Archimedes

Contributions of Archimedes on mechanics and design

of mechanisms

Marco Ceccarelli 1

LARM: Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics, University of Cassino and South Latium, Via G. Di Biasio 43, Cassino, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:

Received 15 January 2013

Received in revised form 2 October 2013

Accepted 12 October 2013

Available online 2 November 2013

Relevant contributions are ascribed to Archimedes as related to early developments in mechanics

with application to mechanism design with a modern vision. Archimedes developed theoretical

advances thatweremotivated by and applied to practical problemswith an enthusiastic behaviour

and with a modern spirit that can be summarized in his motto ‘Give me a place to stand and I will

move the earth’. In this paper his contribution tomechanics is discussed as related to his results in

designing and successfully operating mechanisms.

Keywords: © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

History of Mechanical Engineering

History of mechanics

Mechanism design

Archimedes

1. Introduction

Since Renaissance Archimedes' mechanics has been reconsidered together with a new attention to Greek–Roman machine

designs with the aim to develop an early approach for modern theory of mechanisms, as outlined in [1].

The works of Archimedes, mainly in the aspects of mechanism design, has been rediscovered and studied during Renaissance,

as for example in the works [2–5]. They were used as fundamental backgrounds for the first developments of early TMM (Theory

of Mechanisms and Machines) by Guidobaldo Del Monte [6] and Galileo Galilei [7,8]. Even at the beginning of the modern TMM in

the 19th century Archimedes' contribution was recognized in identifying basic conceptual elements, like for example in the works

[9,10]. The modernity of Archimedes in MMS (Mechanism and Machine Science) can today still be advised in his approach of

classification for the variety of mechanism designs as function of a unique principle in the operation mechanics, as indicated in

[11], following the earlier Aristotelian work ‘Mechanical Problems’.

The major contributions of Archimedes that can be understood in the field of modern MMS, can be recognized in:

- identification and analysis of basic elements of machines and mechanisms, as pointed out in [8]

- analysis of machinery operation as function of a unique concept that he identified in the functionality of levers

- application of theory to successful practical designs that since his time gave dignity of discipline to machine design

- enthusiasm and optimism in mechanism design in developing technology for enhancing society and quality

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