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The Archimedes Screw History Project
The Archimedes Screw History Project takes a basic mechanical device, the screw, and traces its application to different technical challenges during the 18th and 19th centuries. The project collects sources on screw technology and its application, including newspaper articles, letters, memoirs, illustrations, and patents.
The project is a hypermedia resource for students of the history of technology. Using interpretive essays and primary source material on the site, students can explore the history of technology, and create original historical works of their own.
Some questions to ask yourself about technology and history:
* Is invention the mother of necessity, or vice versa?
* Does technology evolve?
* How much control do people have over new technologies?
* Does technological innovation progress steadily, or in bursts?
We hope the materials on this website will help you begin to form responses to these and other questions.
A primitive steam boat employing both paddle wheels and screw propeller, circa 1796.
This woodcut illustrates an Archimedes' Screw pumping water from a stream to a bucket. It comes from a 1522 edition of Virtruvius's De Architectura, by Fra Gioconda.
A diagram of the propeller used on board the Liverpool Screw in 1844.
