Who invented the first catapult

Posted by Z.Z. at 9:28 AM 0

Diodorus ascribes the invention of the catapult to Syracuse tyrant Dionysius I in 399 BC, who gathered the artisans in Syracuse of Sicily, so that they construct this advanced weapon. Dionysius gave artisans the highest salary, used to make them lavish gifts and even dine with them. They in response created different types of catapults, made sets of armor and built new types of powerful rowing boats. As early as 397 B.C. Dionysius used the archery from the shore against the ships of Carthage. A new weapon has caused considerable losses and had a big psychological effect on the Carthaginians.
Sometimes there is a presupposition that the first catapult is that depicted on the Assyrian bas-reliefs of the IX. B.C. in Nimrud, but these bas-reliefs show only the slings and bows from the throwing weapons. In the encyclopedic book on Assyria by George Rawlinson «The Seven Great Monarchies of The Ancient Eastern World» an image structure from a bas-relief is illustrated, which according to the author recalls the prototype of catapults, but it is difficult to accept such an interpretation of that image.
Plutarch in his "Maxims" cites exclamation (The Great Hercules! That's the end of military valor) of a man who lived in the era of Alexander of Macedon and the Spartan king Archidamus, done on seeing the arrow from newly invented catapult. This happened in Sicily. Alexander of Macedon himself widely used long-range catapults in his battle campaigns. Perhaps his father, the Macedonian king Philip II, first used catapults in Greece during the siege of Byzantium cities and the cities of Perinf, but even these cities have defended themselves with catapults. According to the ancient list of items in the store of the Athenian arsenal, the ammunition for catapults was in store in around 350 B.C.
Ballista catapults appeared somewhat later. They are first mentioned in the battle campaign of Alexander of Macedon.

Build a small catapult

Posted by Z.Z. at 4:52 AM 0

Catapult was the ideal state of siege weapon throwing the shells on horizontal trajectory with the energy of twisted bundles, between which the lever with a shell was attached. That twisted bundles make the lever throw heavy stones at high speed and people at a distance of five hundred meters. If mankind has not invented the rocket-propelled missiles, it would inevitably come down to the fact that people would try to run into space by means of huge catapults.
The schematic drawing of the operational device of ancient Romans catapult consists of
the focus, catapult lever and winch, through which the lever with the shell is pulled from in the deployed position. Because the ancient Romans catapult is not a bow or crossbow, so you will not succeed in pulling out the lever with the catapult with your hands. To do this, a makeshift catapult winch is to be attached to the back of its frame, which will pull the rope attached to a lever, thereby pulling it back:
But whatever the length has your lever, a makeshift catapult is nothing without special twisted bundles making the lever to move.
If you do not completely understand the principle of accumulation of large amounts of potential energy due to tangled bundles, you can try to make a catapult with your own hands on the principle of combat bow: a thick string is fastened behind the lever, accumulating energy when pulling a lever with a winch.
Check your weapons are not designed to be a one-time, you have to make sure that during the shot a lever and the focus are not scattered in pieces, to prevent this, it is desirable to fasten bars between them out of soft wood, and they will take over the bulk of the impact of the lever. It is important to know how to position the bars and enclose the lever with special construction (two parallel bars that hold the direct path of the lever) so that catapult not collapse and a shell fly along the correct trajectory.

Making mini catapult from a spoon

The principle of this makeshift mini catapult model looks like a slingshot, a spoon at one end rests on the bottom of the saucepan and the other part of it, along with a shell in it, it is pulled by a rubber ring-pads, one end of which should be threaded into the handle of a saucepan and fold in half, after which pass a spoon in both ends to get the desired mini catapult.
To make a shot from this homemade mini catapult, pull the part of the spoon in which rests a shell so that the others were resting on the bottom of the saucepan. Note that the departure of both a shell and a spoon is possible when shooting from it. To avoid this, try to kink the rubber ring around thereby firmly fixing the spoon in the rubber as you did it with the base of the ancient Roman catapult. Spoon for the guns should be selected to be a strong and stiff and not wooden or aluminum.