On Architecture

1. WITH regard to water organs, however, I shall not fail with all possible brevity and precision to touch upon their principles, and to give a sufficient description of them. A wooden base is constructed, and on it is set an altar-shaped box made of bronze. Uprights, fastened together like ladders, are set up on the base, to the right and to the left (of the altar). They hold the bronze pump-cylinders, the moveable bottoms of which, carefully turned on a lathe, have iron elbows fastened to their centres and jointed to levers, and are wrapped in fleeces of wool. In the tops of the cylinders are openings, each about three digits in diameter. Close to these openings are bronze dolphins, mounted on joints and holding chains in their mouths, from which hang cymbal-shaped valves, let down under the openings in the cylinders.

2. Inside the altar, which holds the water, is a regulator shaped like an inverted funnel, under which there are cubes, each about three digits high, keeping a free space below between the lips of the regulator and the bottom of the altar. Tightly fixed on the neck of the regulator is the windchest, which supports the principle part of the contrivance, called in Greek the kanw\n mousiko/s. Running longitudinally, there are four channels in it if it is a tetrachord; six, if it is a hexachord; eight, if it is an octachord.

3. Each of the channels has a cock in it, furnished with an iron handle. These handles, when turned, open ventholes from the windchest into the channels. From the channels to the canon there are vertical openings corresponding to ventholes in a board above, which board is termed pi/nac in Greek. Between this board and the canon are inserted sliders, pierced with holes to correspond, and rubbed with oil so that they can be easily moved and slid back into place again. They close the above-mentioned openings, and are called the plinths. Their going and coming now closes and now opens the holes.

4. These sliders have iron jacks fixed to them, and connected with the keys, and the keys, when touched, make the sliders move regularly. To the upper surface of the openings in the board, where the wind finds egress from the channels, rings are soldered, and into them the reeds of all the organ pipes are inserted. From the cylinders there are connecting pipes attached to the neck of the regulator, and directed towards the ventholes in the windchest. In the pipes are valves, turned on a lathe, and set (where the pipes are connected with the cylinders). When the windchest has received the air, these valves will stop up the openings, and prevent the wind from coming back again.

5. So, when the levers are raised, the elbows draw down the bottoms of the cylinders as far as they can go; and the dolphins, which are mounted on joints, let the cymbals fall into the cylinders, thus filling the interiors with air. Then the elbows, raising the bottoms within the cylinders by repeated and violent blows, and stopping the openings above by means of the cymbals, compress the air which is enclosed in the cylinders, and force it into the pipes, through which it runs into the regulator, and through its neck into the windchest. With a stronger motion of the levers, the air is still more compressed, streams through the apertures of the cocks, and fills the channels with wind.

6. So, when the keys, touched by the hand, drive the sliders forward and draw them back regularly, alternately stopping and opening the holes, they produce resonant sounds in a great variety of melodies conforming to the laws of music.

With my best efforts I have striven to set forth an obscure subject clearly in writing, but the theory of it is not easy, nor readily understood by all, save only those who have had some practice in things of this kind. If anybody has failed to understand it, he will certainly find, when he comes to know the thing itself, that it is carefully and exquisitely contrived in all respects.

1. THE drift of our treatise now turns to a useful invention of the greatest ingenuity, transmitted by our predecessors, which enables us, while sitting in a carriage on the road or sailing by sea, to know how many miles of a journey we have accomplished. This will be possible as follows. Let the wheels of the carriage be each four feet in diameter, so that if a wheel has a mark made upon it, and begins to move forward from that mark in making its revolution on the surface of the road, it will have covered the definite distance of twelve and a half feet on reaching that mark at which it began to revolve.

2. Having provided such wheels, let a drum with a single tooth projecting beyond the face of its circumference be firmly fastened to the inner side of the hub of the wheel. Then, above this, let a case be firmly fastened to the body of the carriage, containing a revolving drum set on edge and mounted on an axle; on the face of the drum there are four hundred teeth, placed at equal intervals, and engaging the tooth of the drum below. The upper drum has, moreover, one tooth fixed to its side and standing out farther than the other teeth.

3. Then, above, let there be a horizontal drum, similarly toothed and contained in another case, with its teeth engaging the tooth fixed to the side of the second drum, and let as many holes be made in this (third) drum as will correspond to the number of miles—more or less, it does not matter—that a carriage can go in a day's journey. Let a small round stone be placed in every one of these holes, and in the receptacle or case containing that drum let one hole be made, with a small pipe attached, through which, when they reach that point, the stones placed in the drum may fall one by one into a bronze vessel set underneath in the body of the carriage.

4. Thus, as the wheel in going forward carries with it the lowest

5. On board ship, also, the same principles may be employed with a few changes. An axle is passed through the sides of the ship, with its ends projecting, and wheels are mounted on them, four feet in diameter, with projecting floatboards fastened round their faces and striking the water. The middle of the axle in the middle of the ship carries a drum with one tooth projecting beyond its circumference. Here a case is placed containing a drum with four hundred teeth at regular intervals, engaging the tooth of the drum that is mounted on the axle, and having also one other tooth fixed to its side and projecting beyond its circumference.

6. Above, in another case fastened to the former, is a horizontal drum toothed in the same way, and with its teeth engaging the tooth fixed to the side of the drum that is set on edge, so that one of the teeth of the horizontal drum is struck at each revolution of that tooth, and the horizontal drum is thus made to revolve in a circle. Let holes be made in the horizontal drum, in which holes small round stones are to be placed. In the receptacle or case containing that drum, let one hole be opened with a small pipe attached, through which a stone, as soon as the obstruction is removed, falls with a ringing sound into a bronze vessel.