The Torsion Catapult

Representative Depiction of Torsion Catapult

Transitioning from the Flexible Bow catapult 50 years prior, the increasing interest in the utility of the catapult lead to the subsidization of the next phase of this devastating weapon, the Torsion Catapult.  Commissioned by Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, around 350 B.C., the newly developed catapult utilized what is referred to as the torsion principle, a system which requires tightly wound fibers being drawn to a notched pull.  This specific catapult apparatus significantly improved the range and precision of the previous catapult design and was largely unchanged for many centuries.  With slight adjustments deriving from physicists and engineers such as Philo of Byzantium, Archimedes of Syracuse, Hero of Alexandria, and Vitruvius of Rome, the torsion catapult was able to transition from launching arrows the size of light javelins and handheld stones to projectiles weighing as much as 78 kilograms.  Moreover, according to Vitruvius, these catapults, when unloaded, were capable of weighing 162 kilograms and most commonly launched projectiles ranging from 13 to 26 kilograms at a range of 640 meters.  With their high degree of intrinsic accuracy and wall-penetrating power, historical commanders ranging from Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar were known for utilizing these weapons in significant historical battles such as the siege of Gaza in 332 B.C., the Roman siege of Syracuse from 213 to 211 B.C., and the siege of Jerusalem in 63 B.C.

With the advent of this creative weapon, shifts in politics and society arose.  Firstly, the increased mechanization of warfare displaced the human-to-human contact and denounced the personability of war as one’s emotional investment in eliciting physical violence was replaced by strategic aerial assault tactics.  This increased separation of battling forces was noted by Philo of Byzantium in 200 B.C. as he claimed, in his artillery manual, that a wall had to be at least 4.62 meters thick to withstand catapult stones and that the minimum distance to maintain between the walls of a defensive fortress and a catapult should be at least 150 meters.  Thus, by noting that a wall-reducing device was now readily available in warfare, new social constructs had to be developed in order to preserve social living space.  For example, Aristotle, in the mid-4^th century B.C. was quoted in suggesting that the newly popularized quadrilateral city blocks of ancient civilizations be combined with the prior, ancient landscapes, such as motes, inner-city defense walls, and ditches, in order to maintain structural composition of these newly developing cities when subjected to the decimating force of invading catapults.  Conversely, the introduction of the torsion catapult also significantly redefined the Eurasian political landscape as Alexander the Great’s successfully dominating conquest was considerably assisted by his use of this optimized weapon.  With the development of the catapult proving to be an imperative military marvel, the equality of arms in warfare was lost and the technical skills necessary to operate mechanical weapons foreshadowed the first differentiations of status amongst military operations.  Moreover, the specialized knowledge in mathematical and technical skills required to construct and maintain catapults thus increased the social status of catapult engineers as military experts and allowed them to survive political purges.

Sources:

International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms : Proceedings of HMM 2008, edited by Hong-Sen Yan, and Marco Ceccarelli, Springer, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/purdue/detail.action?docID=417096. Created from purdue on 2019-05-09 18:07:26.

Yurtoğlu, N. (2018). Http://www.historystudies.net/dergi//birinci-dunya-savasinda-bir-asayis-sorunu-.... History Studies International Journal of History, 10(7), 241-264. doi:10.9737/hist.2018.658

The Flexible Bow Catapult

Representative Depiction of Dionysius' Catapult

With the specificity of ancient Greek tactical warfare as a quest to conquer cities of breadth, depth, and optimized defense, the rulers of Greek colonies during the fourth century B.C. era became increasingly interested in improving their range and decimating force of weaponry in their lustrous goals to secure any and all sieges or battles.  Thus, the commencement for designing a weapon to redefine infringing warfare began in 399 B.C. when Dionysius the Elder, the Greek ruler of the colony of Syracuse in Sicily, issued a declaration to produce new novel weapons, one of which was the infamous catapult.

Although categorized as the first catapult recorded through conventional documentation, these ancient catapults more closely resembled the common draw-bows of soldiers during this era and utilized what has now been coined, “The Flexible Bow Mechanism,” an apparatus which generates power through tension created by movable sliders.  Thus, these mechanical bows were responsible for launching arrows through the compositionally conglomerative use of composite wooden ores, tension fibers of animal sinew, and wooden compression horns.  Contrary to the depiction of stereotyped catapults, one should note that this initial design remained attached to the human subject as, descriptively, this preliminary design was to be worn across the shoulders of soldiers on the battlefield and strategically placed along a surface once one’s destination was secured.  However, records also suggest that the soldiers of Syracuse were also known to have constructed mobile siege towers that were to overlook enemy city walls and utilize flexible-bow catapult to provide heavy aerial fire.  The design also received notable adjustments in its inception.  This included the preferred use of animal sinew to human or horsehair for optimized elastic tension, the addition of linear ratchets alongside the weapon’s main stock which increased the resistive force of the bow, and the use of a circular rachet to allow winches to be used in the drawing of the highly compressed bow. 

