Technological achievements of Greece and Rome (500 bce–500 cerium)

The contributions of Greece and Rome in philosophy and religion, political and legal institutions, poetry and play, and in the kingdom of scientific guess stand in dramatic line with their relatively circumscribed contributions in engineering. Their mechanical invention was not distinguished, and, evening in the kingdom of military and construction mastermind, in which they showed bang-up inventiveness and aesthetic sensitivity, their work represented more a consummation of earlier lines of development than a dramatic invention. This apparent paradox of the classical music period of the ancient earth requires explanation, and the history of technology can provide some clues to the solution of the problem.

The mastery of iron

The outstanding technological factor of the Greco-Roman earth was the smelt of iron, a technique—derived from nameless metallurgists, probably in Asia Minor, about 1000 bce—that spread far beyond the peasant frontiers of the Roman Empire. The use of the alloy had become general in Greece and the Aegean Islands by the dawn of the classical period about 500 bce, and it appears to have spread cursorily west thereafter. Iron ore, long a familiar material, had defied reduction into metallic form because of the great estrus required in the furnace to perform the chemical transformation ( about 1,535 °C [ 2,795 °F ] compared with the 1,083 °C [ 1,981 °F ] necessary for the decrease of copper ores ). To reach this temperature, furnace construction had to be improved and ways devised to maintain the heat for several hours. Throughout the classical music period these conditions were achieved only on a little scale, in furnaces burning charcoal and using foot bellows to intensify the heat, and even in these furnaces the heat was not sufficient to reduce the ore completely to molten metal. rather, a little spongy ball of iron—called a bloom —was produced in the bottomland of the furnace. This was extracted by breaking loose the furnace, and then it was hammered into bars of work iron, which could be shaped as required by far inflame and forge. apart from its greater abundance, iron for most purposes provided a hard and stronger material than the earlier metals, although the impossibility of casting it into molds like bronze was an inconvenience. At an early date some smiths devised the cementation process for reheating bars of iron between layers of charcoal to carburize the surface of the iron and frankincense to produce a coat of steel. such case-hardened iron could be far heated, hammered, and tempered to make knife and sword blades of high quality. The identical best sword in Roman times was Seric steel, brought into the western earth from India, where it was produced in blocks a few inches in diameter by a crucible process, melting the ingredients in an insert vessel to achieve purity and consistency in the chemical combination .

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Mechanical contrivances

Though slender, the mechanical achievements of the Greco-Roman centuries were not without meaning. The populace had one of its great mechanical geniuses in Archimedes, who devised remarkable weapons to protect his native Syracuse from Roman invasion and applied his potent take care to such basic mechanical contrivances as the screw, the pulley, and the pry. alexandrian engineers, such as Ctesibius and Hero, invented a wealth of clever mechanical contrivances including pumps, wind and hydraulic organs, compressed-air engines, and screw-cutting machines. They besides devised toys and automata such as the aeolipile, which may be regarded as the first base successful steam turbine. short practical use was found for these inventions, but the alexandrian school marks an important passage from very simple mechanisms to the more complex devices that by rights deserve to be considered “ machines. ” In a sense it provided a start item for modern mechanical practice. The Romans were responsible, through the application and development of available machines, for an significant technological transformation : the widespread insertion of circular gesture. This was exemplified in the habit of the treadmill for powering cranes and other heavy lifting operations, the introduction of rotary water-raising devices for irrigation works ( a scoop wheel powered by a treadmill ), and the development of the waterwheel as a prime mover. The 1st-century-bce Roman mastermind Vitruvius gave an report of watermills, and by the conclusion of the Roman era many were in process.

Agriculture

Iron Age technology was applied to agriculture in the class of the iron ( or iron-tipped ) plowshare, which opened up the hypothesis of deeper plowing and of cultivating heavier soils than those normally worked in the classical period. The construction of plows improved slowly during these centuries, but the moldboard for turning over the earth did not appear until the eleventh hundred ce, so that the capacity of turning the sod depended more on the wrists of the plowman than on the intensity of his draft team ; this discouraged tackling heavy ground. The potentialities of the heavy plow were therefore not fully exploited in the moderate areas of Europe until after the Roman menstruation. elsewhere, in the dry climates of North Africa and Spain, the Romans were responsible for extensive irrigation systems, using the Archimedean screw and the noria ( an animal- or water-powered exclusive bicycle ) to raise water.

