1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

4.3 Military Technology 95
we owe the preceding description, 45 one would often see sparks between
piston and cylinder. The creation of such weapons by Ctesibius was obviously
closely related to his research on techniques for treating materials
and on the compressibility properties of air.
At Rhodes, one of the most active centers of artillery studies, scientists
also built a repeating catapult. 46 Modern historians who refer to these con- page 132
trivances usually add that they remained in the model stage, but there is
no good reason to think so. Repeating crossbows similar to the repeating
catapults described by Philo, albeit less powerful and sophisticated, were
in use centuries later in China and still played a role in the Sino-Japanese
war of 1894–95. 47
The Romans had no contribution to make to the development of military
technology, prior to the anonymous author of De rebus bellicis (fourth
century A.D.). Even this author uses only Greek terms for all the war machines.
48
In Western Europe’s early Middle Ages, the ability to build effective
artillery weapons was completely lost. Late medieval trebuchets were far
less effective than the ancient catapults, the power of which could only be
appreciated again after 1904, when models were first built on the basis of
the indications provided by the ancient treatises, through the efforts of the
German general E. Schramm.
The introduction of firearms in the modern age concerned primarily
large-bore guns used against fixed fortifications; as a personal weapon,
the arquebus took centuries to supplant the pike. 49 Thus the main role of
gunpowder was to replace the catapult, the technology of which had been
lost.
Wherever there is science, military technology has been an important
motivation and application for it. Hellenistic mechanics and early-modern
mechanics both arose in connection with the main military applications of
their day: catapults and firearms. In the latter case, mechanics had nothing
to contribute to the energy imparted to the projectile, which depends
on a chemical reaction outside the scope of the quantitative science of the
time. Therefore scientists concentrated on the motion of the missile after
it leaves the weapon’s barrel, and, as is well known, the discovery of the page 133
laws of motion in free fall was decisively stimulated by the problem of de-
45
Philo of Byzantium, Belopoeica, 77–78 = [Marsden: TT], pp. 152–154.
46
Philo of Byzantium, Belopoeica, 73–77 = [Marsden: TT], pp. 144–152.
47
[Marsden: TT], p. 178.
48
One wonders if this person was in fact the first Roman to be interested in technological innovations
or the first Greek speaker to realize the advantages of writing in Latin for the purposes of
selling technology to Roman generals.
49
See, for example, [Braudel], pp. 392–393.
Revision: 1.14 Date: 2002/10/24 04:25:47