Archimedes, the inventor and engineer
Archimedes is also famous as an inventor because he made new tools and machines. For example, he made a machine to lift water that could be used by farmers to bring water to their crops. This is called Archimedes' screw.
Archimedes probably also invented a machine to measure distance, an odometer. A cart was built with wheels that turned four hundred times in one mile. A pin on the wheel would hit a 400-tooth gear, so it turned once for every mile. This gear would then make a small stone fall into a cup. At the end of a journey one could count the number of stones in the cup to find the distance.
Archimedes also made a system which one person could pull a large ship with just one rope. This was called the compound pulley. This is an important machine even today, as it helps people in everyday life, although the versions we now use are much more complicated. They still work by the same principle.
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