page_title: Aqua Virgo
section_title: Lifting Tools
hierarchical_section_title: Aqua Virgo / Construction tools / Lifting Tools
caption_attribution_description: This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 76000178 More images English: Anchor windlass in the Forecastle of the sailing ship Balclutha. Composite image of two photographs by User:Leonard G.
context_page_description: The Aqua Virgo was one of the eleven Roman aqueducts that supplied the city of ancient Rome. The aqueduct fell into disuse with the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but was fully restored nearly a millennium later during the Italian Renaissance to take its current form as the Acqua Vergine. The Aqua Virgo was completed in 19 BC by Marcus Agrippa, during the reign of the emperor Augustus. Its source is just before the 8th milestone north of the Via Collatina, in a marshy area about 3 km from the Via Praenestina. It was also supplemented by several feeder channels along its course. The name is thought to be derived from the purity and clarity of the water because it does not chalk significantly. According to a legend repeated by Frontinus, thirsty Roman soldiers asked a young girl for water who directed them to the springs that later supplied the aqueduct; Aqua Virgo was named after her.
  Along its more-than-20 km length, the aqueduct dropped only 4m to reach Rome in the centre of the Campus Martius. At its height, the aqueduct was capable of supplying more than 100,000 cubic metres of water every day.
context_section_description: Many lifting tools would have been in use during the Roman times in the construction of temples, tall buildings, bridges, and arches to move large stone blocks and materials from for example a quarry to the job site and then lifted into place.
  The windlass consists of a drum on a horizontal axle anchored against displacement. Tensioning a rope to the drum by using some form of a grip the drum is rotated.  The windlass would have been used in cranes during the Roman times.
  The toothed wheel is the most primitive gear and was used by Egyptians to lift water by one gear turned on a horizontal axis which would turn another gear on a vertical axis.
  To lift water the Romans used a tool called a tympanum which consisted of a large wheel with many internal sectional chambers.
  Another water lifting device was the cochlea which consisted of spiral turning inside a tube.
  A Ctesibica machina is a pump device which could lift water a large height.  As described by Vitruvius:
  It is to be made of bronze.  The lower part consists of two similar cylinders at a small distance apart, with outlet pipes.  These pipes converge like the prongs of a fork, and meet in a vessel placed in the middle.  In this vessel, valves are to be accurately fitted above the top openings of the pipes.  And the valves by closing the mouths of the pipes retain what has been forced by air into the vessel.  Above the vessel, a cover like an inverted funnel is fitted and attached, by a pin well wedged, so that the force of the incoming water may not cause the cover to rise. On the cover of the pip, which is called a trumpet, is jointed to it, and made vertical.  The cylinders have, below the lower mouths of the pipes, valves inserted above the openings in their bases.  Pistons are now inserted from above rounded on the lathe, and well oiled.  Being thus enclosed in the cylinders, they are worked with piston rods and levers.  The air and water in the cylinders, since the valves close the lower openings, the pistons drive onwards.  By such inflation and the consequent pressure, they force the water through the orifices of the pipes into the vessel.  The funnel receives water and forces it out by pneumatic pressure through a pipe.  A reservoir is provided, and in this way water is supplied from below for fountains.
caption: Modern day windlass used for an Anchor
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