Furthermore, the weapon’s highly optimized precision was said to have made the catapult an attractive device for the ruling Greek commissioners.  Thus, due to the increased precision of the bow, the size of the design quickly increased to favor more impactful assaults.  While no longer permitting the mobility of the device by mere human strength, the catapult required a lower pedestal for stability purposes.  To facilitate this change in design, the ancient engineers of Syracuse were recorded as the creators of the first iteration of the universal joint, a mechanism which is commonly thought to originate in the 16^th and 17^th century by either Girolamo Cardano or Robert Hooke.  While there is not any official recording for the approximate range of these early catapults, these weapons were said to have been able to utilize arrows nearly two meters long and decimate enemy forces with deadly accuracy.

Sources:

History of Catapults - Physics of Catapults. (n.d.). Retrieved May 6, 2019, from https://sites.google.com/site/physicsofcatapults/home/history-of-catapults

Yurtoğlu, N. (2018). Http://www.historystudies.net/dergi//birinci-dunya-savasinda-bir-asayis-sorunu-.... History Studies International Journal of History, 10(7), 241-264. doi:10.9737/hist.2018.658

Andrea del Verrocchio

Portrait of Andrea del Verrocchio

Andrea del Verrocchio was a 15th century Italian sculptor, painter and goldsmith. Very little biographical information is known about the early life of Verrocchio, but it is thought that he studied painting with Sandro Botticelli under the Renaissance master Fra Filippo Lippi. He was also trained as a goldsmith, and in fact took the name "Verrocchio" from his master.  Verrocchio’s rise to artistic prominence is largely owed to the patronage of the Medici family, who supported his career as a sculptor. His reputation across the country led many great artists to study in his studio, perhaps most importantly young Leonardo da Vinci.

Passavant, Günter. “Andrea Del Verrocchio.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1 Feb. 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Andrea-del-Verrocchio.

Image Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons, fair use

Uffizi Gallery

Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The Uffizi Gallery is one of the largest and most important Italian museums, storing a collection of priceless works of art from the Italian Renaissance and beyond. Cosimo de’ Medici commissioned Giorgio Vasari to design the building in 1560. It’s original function was to house Florentine legal and administrative offices, with a private gallery for the collections of the Medici family on the second floor. At the end of the Medici dynasty, The Family Pact of 1737 allowed Anna Maria de’ Medici to declare that the Medici’s art collections may never be moved from Florence, ensuring the permanence of the Uffizi Gallery and its priceless collections. In 1769 the Gallery was opened to the public and has since become one of the most visited museums in the world.

“History | The Uffizi.” Uffizi Galleries, www.uffizi.it/en/the-uffizi/history.

Image Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons, fair use

Milan Cathedral Design

In 1487, officials in Milan asked architects to submit design ideas for a tiburio, lantern tower, for the top of their under-construction cathedral. Leornardo collaborated with architects Donato Bramante and Francesco di Giorgio on the design. He worked to design a double-shell dome, very similar to the one in Florence's cathedral. However, Leonardo favored a more traditional style, so he did not try to make his dome match the gothic design of the rest of the Milan cathedral. As a result, his designs were rejected and he eventually withdrew his application. The winning designs came from Francesco di Giorgio, and architect from Siena, who Leonardo worked with on other projects later on. 

Source: Isaacson, Walter. “Vitruvian Man”. Leonardo Da Vinci. Simon & Schuster, 2017

Photo Source: http://www.leonardo-da-vinci.net/architecture/

Tomb of Piero and Giovanni de Medici by Verrocchio

Tomb of Piero and Giovanni de Medici by Verrocchio

The tomb of Piero and Giovanni de Medici, completed in 1472, was the Medici’s first major commission from Italian painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. The sarcophagus is unique both in its composition and its materials. The tomb is set in an archway and uses a combination of coloured marble and porphyry, complimented by decorative bronze ornamentation. Verrocchio was a master of both stone and metalwork, which sets this tomb apart from others of this period. This work is significant not only because it marks the start of the Medici’s lifelong patronage of Verrocchio, but also because it is most likely the inspiration piece for the marble bench that appears in da Vinci’s Annunciation. This provides evidence that Leonardo da Vinci was active in Verrocchio's workshop, and both masters may have had a hand in painting Annunciation

Passavant, Günter. “Andrea Del Verrocchio.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1 Feb. 2019, www.britannica.com/biography/Andrea-del-Verrocchio.

