Ancient Machines Here I go thinking about strange things again. I guess I just can't help myself. I was just thinking about, how in ancient times, people did so much with so little and then I thought that maybe they had more to work with than we suspect. After all, in some areas they weren’t behind at all. The Romans used concrete and it was just about the same as what we use today. They also had surgical tools for repairing wounds that any doctor today would recognize right away. So, what machines did they have? The Romans actually used cranes when they worked on very large buildings. There was usually a height limit depending upon which Emperor was in power. The limit was usually 60 or 70 feet. This was because since there were no elevators the Roman apartment buildings couldn't be more than either 8 or 9 stories high. The way these were built was usually a commercial space on the first floor with a couple of floors of luxury apartments and above those smaller apartments. The machines I am talking about were wooden and used ropes and pulleys. Sometimes they were wooden cranes and other times they were a sort of frame with pulleys attached. With this they were able to lift blocks weighing many tons. Just as we have building codes today, the Romans had building codes thousands of years ago. Roman machines were also used to make war, here are some: Scorpio - A large bow type machine. It was fired as artillery and fired an arrow at least 2 feet long. Some of these machines have been known to contain a mechanism that allowed another arrow to drop into place to be fired when the one before it was fired, creating an automatic type weapon. Ballista - a machine that was similar to a catapult and fired like one. Great for throwing boulders over the walls of cities. Onager - a medium sized Ballista Catapult - a machine for lobbing rocks a long distance. Moving on to the Egyptians we find many mysteries in their drawings and carvings. Did the Egyptians have flying machines? They certainly had model planes that actually flew. Some of these models that have been found in drawings and in at least one tomb have been reconstructed and flown. And what about those famous reliefs that seem to show a jet plane, a helicopter and a UFO? Even aside from all this, were there machines that were used to construct projects like the pyramids? Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any record of machines being used. Is it possible that the record of the construction of the pyramids was destroyed when the great library at Alexandria burned? We know that the Ancient Greeks knew about gears. I am talking about metal gears as in clock gears. The reason we know this is the discovery of a mechanical computer found in the wreck of a Greek ship which was thousands of years old. If one studies the ancient Greeks, they would be surprised to find out how many machines they actually had. We think automatic doors are a recent invention, but they were invented over 2,000 years ago. The ancient Greeks had temples which had steam plants under them that controlled the heavy doors. When the temple was open for business the doors would magically open on their own wowing the worshipers. The same is true for vending machines. The first vending machine is thought to be a holy water dispenser in Greek temples. You would drop a coin in a slot and the coin would land on a small plate and it weighed just enough for that weight to open a valve until it fell off the plate. When the valve was open it dispensed a small amount of holy water. The ancient Greeks were also credited with building the first waterwheels which are said to date back to between 280 B.C. and 220 B.C. Hero of Alexandra created many ancient inventions as did Archimedes. Archimedes invented a screw mechanism which helped farmers irrigate their crops by moving water along even uphill. He was also responsible for creating an iron claw which was capable of crushing wooden ships which had the Romans very worried. He was also credited with inventing the very first odometer. He mounted a wheel of known circumference to a frame. As the wheel made a full revolution it dropped a pebble into a pot. Adding up the pebbles would give you the distance. The Romans created a mill known as mala asarina. It was used for such things as grinding grain into flower, or grinding stones and ore. It was a rotary mill which was driven by horses or other animals of burden and sometimes even by slaves. The ancient Chinese were responsible for some incredible machines. We can thank them for inventing the crossbow which was not discovered in the West until centuries later. Two thousand years ago the Chinese invented the seismograph. It has been said this invention was about 1,600 years ahead of anything in the West. Over 2,000 years ago the Chinese had oil drills. It is claimed the ones we have today were reinvented. Can you imagine having these drills that far back? The also drilled for natural gas. The drills used bamboo cable which was as strong as steel cable. The drill was animal powered with some human power. Incredibly some of these drills still exist in China. The ancient Chinese had created automated air bellows machines for their factories which gave them the ability to do metal work which rivaled the work today. They even built a tall cast iron building which was discovered in the Provence of Shantung. We still don’t know how they were able to do this. One simple machine which changed travel on earth was the compass and another was the Chinese printing press. The Chinese invented it in 868 A.D. Gutenberg did not invent it but did invent movable type allowing for mass production of printed materials. The Chinese had huge ancient factories capable of mass production. It is amazing how industrialized some ancient cultures were. It seems the biggest drawback for them was the fact they didn’t have a power source other than water, animal or human. If they would have had internal combustion, electricity or even steam power and realized what they had, things would have been a lot more advanced today. I say realized because the ancient Greeks had it, but never pursued in as other than a power source for a gadget.
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