Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/96

 60 STATESMEN AND SAGES upon this method of detection, he did not wait a moment, but jumped joyfully out of the bath, and running forthwith toward his own house, called out with a loud voice that he had found what he sought. For as he ran he called out, in Greek, " Eureka ! Eureka ! I have found it ! I have found it ! " When his emo- tion had sobered down, he proceeded to investigate the subject calmly. He procured two masses of metal, each of equal weight with the crown one of gold and the other of silver and having filled a vessel very accurately with water, he plunged into it the silver, and marked the exact quantity of water that over- flowed. He then treated the gold in the same manner, and observed that a less quantity of water overflowed than before. He next plunged the crown into the same vessel full of water, and observed that it displaced more of the fluid than the gold had done, and less than the silver ; by which he inferred that the crown was neither pure gold nor pure silver, but a mixture of both. Hiero was so grat- ified with this result as to declare that from that moment he could never refuse to believe anything Archimedes told him. Travelling in Egypt, and observing the necessity of raising the water of the Nile to points which the river did not reach, as well as the difficulty of clearing the land from the periodical overflowings of the Nile, Archimedes invented for this purpose the screw which bears his name. It was likewise used as a pump to clear water from the holds of vessels ; and the name of Archimedes was held in great veneration by seamen on this account. The screw may be briefly de- scribed as a long spiral with its lower extremity immersed in the water, which, rising along the channels by the revolution of the machine on its axis, is dis- charged at the upper extremity. When applied to the propulsion of steam-ves- sels the screw is horizontal ; and being put in motion by a steam-engine, drives the water .backward, when its reaction, or return, propels the vessel. The mechanical ingenuity of Archimedes was next displayed in the various machines which he constructed for the defence of Syracuse during a three years' siege by the Romans. Among these inventions were catapults for throwing arrows, and ballistic for throwing masses of stone ; and iron hands or hooks attached to chains, thrown to catch the prows of the enemy's vessels, and then overturn them. He is likewise stated to have set their vessels on fire by burning- glasses ; this, however, rests upon modern authority, and Archimedes is rather believed to have set the ships on fire by machines for throwing lighted materials. After the storming of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier, who did not know who he was. The soldier inquired, but the philosopher, being intent upon a problem, begged that his diagram might not be disturbed ; upon >vhich the soldier put him to death. At his own request, expressed during his life, a sphere inscribed in a cylinder was sculptured on his tomb, in memory of his discovery that the solid contents of a sphere is exactly two-thirds of that of the circumscribing cylinder ; and by this means the memorial was afterward identi- fied. One hundred and fifty years after the death of Archimedes, when Cicero was residing in Sicily, he paid homage to his forgotten tomb. "During my quaestorship," says this illustrious Roman, " I diligently sought to discover the