Archimedes Death Ray

Werner Heuser writes "Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth ... Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that it could work, MIT's 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development 'sketch or soft modeling' process to the problem."

Comments

That's nothing!

[JMZorko]

Why, in the Great Siege Of San Francisco, October 2005, I, a reasonable-intelligent-but-far-more-delusional person, defeated the vast mongrel hoardes anchored off of the coast of Pacifica, with nothing but a piece of string, a breath mint, and my unbending will.

... at least, that's how I remember it :-)

Regards,

John

Re:And Leonardo, while we're mentioning dead geniu

[thogard]

IBM has a traveling museum exhibit of models of Leonardo daVinci's work. Its worth seeing if you get the chance.