add another piece of knowledge that may

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Speaker 1: or may not influence whether you believe in the Death ray.

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Speaker 1: But have you heard of the Lighthouse of Alexandria Jane,

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Speaker 1: the very famous one. It's one of the seven Wonders

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Speaker 1: of the ancient world, and it was commissioned by art. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've heard an article about this a long time ago,

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Speaker 1: and when I was doing research for that many many

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Speaker 1: moons ago, I read that the mirror inside the lighthouse

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Speaker 1: was so strong a concave mirror, that it could provide

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Speaker 1: light to ships up two hundreds of miles away. And again,

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Speaker 1: that could be a tall tale, but another part of

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Speaker 1: the tale was that it was so strong that when

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Speaker 1: the light hit it just right, it could be angled

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Speaker 1: to set ships far away on fire. And I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: that's weird because construction began on the lighthouse around two

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Speaker 1: b C, just two years before our commutees would have

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Speaker 1: been born. Furthermore, our commedees, like you said, studied in Alexandria,

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Speaker 1: so he would have gone over when the lighthouse was

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Speaker 1: either being built or remodeled, because we knew it was

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Speaker 1: constantly remodeled, and he would have been there at least

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Speaker 1: to observe the engineers at work or the great minds

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Speaker 1: who were conceiving of how to build the lighthouse and

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Speaker 1: how to revamp the mirror system. So it's just interesting

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Speaker 1: he just blew the story. Would I don't know, I

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Speaker 1: don't know you guys are gonna have to email me

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Speaker 1: and tell tell me what you think. And this is

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Speaker 1: just something I happen to put two and two together.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if there's any connection between the types

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Speaker 1: of and the lighthouse and the type of mirror that

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Speaker 1: our communities would have used, but it's a thought. But

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Speaker 1: all the science aside, because that is not my forte.

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Speaker 1: Um Drawing conclusions is my forte I wanted to bring you,

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Speaker 1: guys just full circle to the story of the Siege

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Speaker 1: of Syracuse. Um. We know that this was a pretty

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Speaker 1: big war that was raging between the Carthaginians and the Romans,

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Speaker 1: and like we said, Syracuse was stuck right in the middle.

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Speaker 1: And the first Punic War we saw we saw a

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Speaker 1: Syracuse sort of siding with with Rome because they was

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Speaker 1: a tribute system established where they would provide the Romans

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Speaker 1: with grain and they would give them a little bit

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Speaker 1: of tribute and they'd be protected essentially. But then Hannibal

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Speaker 1: comes along and he is just so darn successful scaling

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Speaker 1: the Alps and breaking into Italy that Syracusans think, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe we need to side with Carthage. Rome did not

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Speaker 1: like that at all, so they sent this really scary

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Speaker 1: General Marcus Marcellus. First they sent him to a neighboring

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Speaker 1: town where he killed everyone. Then he moved on to Syracuse.

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Speaker 1: They heard he was coming, so they fortified the city

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Speaker 1: and they were able to keep them out for a

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Speaker 1: really long time, but then they broke in. And so

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Speaker 1: I think Dane has this one more fabulous anecdote that

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Speaker 1: they or may not be true about poor hapless Archimedes

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Speaker 1: absorbed in his work. And let me know it too,

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Speaker 1: that Marcellus is pretty adamant no one kill Archimedes. I

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Speaker 1: think he really respected this guy's genius and he was

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Speaker 1: pretty ticked off when he found out about this. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right. Like Canda said, Archimedes and his war machines

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Speaker 1: were able to hold them all for a while, but

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Speaker 1: they eventually got in in comedies. Was so wrapped up

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Speaker 1: in his geometric figures when when a soldier came to

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Speaker 1: arrest him and take him away, he screamed the soldier

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Speaker 1: and he was like, leave my circles alone. I think

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Speaker 1: in the loose translation, I love the use of circles,

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Speaker 1: like don't touch my circles and circles, and the soldier

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Speaker 1: got so upset that he killed Archimedes in a rage,

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Speaker 1: and according to Plutarch and Pliny, the elder Mary Salis

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Speaker 1: is very much grieved at this situation. But he was

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Speaker 1: not the nicest man. He broke into Syracuse on a

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Speaker 1: day when the Syracusans had abandoned their posts because they

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Speaker 1: were celebrating the festival of Artemus. So he was pretty sneaky,

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Speaker 1: and he'd known that if he was launching a snake attack,

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Speaker 1: he might lose the one guy he valued so much.

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Speaker 1: And who knows if he really loved Archimedes for the

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Speaker 1: crazy genius he was, or if you want to take

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Speaker 1: him back to rom to put him to work there.

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Speaker 1: We don't know. But that aside, all of these wonderful

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Speaker 1: musings that Jane and I have can be found not

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Speaker 1: only in our podcasts, but also in our brand new blog.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We both blog once a day and it's

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Speaker 1: called so if you miss some history Glass and it's

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Speaker 1: all on how stuff works dot com. So be sure

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Speaker 1: to visit the website to read our entries, our latest posts,

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Speaker 1: and also read the territy of this article what was

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Speaker 1: Archimedes death? Right on how stuff Works dot com for

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it

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