Other records mention earlier versions of the burning mixture. The steam cannons only represent the latest historical investigation by Rossi. The trio plan to meet up with other historians in the future and possibly reconstruct versions of the ancient weapons.
Flavio previously built several working reconstructions of ancient Roman artillery weapons, and Ferruccio specializes in 3-D virtual reconstructions of mechanical devices. Some of Rossi's other work looked at ancient motors that may have moved siege towers used by the Greeks and Romans. The likeliest motors may have relied on counterweights, and emerged in records as the invention of Heron of Alexandria in the first century. Such devices could have been placed inside the protection of the towers themselves, Rossi noted.
He pointed to an account by the Roman general Julius Caesar , who told of using such towers against a town defended by Gallic tribes in modern-day France. The sight of towers appearing to move by themselves frightened the defenders into negotiating for surrender. A research paper on the siege towers was presented alongside Rossi's recent work entitled "Archimedes' Cannons against the Roman Fleet?
In the end, the engineering talents of Archimedes did not save him from death when the Romans finally stormed Syracuse. But at least a love of history among Rossi and his colleagues may lead to the resurrection of some of his ancient devices. Already a subscriber? Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in.
We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations. The Christian Science Monitor has a fascinating article about it. Here is a taste: Most significant among the discoveries was the knowledge that "Archimedes was the first to calculate with actual infinity in the mathematics of the West. The Archimedean texts, Noel writes, make the mathematics of Leonardo da Vinci "look like child's play.
I really recommend it, if you want to get a sense of the "Original Hacker" was all about. Labels: cool stuff , history , knowledge , math. But creating an entire Ruby on Rails application just for a tiny little Facebook application is, at the very least, a bit wasteful. In the case of a overly popular Facebook app you could end up with, as Marc Andreessen put it, a "self-inflicted denial of service attack" , unless you have both a pretty serious infrastructure to support it, as well as lots of cash to keep that data center running.
Wouldn't you rather be able to create a highly scalable "hello, world" Facebook application in around 13 lines of Ruby code? Why would you want to use it? If your Facebook application needs to be highly scalable, is fairly small, or is really a mashup of other web-available resources, than Frankie could be a good solution.
Frankie is available now for your enjoyment. Here is how to get started: - Install the Frankie gem, which will install the Sinatra and Facebooker gems if you do not already have them. Google "setup new facebook application" if you are unsure how to do this. I recommend starting with an IFrame application, so that you can point a development version of your Facebook application to your local machine.
If you have things setup correctly then you should see your application appear inside of Facebook's site. Facebook is now your playground Posted by Ron Evans at PM 11 comments:. Skip to content. Continue Reading. Wendys Blog. Home The Forum Contact.
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