From Syracuse

Eureka!

Or, "I have found it."

And that's pretty much all I'd ever heard about Archimedes.

Archimedes was born in Syracuse. Sicily, that is. But, as Syracuse, NY, was named for Syracuse, Italy in 1825 when the Village of Syracuse was officially incorporated, we can claim a little shared heritage. The founders  of our city saw what they thought were some common features, such as the salt industry and a nearby town called "Salina." 

Exploring an article on the Antikythera recently, I read that Archimedes was cited as having been a possible creator of the ancient "computing" device, given his amazing array of discoveries in math, engineering, and physics.

The Antikythera is a startling device that uses gears, equations, dials and pins to provide, as the article puts it, "a dizzying display of astronomical information." ("Will We Ever Unlock Its Secrets?" by Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, March-April 2025). No one is certain how the 2000 year-old device was created, or precisely for what, but since its discovery in 1900, archaeologists, scientists, mathematicians and puzzle-solvers have been seeking answers to its enigmatic design and purpose.

As fascinating as that is to explore, I became curious about Archimedes, about whom most school children will have heard his supposed exclamation when he realized that his body displaced a very specific amount of water as he bathed. The bathing part, as it turns out, is fanciful, but Archimedes was tasked with discovering whether a "golden crown" (to be bestowed upon Syracusan Hiero, a commander during the Carthaginian war, who was elected "king") was real, solid gold. He solved the problem with what became known as the "Archimedes principle" of buoyancy, that an "upward buoyant force that is exerted in a body immersed in a fluid, whether fully or partially, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces." His principle is essential to the study of fluid mechanics, and explains the phenomenon we all witness when we pour liquid over ice. The ice will float and gradually melt. Presuming we drink nothing from the glass the ice and liquid are in, the melted ice will not overflow the glass, but the level of fluid will remain constant.

For most scientists or mathematicians, such a discovery - and one so relatively early in the examination of the subject - would be plenty. But some of Archimedes other work reads like science fiction.

If calculating an area challenged you in Geometry, Archimedes took it to eleven with his proofs of the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid in revolution and the area of a spiral.

Perhaps his interest in the spiral and displacement led to his invention of a screw used for raising water - still considered a key invention - known as the Archimedes Screw. The device, which Archimedes is said to have encountered in some form during his time studying in Egypt, was described by the man in about 234 BCE, and can be used as a pump (bringing water up from one level to another), or power generator (using water to turn the screw). Again, for the benefit of King Hiero, Archimedes is said to have designed what amounted to a bilge pump for one of Hiero's showy naval ships, using the hand-cranked version of the screw.

Another legend of Archimedes attributes to him the comment, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." Or as other phrasing has it, "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth." Either way, what was being lauded was the idea that very, very large loads can be moved using the lever - a long "arm" placed on a balance point. When force is exerted on one end, the other can lift an object much too big and dense to be moved with the same force by simple lifting. Again, Archimedes seems to have been focused on practical problems, as one use to which this idea was immediately put was the block-and-tackle pulley system, which allowed sailors to lift heavy objects otherwise too much to lift by sheer man-power. 

Expressing the "powers" of number (10 to the 10th, for example), the idea of the center of gravity, and an improvement on the catapult, are all among other feats of observation and calculation for which Archimedes is credited. He supposedly also suggested a device known as a "ship shaker," which was a claw on a sort of crane. When the crane was deployed, the claw could grab a ship or other large object, lifting it from its moorings, and overcoming it.

And another of his storied ideas - the one that struck me as most like a science fiction tale - was a sort of "death ray." And science fiction it may be, for scholars since the Renaissance have been arguing whether or not such a device was ever put to use. The idea was to create a series of mirrors in a parabolic shape, and focus the light of the sun on a ship or other target. The heat generated would possibly have caused the target to burn, or at the very least, render any people on or about it, slightly too warm to pose a threat.

Archimedes died in 212 when Syracuse was conquered, and it is unknown if he had married or had children. But whether or not his lineage carried on after him, his investigations, curiosity and reputation certainly did.