Lenses and Screws

Lenses and screws: Archimedes of Syracuse harnessed the energy of two of the ancient ‘elements’ like none before him – that is, if you can concede to the philosophy of fire, water, air and earth being the four basic elements of the universe, whether or not you have watched “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” Nonetheless, Archimedes, through ingenuity and the design of his screw, as opposed to sorcery, was able to make water flow uphill; this proved to be crucial for farmers and of interest to “scientists” (again, if you are willing to make a concession in semantics) of the day. Of course, because the “scientists” (or ‘critical observers’ if you like that nomenclature better) of the day depended on the crops of the farmers of that day, they also found Archimedes' screw to be crucial and not simply ‘interesting.’ However, water is so basic and tamable, that Archimedes, perhaps through boredom or perhaps through more disreputable intentions, decided to try harness the untamable energy of the sun, that is, fire. He is alleged to have used archaic Fresnel lenses, or maybe even just a series of regular lenses and mirrors, to focus the sun’s rays and burn a fleet of attacking ships.

A few principles here: one, water heals, fire burns; two, history and legend can sometimes coalesce, so do your research; three, we (I include myself) often have chronological snobbery to the degree that we think because we cannot complete a task for television, say setting a ship on fire with mirrors on “Mythbusters” then it couldn’t have occurred in history, which simply is not so; four, there probably are easier ways to set a ship on fire than using lenses – flaming arrows, for example – though using lenses probably has a similar prerogative for increasing your ‘swagger factor’ as flaming arrows do; five, I am thankful for other inventions, like water pumps, so that I don’t have to screw my drinking water all the way from the aquifer 300 feet below ground. It is the little things we can be thankful for, sometimes even things we didn’t know that we needed to be thankful for.