Italian scientist redesigns Archimedes’s flaming steam cannon

LONDON - An Italian scientist has redesigned the famous cannon built by Archimedes to destroy Roman ships in wars.

Cesare Rossi of the University of Naples Federico II says that Archimedes invented a cannon, which used pressurised steam to force a projectile out of the barrel at high speed.

Sun-focusing mirrors could have heated such a cannon, while the projectiles would have been hollow and filled with an incendiary fluid - perhaps a mixture of sulphur, bitumen, pitch and calcium oxide.

According to New Scientist, Rossi has worked out a possible design for the cannon.

However, other historians don’t agree.

Serafina Cuomo of Imperial College London, UK, said, “Archimedes became a quasi-mythical icon of the scientist capable of constructing incredible weapons.”

Others say that Rossi doesn’t explain why the hollow clay cannonballs didn’t break apart when they were fired. (ANI)