Building

Though many buildings of the Greeks outlive as excellent monuments to the educate communities that built them, as technical monuments they are of fiddling significance. The Greeks adopted a form of column and header structure that had been used in Egypt for centuries and was derived from experience of timbre structure. In no major sense did greek build constitute a technical invention. The Romans copied the greek style for most ceremony purposes, but in early respects they were important innovators in building technology. They made across-the-board habit of open fire brick and tile angstrom good as stone ; they developed a potent cement that would set under water ; and they explored the architectural possibilities of the arch, the vault, and the dome. They then applied these techniques in amphitheatres, aqueducts, tunnels, bridges, walls, lighthouses, and roads. Taken together, these constructional works may fairly be regarded as the primary technological accomplishment of the Romans .Roman aqueducts A network of Roman aqueducts showing a department undergoing repairs, painting by Michael Zeno Diemer ( bear 1867 ) ; in the Deutsches Museum, Munich .Courtesy of the Deutsches Museum, Munich

Other fields of technology

In manufacture, transportation, and military technology, the achievements of the Greco-Roman period are not remarkable. The major manufacturing crafts—the make of pottery and glass, weaving, leatherworking, fine-metalworking, and then on—followed the lines of former societies, albeit with authoritative developments in style. wonderfully decorated athenian pottery, for exemplar, was widely dispersed along the deal routes of the Mediterranean, and the Romans made good quality pottery available throughout their conglomerate through the fabrication and barter of the exchangeable crimson merchandise called terra sigillata, which was produced in big quantities at several sites in Italy and Gaul.

Transport

Transport, again, followed earlier precedents, the sailing ship emerging as a seagoing vessel with a carvel-built hull ( that is, with planks meeting edge-to-edge preferably than overlapping as in clinker-built designs ), and a amply developed keel with stempost and sternpost. The greek glide ship was equipped with a square or orthogonal cruise to receive a following wind and one or more banks of oarsmen to propel the ship when the wind was contrary. The Greeks began to develop a specialize fight transport, provided with a ram in the bow, and the cargo ship, dispensing with oarsmen and relying entirely upon the scent, was besides well established by the early years of classical Greece. The Romans took over both forms, but without meaning initiation. They gave a lot more attention to inland conveyance than to the sea, and they constructed a noteworthy network of carefully aligned and well-laid roads, frequently paved over retentive stretches, throughout the provinces of the empire. Along these strategic highways the legions marched quickly to the locate of any crisis at which their presence was required. The roads besides served for the development of craft, but their primary function was constantly military, as a vital means of keeping a huge empire in subjugation.

Military technology

Roman military technology was imaginative on occasion, as in the bang-up siege catapults, depending on both torsion and tension world power. But the criterion equipment of the legionnaire was simpleton and button-down, consisting of an iron helmet and breastplate, with a short sword and an iron-tipped spear. As most of their opponents were besides equipped with iron weapons and sometimes with superior devices, such as the Celtic chariots, the Roman military achievements depended more on organization and discipline than on technical superiority. The Greco-Roman era was distinguished for the scientific natural process of some of its greatest philosophers. In keeping with Greek bad think, however, this tended to be powerfully conceptual so that it was in mathematics and other abstract studies that the main scientific achievements are to be found. Some of these had some hardheaded significance, as in the survey of position effects in build structure. Aristotle in many ways expressed the inquiring quackery that has caused scientists to seek an explanation for their physical environment. In at least one field, that of medicate and its associate subjects, Greek inquiry assumed a highly virtual form, Hippocrates and Galen laying the foundations of modern checkup skill. But this was especial, and the normal Hellenic attitude was to pursue scientific question in the kingdom of ideas without much think of the possible technical consequences.