Ctesibius

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Ctesibius

Ctesibius or Ktesibios or Tesibius (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
?t?s?ß???) (fl.

Floruit

Floruit refers to a period of time during which a person, school, movement or even species was active or flourishing. It is the third person, singular, perfect tense, indicative, active form of the Latin verb florere ? "to flourish"....
285–222 BC) was a Greek

Ancient Greece

The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
inventor

Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
and mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics....
in Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
, Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Aegyptus in 30 BC....
. He wrote the first treatises on the science of compressed air and its uses in pumps (and even a cannon

Cannon

A cannon is any tubular piece of artillery, that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile over a distance....
). This, in combination with his work on the elasticity of air On pneumatics, earned him the title of "father of pneumatics

Pneumatics

Pneumatics is the use of pressurized gas to affect mechanical motion.Pneumatic power is used in industry, where factory machines are commonly plumbed for compressed air; other compressed inert gases can also be used....
." None of his written work has survived, including his Memorabilia, a compilation of his research that was cited by Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greeks rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The Suda only tells us that he lived in the times of Marcus ; but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus shows that he survived that emperor....
.

Inventions
Ctesibius was probably the first head of the Museum of Alexandria

Musaeum

The Musaeum or Mouseion at Alexandria , which included the famous Library of Alexandria, was an institution apparently founded by Ptolemy I Soter or, perhaps more likely, Ptolemy II Philadelphus at ancient Alexandria in Egypt which remained supported by the patronage of the royal family of the Ptolemies....
.

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Ctesibius or Ktesibios or Tesibius (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
?t?s?ß???) (fl.

Floruit

Ancient Greece

Inventor

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics....
in Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
, Ptolemaic Egypt

Ptolemaic Egypt

Cannon

Pneumatics

Athenaeus

Inventions

Ctesibius was probably the first head of the Museum of Alexandria

Musaeum

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes La?rtius , the biographer of the Greece philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman Empire family of the La?rtii....
) that his first career was as a barber

Barber

A barber is someone whose occupation is to cut any type of hair, give shaving, and trim beards. In previous times, barbers also performed surgery and dentistry....
. During his time as a barber, he invented a clever counterweight

Counterweight

A counterweight is an equivalent counterbalancing weight that balances a load....
-adjustable mirror

Mirror

A mirror is an object with one surface polished, which leads to reflection and another opaque. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface....
. His other inventions include the hydraulis, a water organ that is considered the precursor of the modern pipe organ

Pipe organ

The pipe organ is a keyboard musical instrument that produces sound by venting mechanically compressed air through resonant Organ pipe. Each pipe produces sound at one fixed pitch, so they are provided in sets or "ranks" with one pipe or more per note, each rank having a common timbre and loudness throughout....
, and an improved water clock

Water clock

A water clock or clepsydra is any timekeeper operated by means of a regulated flow of liquid into or out from a vessel where the amount is then measured....
called a clepsydra

Clepsydra

Clepsydra may refer to*Clepsydra , the Greek word for water clock.* Clepsydra Geyser in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone*Clepsydra , a genus of protists....
. The clepsydra kept more accurate time than any clock

Clock

A clock is an instrument used for indicating and maintaining the time and passage thereof. The word clock is derived ultimately from the Celtic languages words clagan and clocca meaning "bell"....
invented until the Dutch physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens was a prominent Netherlands mathematics, astronomer, physics, and horology. His work included early telescopic studies, investigations and inventions related to time keeping, and studies of both optics and centrifugal force....
detailed the use of a pendulum

Pendulum

A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so it can swing freely.When a pendulum is displaced from its resting Mechanical equilibrium, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position....
to regulate a clock in the 17th century. He described one of the first force pumps for producing a jet of water, or for lifting water from wells, and examples have been found at various Roman sites, such as at Silchester

Silchester

Silchester is a village and civil parish in the England county of Hampshire. It is best known for the adjacent archaeological site and Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, which was first occupied by the Romans in about AD 45 and includes what is thought to be the best-preserved Roman Empire wall in Great Britain....
in Britain. The principle of the siphon

Siphon

A siphon is a continuous tube that allows liquid to drain from a reservoir through an intermediate point that is higher, or lower, than the reservoir, the flow being driven only by the difference in hydrostatic pressure without any need for pumping....
has also been attributed to him.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Ctesibius was miserably poor. Laertius details this by recounting the following concerning the philosopher Arcesilaus

Arcesilaus

Arcesilaus was a Greece philosopher and founder of the Second or Middle Platonic Academy—the skepticism phase of the Academy. Arcesilaus succeeded Crates of Athens as head of the Academy c....
: "when he had gone to visit Ctesibius who was ill, seeing him in great distress from want, he secretly slipped his purse under his pillow; and when Ctesibius found it, 'This,' said he, 'is the amusement of Arcesilaus.'"

Reputation

Ctesibius's work is chronicled by Vitruvius

Vitruvius

File:Vitruvius.jpgMarcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Ancient Rome writer, architect and engineer , active in the 1st century BC. By his own description Vitruvius served as a Ballista , the third class of arms in the military offices....
, Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Philo of Byzantium

Philo of Byzantium , also known as Philo Mechanicus, a Greeks writer on mechanics, flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century B.C....
who repeatedly mentions him, adding that the first mechanicians such as Ctesibius had the advantage of being under kings who loved fame and supported the arts. Proclus

Proclus

Proclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek philosophy Neoplatonist philosophy, one of the last major Classical philosophers ....
(the commentator on Euclid

Euclid

Euclid , floruit 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematics and is often referred to as the Father of Geometry. He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I ....
) and Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria

Hero of Alexandria . was an ancient Greek mathematics who was a resident of a Roman province ; he was also an engineer who was active in his hometown of Alexandria....
(the last of the engineers of antiquity) also mention him.

Ctesibius

Inventions

Reputation

External links