Ancient and

Medieval
War Technology
• Technological progress

• Needs/ resources

• Bottlenecks/ End points

• innovations

• Revolutions
 • The Telescope: 1610

• The problem of
chromatic aberration
The Newtonian telescope Palomar
Late 17th century Observatory
The invention of achromatic
lens in mid 18th century

And Achromatic triplet

Williams
Yerkes Bay, Wisconsin
Observatory: End Point!
The Thirty Meter
Telescope

Mt. Palomar
5 meter mirror
Espionage Cameras
• War technology
– From personal level to
state/national level
 War technology
• A survival Technology
• Directly connected to the state /
government and uses state budget
• Directly connected to national (and
international) interest
• Intense competition on effectiveness
•
 The catapult
Reliable information on the mechanical
characteristics of catapults comes
primarily from three sources:

• The Belopoiika of Philo of Byzantium,

• The tenth book of Vitruvius' De architectura,

• The Belopoiika of Heron of Alexandria

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (died after c. 15
BC),
• Roman writer, architect and engineer
• Author of De architectura, known
today as The Ten Books on
Architecture.
• Books VIII, IX and X of De architectura
form the basis of much of what we
know about Roman technology
• Philo of Byzantium (ca. 280 BC - ca. 220 BC),
– also known as Philo Mechanicus,

• Author of a large work called Mechanike syntaxis

(Compendium of Mechanics), in eight sections.

• Belopoiika or Belopoeica is a sections of this

book on artillery.
• Why were catapults so successful, so
widely adopted?

• What role, if any, did Greek science play

in the development of catapults?

• What were the consequences of a highly

developed catapult technology?
Think in terms of technological
progress
• The mount of energy which
can be stored in a bow is
determined by:
The stiffness of the bow (the force
required to bent it)

The length of draw

Both of these factors are in turn subject

to human physical limitations
 • the force required to bent the bow
depends on the strength of the
bowman’s chest, shoulder and
arm muscles.

• A bow requiring a draw force of

100 lb is considered to be near
the limits of a normal-sized man’s
capability.

It is also depends on the ability of the fingers of

the right hand to control the string, to hold it
during aiming and release it at the right moment

The length of draw is limited by the length of the bowman’s arm,

from the left hand fully extended to the right hand, drawn back
beside the right shoulder >>>>>> Bottleneck/ End point
• In the gastraphetes, a hand weapon
Heron attributed to Zopyros of Tarentum
(fl. ca. 350 B.C.), the bow was mounted on
a stock grooved on its upper surface.
The archer could
use not only his arm
muscles but his
more powerful back
muscles as well.

Once spanned, a rack-

and-pawl device held
the slider in position
while the archer
inserted an arrow
before the bowstring,
aimed, and fired.
 Four other mechanical devices related to the
lever
All described in the Mechanica of Heron of Alexandria (1st
century AD)

• The wedge
• The screw
• The compound pulley
• The wheel and axle
• The inclined plane
Larger and more
powerful bow-catapults
were stand-mounted
and spanned by winch
but otherwise were
similar in design to the
gastraphetes
• Dependence on the elasticity of the bow
was a basic limitation of bow-catapults.

• Bow-catapults were succeeded during

the course of the fourth century by
torsion catapults.
Catapult Physics
Catapult physics is basically
the use of stored energy to hurl
a projectile, without the use of
an explosive. The three primary
energy storage mechanisms
are tension, torsion, and
gravity.
Small catapults/ missile engines
Bottlenecks…

>>> Improvement in fortifications

>>> New siege craft

Aeneas Tacticus (fl. ca. 350 BC) devoted only nine
short chapters at the end of his Poliorketika to assault
techniques. The bulk of his work, a manual for the
commanders of besieged cities, dealt with methods to
prevent a city's betrayal. He mentioned missile
engines only once!
• Torsion catapults had important
shortcomings. They were slow and
cumbersome- disadvantages that increased
as the catapult became more powerful.

• Problems inherent in the use of twisted

skeins were more serious: the tension of
skeins varied with changes in atmospheric
humidity .
The Counterweight Trebuchet (13th c. AD):
A revolutionary invention

Using the force of GRAVITY+ the angular

momentum
• The trebuchet was, in fact, a much more
powerful machine than any earlier missile-
thrower, and far simpler in design.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_inE83
6lE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgNlPOM
Ops0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FS
oR2D38J0

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1EAA7pk
EJ4
 Technology and Secrecy
Military secrecy

U.S. soldier at camp during

World War II.
 The Greek Fire
>Constantinople: 678 AD under the attack
of the Arabs naval power.

> Kallinikos, a Greek architect or engineer

brought a new and decisive invention to
the Byzantines.
Bosphorus and its
mighty fortifications
>> Greek fire: a napalm-like substance that
burned in water and could be projected
great distances from the bows of ships.

