Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Hydromechanics" to "Ichnography" / Volume 14, Slice 2

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HYDROMECHANICS (ὑδρομηχανικά), the science of the mechanics of water and fluids in general, including hydrostatics or the mathematical theory of fluids in equilibrium, and hydromechanics , the theory of fluids in motion. The practical application of hydromechanics forms the province of hydraulics ( q.v. ).
Historical. —The fundamental principles of hydrostatics were first given by Archimedes in his work Περὶ τῶν ὀχουμένων, or De iis quae vehuntur in humido , about 250 B.C., and were afterwards applied to experiments by Marino Ghetaldi (1566-1627) in his Promotus Archimedes (1603). Archimedes maintained that each particle of a fluid mass, when in equilibrium, is equally pressed in every direction; and he inquired into the conditions according to which a solid body floating in a fluid should assume and preserve a position of equilibrium.
In the Greek school at Alexandria, which flourished under the auspices of the Ptolemies, the first attempts were made at the construction of hydraulic machinery, and about 120 B.C. the fountain of compression, the siphon, and the forcing-pump were invented by Ctesibius and Hero. The siphon is a simple instrument; but the forcing-pump is a complicated invention, which could scarcely have been expected in the infancy of hydraulics. It was probably suggested to Ctesibius by the Egyptian Wheel or Noria , which was common at that time, and which was a kind of chain pump, consisting of a number of earthen pots carried round by a wheel. In some of these machines the pots have a valve in the bottom which enables them to descend without much resistance, and diminishes greatly the load upon the wheel; and, if we suppose that this valve was introduced so early as the time of Ctesibius, it is not difficult to perceive how such a machine might have led to the invention of the forcing-pump.
Notwithstanding these inventions of the Alexandrian school, its attention does not seem to have been directed to the motion of fluids; and the first attempt to investigate this subject was made by Sextus Julius Frontinus, inspector of the public fountains at Rome in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. In his work De aquaeductibus urbis Romae commentarius , he considers the methods which were at that time employed for ascertaining the quantity of water discharged from ajutages, and the mode of distributing the waters of an aqueduct or a fountain. He remarked that the flow of water from an orifice depends not only on the magnitude of the orifice itself, but also on the height of the water in the reservoir; and that a pipe employed to carry off a portion of water from an aqueduct should, as circumstances required, have a position more or less inclined to the original direction of the current. But as he was unacquainted with the law of the velocities of running water as depending upon the depth of the orifice, the want of precision which appears in his results is not surprising.