The Claw of Archimedes (Ancient Greek: Ἁρπάγη, romanized: harpágē, lit. ‘snatcher’; also known as the iron hand) was an ancient weapon devised by Archimedes to defend the seaward portion of Syracuse’s city wall against amphibious assault. Although its exact nature is unclear, the accounts of ancient historians seem to describe it as a sort of crane equipped with a grappling hook that was able to drop and partly submerge an attacking ship down into the water, then either cause the ship to capsize or suddenly let it go altogether. It was dropped onto enemy ships, which would then swing on to defensive forces and destroy them.
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The plausibility of this invention was tested in 1999 in the BBC series Secrets of the Ancients and again in early 2005 in the Discovery Channel series Superweapons of the Ancient World. The producers of Superweapons brought together a group of engineers tasked with conceiving and implementing a design that was realistic, given what is known about Archimedes. Within seven days they were able to test their creation, and they did succeed in tipping over a model of a Roman ship so that it would sink. While this does not prove the existence of the Claw, it suggests that it would have been possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claw_of_Archimedes
To @PugJesus@lemmy.world: It would be useful if you would just copypaste some basic info, or a link to wikipedia on posts like this. Not everyone have such a huge knowledge of history like you, some historical context would help understand what exactly visible on the image.
E.g. in this case this image is purely speculation, as we don’t have any remains or drawings of these machines to reconstruct it from, only some textual descriptions.
I only got so much energy in the day, man. I try to be at least somewhat precise in the titles so people can look it up if they’re lost, but generally I only comment on images if I have some specific knowledge to share.
Ok, don’t get me wrong, thank you for your posts!
I will continue to add some context as previously.
It’s fine. I do explanations elsewhere, so I understand why it might seem odd, but a lot of the illustrations I post don’t much benefit from additional explanation - at least not any I can give - and as they often deal with general themes, are not necessarily intuitive to me as to what subjects do and do not need explaining for the average reader. If someone wants to know more about “Roman soldiers”, hell, what do I link them without getting overly specific?
It’s considerably more mental effort than “This is the joke” or a link to a museum page. So I just try to specify whatever scant details I know in the title and leave it at that.
Imma start an account named Pug_Judas and just be a dick about every thing you post.
J.K. But seriously you always post quality stuff, ty!
Always makes me happy to hear my posting is appreciated and not just clutter! 🙏
Cool image, but there’s just way too much going on visually to easily grok what I’m looking at.
Very cool though.
To easily what?
Grok, mf.
The corvus is a brilliant idea. How to win a naval engagement if you are a bit shit at naval warfare but unmatched at land battles
