Archimedes
Archimedes names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Archimedes ar'ki-me'des (287-213 B
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
ar'ki-me'des (287-213 B. C.), a philosopher of Syracuse. He is supposed to have studied at the peculiar university connected with the Alexandrian library. While in Egypt, so it is said, he invented what is known as Archimedes' screw. It consists of a hollow tube, wound in a spiral fashion around a central cylinder. If the cylinder be placed in a slanting position, with the lower end of the tube under water, and the cylinder turned with a crank, water may be elevated through the spiral. This device was of use to the Egyptians in draining their lower lands after the overflow of the Nile. It is still in use in Holland, where water screws are turned by windmills to drain the lowlands behind the dikes. Archimedes, speaking of the lever, is said to have declared, "Give me a place to stand and I will move the world." Archimedes is credited with the discovery of the principle known by his name, namely that if a solid be immersed in a liquid, the loss of weight by the solid is equal to the weight of the amount of liquid displaced. A cubic inch of silver and a cubic inch of gold immersed in a liquid displace a cubic inch each, and suffer an equal loss of weight; but a pound of gold occupies less space than a pound of silver. It therefore displaces less of the liquid and suffers a smaller loss of weight. When immersed in water, gold loses a little less than one-nineteenth of its weight; silver considerably more than one-tenth. A story runs to the effect that King Hiero trusted an artificer with a quantity of gold out of which to make him a crown, but that, having occasion to doubt the honesty of the workman, he sent the crown to Archimedes for an examination. While in a public bath and noticing the height to which his own body caused the water to rise in the tub, it occurred to the philosopher that if he were to ascertain the loss of weight of gold in water, and compare it with the weight of the crown in water, he could determine the amount of gold that had been stolen and replaced by a baser and lighter metal. So overjoyed was he, so the story goes, that he sprang from the bath and ran home without a stitch of clothing, crying, "Eureka, Eureka! I have found it! I have found it!" During the siege of his native city Archimedes is said to have set fire to a Roman ship with a burning glass. He perished at the hands of a common Roman soldier, who knew no better than to slay the greatest scientist of the day. Cicero, once appointed governor of Sicily, reported finding the tomb of Archimedes overgrown with briars. His monument bore an inscription of a cylinder in which a sphere was inscribed, a fitting testimonial to Archimedes' discovery of their relative magnitude.
Archimedes A famous geometrician of Syracuse who invented a machine
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A famous geometrician of Syracuse who invented a machine of glass that represented the motion of the heavenly bodies. When Marcellus , the Roman consul, besieged Syracuse, Archimedes constructed machines which suddenly raised into the air the ships of the enemy, which then fell into the sea and were sunk. He also set fire to the ships with burning-glasses. When the enemy were in possession of the town, a soldier, not knowing who he was, killed him, B. C. 212. Arctos (The Bear). Two constellations near the North Pole . - (1) The Great Bear (Ursa Major), also called the Wagon (plaustrum). The ancient Italian name of this constellation was Septem Triones, that is, the Seven Plowing Oxen, also Septentrio, and with the epithet Major to distinguish it from the Septentrio Minor, or Lesser Bear.- (2) The Lesser or Little Bear (Ursa Minor), likewise called the Wagon, and Cynosura (dog's tail) from the resemblance of the constellation to the upturned curl of a dog's tail.
Archimedes PRINCIPLE OF, a well known principle in hydrostatics
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
PRINCIPLE OF, a well known principle in hydrostatics, the discovery of which is attributed to the celebrated philosopher whose name it bears. This important theorem may be thus defined: When a solid is immersed in a fluid, it loses a portion of its weight, and this portion is equal to the weight of the fluid which it displaces, that is, to the weight of its own bulk of the fluid. This ingenious method is one way of ascertaining the specific gravity of solids, but it is not the most exact.
Archimedes most famous of ancient mathematicians
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
most famous of ancient mathematicians, was a native of Syracuse. He possessed equal knowledge of the sciences of astronomy, geometry, hydrostatics, mechanics, and optics. cics. Among his inventions were the combination of pulleys for lifting heavy weights, the revolving screw, and a spherical representation of the motion of the heavenly bodies. When Syracuse was taken by storm Archimedes was killed (212 b. c.). His burial place was afterward discovered by Cicero. Nine of the works of Archimedes have descended to posterity.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The life these accounts give is essentially the one scholars still tell: born at Syracuse, killed by a Roman soldier when the city fell in 212 BC, his tomb marked by the sphere in the cylinder that Cicero later found overgrown. What has changed is that we can now read more of him. In 1906 Johan Ludvig Heiberg identified a Greek prayer book in Constantinople as a palimpsest written over erased Archimedes texts, including 'The Method', in which he explains how he used mechanical reasoning and infinitesimals to guess results before proving them; the manuscript vanished, resurfaced at auction in 1998 and was read again with X-ray and multispectral imaging between 1999 and 2008. Neither Aiton's (1910) nor Collier's (1921) shows any sign of this, so their Archimedes is still chiefly the inventor of screws and burning-glasses rather than the mathematician who came nearest to calculus in antiquity; the burning-glass story itself is now generally treated as legend.
Written for this edition, 2026.