>> Relying on his weapon, the Byzantines

defeated enemies.
674–678: Arabs invasion was defeated
717: Arabs invasion was defeated
718: Arabs invasion was defeated
• Belgian historian,

Henri Pirenne:
– “… The repulse of the Arabs at
Constantinople blocked further
Muslim expansion and left
Henri Pirenne
1862-1935
European civilization to find an
independent course into the
modern world.”
• The characteristics of Greek fire:
• First, it burned in water

• Second, Greek fire was always portrayed as a

liquid

• Third, at least when used at sea, it was always

shot from tubes or siphons located in the bows of
specially designed fire ships

• Finally, many firsthand accounts of its use report

the appearance of smoke and a loud discharge or
booming noise when the flaming liquid left the
tube or siphon
• None of these characteristics was unique,
except perhaps the tubes.

• Most probably, the real secret behind the

weapon was preheating and pressurizing
the liquid below decks before discharging it
from the siphon on the main deck.
• The Greek fire was a weapon system.
Its use depended not on a single
formula but rather on an array of
knowledge associated with the several
components of the system.
Proposed reconstruction of the
Greek fire
• At the heart of the Greek fire story is
the legend that this ultimate weapon

was also the ultimate state secret

closely kept for 500 years and finally
lost even to the keepers.
• Science, is a papyrophilic enterprise, predicated on
the early and complete publication of knowledge. In
fact, publication is the only mechanism of scientific
advancement.

• Technology, in contrast, is papyrophobic.

Practitioners prosper by keeping their secrets to
themselves, passing on knowledge through
apprenticeship, limiting the spread of information
through guild restrictions, and preventing at all
costs the publication of their techniques.
• Even now, craft knowledge is a secret in
many industries and the traditional means
of penetrating the secrecy surrounding
this knowledge continues to flourish:
industrial espionage, apprenticeship,
migration of craftsmen.
• In the modern world, craft secrets came to
be embedded in patents.

• Secrecy is even more important in military

technology.

• Leonardo da Vinci protected all his

inventions by his unique reverse writing.
• The science and technology of the atomic
bomb (in Manhattan Project) were kept
secret by compartmentalization.

• Personnel who constructed and operated

various equipment (such as centrifuges to
isolate uranium-235) did not know exactly what
they were doing. Those that knew did not know
why they were doing it.
• Greek fire thus provides a rare
and illuminating window into
several features of technology
in general and military
technology in particular.
How did the Byzantines manage to keep
the secret?

Did they keep the secret using Coca-Cola

technique?
mix and bottle the liquid in a central plant
where the formula can be controlled and
then ship it to the distributors.
The Coca Cola Vault
Since 1925 the formula has
been kept under lock and key
at SunTrust Banks Inc.
Valuable recipe:
Coca-Cola Co. sells
more than 1.9 billion
products every day in
200 countries.
• Understanding how the secret might have been
guarded requires some appreciation of the
components of technology.

• Technology may be defined as purposeful,

human manipulation of the material world.

• It consists of four components: matter, power, a

tool or machine, and technique.
• In the case of Greek fire, the formula
provides only the matter.

• The power- fire- was obvious, but the

machine and the technique were not.

• The technique itself would have been a

secret of almost as much sophistication as
the formula.
• Thus, even if the components of the
weapon system came into enemy hands,
there was no guarantee that it could be
used successfully.

– The Bulgars in 814 captured some 36 siphons and a

considerable quantity of Greek fire, but there is no evidence
that they knew what to do with it.
• The Byzantines guarded this secret in two ways.

– First, they limited its use to the defense of the capital or

to other fleet engagements, employing entrusted
commanders.

– Second, they compartmentalized knowledge of this

technological system, guaranteeing that it would not fall
into the wrong hands, either Muslem or Christian.
• This is what probably happened to the secret:
Kallinikos fire was immediately recognized as a
weapon system of crucial importance:

• The secret of its preparation and use was

compartmentalized and restricted.

• Over the years, the chaos of succession to the golden

throne disrupted the transmission of the complete
secret, perhaps as early as the 9th century.
Internationalism in Science

– Theoretical studies/ Laws of nature

• Good cooperation, though discoveries assumed to
be a national pride

– Technical / Industrial know-how

• Good, as long as employed in scientific studies, or
by allies

– Military science
• Always considered a secrete,
Examples of Lost Technological Know-How

Damascus Steel

Stradivarius violins

Chinese Tower Clocks

When the Roman Empire fell, the know-how to
make concrete was lost.

It was rediscovered only many centuries later in

1710 by a French engineer. His formula remains
the basic formula used today to make Portland
cement concrete.