Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1909-07-28
A Romance
of 9ress
By ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
ARCHIMEDES = The Absent
Minded Discoverer.
Bv ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE


the ancient Sicilian city Of Syracuse
one day late in the third century,
B. c., rushed an elderly man, bald,
wild of eye, long of beard. He was
yelling at intervals the Greek word
"Eureka!" (I have discovered it!'D
Not a stitch of clothing covered him.
Nor was he aware of his own nude
state until arrested by the scandalized
authorities.
The man who thus unconventional
ly burst upon the public gaze was
Archimedes, greatest of old-time in
ventors and mathematician. The rea-
son for his peculiar action was that
certain amazing discovery he had
just worked out had so elated him
that he absent-mindedly forgot every
thing else in the joy of the moment.
And this is how the discovery was
made: King Hero, Greek ruler Of
Syracuse, had ordered a heavy and
beautiful gold crown constructed for
himself. He had reason to suspect
that the jeweler to whom he had in
trusted the task had cheated him by
mixing a quantity of alloy with the
gold that went into the making of this
royal emblem. But Hero had no
means of proving his suspicious. He
therefore sent for Archimedes, whom
he admired as the wisest man in his
realm, and asked him to find out some
way whereby he could make certain
of the presence and exact amount of
alloy in the crown.
Archimedes undertook the problem,
though he had no reason for suppos-
ing he could solve it. For days the
matter was ever on his mind. One
A Strange Prob tb,s nondorino he
lem and Its c+onnad into bic
sowing bath. AS he did so
he noticed that the tub, already full
to the brim, overlooked when his body
entered the water. This was sim
pie phenomenon A million people
had observed similar action on the
part of water, but to none of them
had it suggested any especial idea.
To Archimedes, however, the Incl
dent meant something. He instantly,
while still bathing, set to work on the
great "Archimedes Principle" still in
use This principle, briefly, asserts
that any object plunged into liquid
sustains an upward pressure equal to
the weight of the water it displaces.
In other words, that the body i'm
mersed loses as much weight while
under water as the weight of an equal
volume of the liquid itself. From this
rr-oc hut etc for To o1rf
an absurdly simple plan for determin-
ing the amount of alloy in Hieros
crown. He would drop the crown into
a vessel full of water and then, after
removing it, drop in an equal weight
of gold and watch the difference of
the two overfows.
Delighted at this double mental
feat, Archimedes leaped from the
bath and out into the streets shout
ing abroad his great discovery He
was heavily fined for his indecorous
action and rewarded by Hero with a
laurel crown for his invention.
Nor was this the only scientific dis
covery Archimedes made in Hiero's
behalf. The king had magnificent
galley whose hold became full of wa
ter. With the primitive appliances
of the time it was well-nigh impos-
sible to bail it. He appealed to Arch
imedes. The latter planned out a wa
ter-tight cylinder, which should run
from the bottom of the hold to the
upper air. Inside this cylinder he
arranged a long, spiral, close-fitting
screw, air tight, and twisted by a
crank from above. By turning this
screw the water was of course drawn
up from the hold through the cylinder
In mathematics Archimedes excelled
all men of his century. He worked out
the mutual relations between sphere
and cylinder and the measurement of
a circle and made
DeVises War En- known the science
9lnes A9ainst of leverage. The
Otys tues complex crank-and-
pulley are also Cf his devising BY
his various discoveries and inventions
he founded the entire art of mechan-
les in use today. To no other man do
mechanics, mathematics and physics
owe so much.
Those were the days of Greek de-
cadence. Marcellus, the Roman gen
eral, besieged Syracuse. Archimedes
at once turned his talents to account
in devising catapults and other war
engines that worked havoc on the in
vaders. He is even said to have ar
ranged collection of burning glasses
in such a way as to set fire once to
the attacking Roman fleet.
Marcellus, like all the world, re-
garded Archimedes with reverential
awe. He gave strict orders that, in
case the city should be captured,
Archimedes and all his property were
to be spared. But when, in 212 B. c.,
the Romans, after a three years
siege, stromed Syracuse, Archimedes
fell victim to his own absent-minded-
ness.