“Tomb of Piero and Giovanni De Medici.” Andrea Del Verrocchio, AndreaDelVerrocchio.com, www.andreadelverrocchio.com/tomb-of-piero-and-giovanni-de-medici/.

Discovery of Anatomy through Art

Leonardo da Vinci showed a great artistic ability at a young age. Da Vinci’s father, Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, took note of his son’s skill and when da Vinci turned 15 years old, sent him to apprentice renowned artist Andrea del Verrocchio. It was here that da Vinci began his anatomical studies.

 Verrocchio had a studio in Florence where he taught many artist in addition to da Vinci. As part of the apprenticeship, Verrocchio made all of this students study anatomy to assist them in depicted human bodies realistically, which was popular during the Renaissance. Da Vinci studied structure, function, and proportions of the body, using his sharp eye to depict startingly life-like sketches.  But da Vinci took his work studying human form and took it many steps further. Da Vinci’s curiosity lead him to more research looking at the functions of body systems. He performed several dissections to study the internal body. Da Vinci sketched countless drawings and wrote pages and pages of notes. These sketches and notes could have on his research that could have changed the subject of anatomy had they have been published.

Sources:

Gunter, P. (2006) Andrea del Verrochio: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Heydenreich, L.H. (2019) Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Studies and Drawings. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Anatomy Before da Vinci

Galen was a Greek physician, philosopher, and author that practiced around 150 A.D. He was a well-known physician and served many emperors in the Roman Empire as a personal physician. Galen complied work from original anatomist such as Hippocrates and added his own discoveries and beliefs to write over 20,000 pages of anatomical study. He had a strong belief in experiments and observation, instead of believing what has always been written. This belief helped him make advancements in his career including:

Identifying 7 of 12 cranial nerves

Proving the kidneys make urine

Diagnosing using a patients’ pulse and urine sample

Discovering the heart has 4 valves

But Galen’s education was still based on old knowledge and he had flaws in his studies such as the belief that an imbalance of humors caused disease and that the liver was the center of the great vessels in the body. Despite this, Galen’s anatomical studies stayed as primary belief for about 1500 years, until scientist like Leonardo da Vinci began to challenge his beliefs. Da Vinci’s artistic ability and engineering studies assisted him in attempting to bring in a new era in anatomical studies, though none of his work was published so little impact was made from all his work. The anatomical revolution was contributed more to Andreas Vesalius.

Sources:

Stewart, D. (2014). Galen. Famous Scientist: The Art of Genius.

Picture from Wikimedia http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1165357

Childhood Exploration

Leonardo da Vinci grew up in a small Tuscan town in the lower valley of the Arno River, allowing him to explore the many fossil-containing caves at the foothills of the Alps. From a young age, da Vinci questioned the popular Biblical flood theory, instead using logical reasoning accompanied by his own observations to come to the correct conclusion on geological formations hundreds of years before these concepts were popularized.

Completion of Santa Maria del Fiore

Construction of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, also known as il Duomo, was completed in the year 1436. From start to finish, the cathedral took over 140 years to complete. Though Leonardo had no influence on the dome, as it was designed and constructed before he was born, the dome had a great impact on him. Da Vinci loved to incorportate domes into his architectural designs, as they require a combination of mathematical and artistic influences.

Sources: http://www.leonardo-da-vinci.net/architecture/

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/italy/articles/16-interesting-facts-about-florence-cathedral/

Photo Source: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/italy/articles/16-interesting-facts-about-florence-cathedral/

Duke of Milan Hires da Vinci

In 1482, Leonardo left Florence to enter the service of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. Under Sforza, Leonardo painted, sculpted, and made designs for machinery, weapons, & buildings. He also did several studies on geometry, construction, canals, and architecture, designing "everything from churches to fortresses." Though he did some traveling and advising on other projects during this time, Leonardo lived in Milan and worked for the Duke until his fall from power in 1499.

Source: https://buffaloah.com/a/virtual/italy/milan/sforza/leo.html