They combusted a boat in San Francisco harbor using the 2,200-year-old weapon.Ī heat-ray weapon unveiled in 2001 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) used microwaves to penetrate “a victim’s skin, heating it to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, creating the sensation that one is on fire,” explained Mayor. Mayor described the weapon as “ranks of polished bronze shields reflecting the sun’s rays at enemy ships.”Īlthough “Mythbusters” failed to reproduce this ancient weapon and declared it a myth, MIT students succeeded in 2005. 212 B.C.) developed a heat-ray weapon that defied the skills of Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” to replicate in 2004. Mayor noted that Serguei Popov, a former top biological weapons researcher in the Soviet Union’s massive Biopreparat program who defected to the United States in 1992, was attempting to make a modern-day Mithridatium.Ī depiction of how Archimedes set on fire the Roman ships before Syracuse with the help of parabolic mirrors. The valuable substance was known as Mithridatium, named for King Mithridates VI. The original formula was lost, explained Adrienne Mayor, a folklorist and historian of science at Stanford University, in a 2008 paper, titled “Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World.” But ancient historians told us that among its ingredients were opium, chopped vipers, and a combination of small doses of poisons and their antidotes.Ī depiction of King Mithridates VI of Pontus. An Antidote to All PoisonsĪ so-called “universal antidote” against all poisons was said to have been developed by King Mithridates VI of Pontus (who reigned 120–63 B.C.) and perfected by Emperor Nero’s personal physician. If the unfortunate Roman glassmaker did indeed invent vitrum flexile, it seems he was thousands of years ahead of his time. In 2012, the glass manufacturing company Corning introduced its flexible “Willow Glass.” Heat-resistant and flexible enough to be rolled up, it has proven especially useful in making solar panels. When the vessel was thrown to the floor, it broke and the glassmaker fixed it with his bare hands. The version told a couple hundred years later by Dio Cassius morphed the glassmaker into a sort of magician. He said that, although the story was frequently told, it may not be entirely true. Fearing the devaluation of precious metals, Tiberius ordered the inventor beheaded so the secret of vitrum flexile would die with him. It didn’t break it only dented, and the glassmaker hammered it quickly back into shape. He asked the emperor to hand it back to him, at which point, the glassmaker threw it to the floor. He wrote about a glassmaker who presented the Emperor Tiberius (who reigned 14–37 A.D.) with a glass vessel. The story of its invention was first told by Petronius (d. Three ancient accounts of a substance known as vitrum flexile, flexible glass, are not clear enough to determine that this substance actually existed. Ten amazing inventions from ancient timesĢ.Archaeological Evidence for 1,700-Year-Old Chemical Warfare.Fifty ancient Greek inventions brought to life through incredible reconstructions.The Byzantines guarded the secret jealously, ensuring only a select few knew the secret, and the knowledge was eventually lost altogether. We still don’t know what this chemical weapon, known as Greek Fire, was made of. This liquid, shot through tubes or siphons, burned in water and could only be extinguished with vinegar, sand, and urine. The Byzantines of the 7th to 12th centuries hurled a mysterious substance at their enemies in naval battle. The caption above the left ship reads, “the fleet of the Romans setting ablaze the fleet of the enemies.” ( Wikimedia Commons ) Image from an illuminated manuscript, the Madrid Skylitzes, showing Greek Fire in use against the fleet of the rebel Thomas the Slav. We have developed the modern equivalent of some of these inventions, but only very recently. We’ve lost the secret to making some of history’s most useful inventions, and for all of our ingenuity and discoveries, our ancestors of thousands of years ago are still able to baffle us with their ingenuity and discoveries.
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