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Archimedes' Weapons of War and Leonardo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

D.L. Simms
Affiliation:
17 Dunstan Road, London NW11 8AG (Tel. 01 455 7972).
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Leonardo's fascination with Archimedes as well as with his mathematics is well known. There are three fairly extensive and eccentric comments in the surviving notebooks: on his military inventions; on his part in an Anglo-Spanish conflict and on his activities, death and burial at the siege of Syracuse. Reti has examined the first of the three, that about the Architronito or steam cannon, mainly considering the origin of the idea for the cannon and its attribution to Archimedes, but with comments on the later influence of Leonardo's ideas. Marshall Clagett has produced the most comprehensive attempt to try to identify Leonardo's sources for the third.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1988

References

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