Ctesibius’ Catapult and The Repeating Catapult

With the domination of the catapult now solidified in the social and pollical hierarchies of ancient civilizations, efforts to further improve the catapult were attempted.  Beginning with Ctesibius of Alexandria in mid-3^rd century B.C., this ancient engineer was credited with an attempt to use airtight cylinders and compress bronze springs to pivot rigid firing arms to a point of optimized tension.  However, with the compression of air and the introduction of piston friction, unexpected fire and smoke emitted from the catapult’s cylinder were responsible for decreasing both the structural rigidity, as the carpenter’s glue used to construct the device was heated, and range of Ctesibius’ catapult.

Furthermore, simultaneous development also begun on what is referred to as the “Repeating Catapult” by Dionysius of Alexandria in an arsenal in Rhodes.  The repeating catapult, an invention which employed mechanisms not reintroduced until the Renaissance, was a theoretically and idealized model with the intention to automatically fire arrows until a revolving drum containing ammunition was emptied.  Essentially proposing a model for an ancient machine gun, this catapult was most notable for its inclusion of a flat-linked chain drive system which was to be later popularized and accredited to Leonardo da Vinci during the early 1500s.  This flat-link chain drive, resembling that used on a modern bicycle chain, was to run over a five-sided prism and repeatedly turn a winch to release and draw the main stock of the weapon.  Regarding da Vinci’s later involvement with the chain-drive device, this chain drive mechanism precisely embodies what he idolized as the fundamental relationship between an object’s mass and velocity while investigating the basic laws of perpetual motion.  Ultimately, this design was never developed due to its paradoxical ability to only fire concentrated shots at a minuscule range of 200 meters that could not be dispersed away from one central target before running out of ammunition.

Sources:

Rossi, C., & Russo, F. (2010). A reconstruction of the Greek–Roman repeating catapult. Mechanism and Machine Theory, 45(1), 36-45. doi:10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2009.07.011

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