ARCHIMEDES
             A Man 2000 Years Ahead of His Time
            
             Archimedes was born in 287 B.C., in the city of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily. His father is thought to have been an astronomer. Through his father, Archimedes developed a life long interest in the study of the heavens. In his youth, Archimedes spent some time in Egypt, where he appears to have studied at the great Library of Alexandria. He was a brilliant Greek mathematician and inventor. He wrote important works on plane and solid geometry, arithmetic, and mechanics.
             Archimedes was able to apply the method of exhaustion, which is the early form of integration. He used this method to obtain a whole range of important results, some of which include his unprecedented knack at computing areas and volumes. Archimedes, through pure mathematics, was able to predict many of the discoveries of modern science, such as the integral calculus. Calculus, which was discovered by Newton and Leibnez some two thousand years later, was anticipated through his studies of the areas and volumes of geometrical shapes, of curved solid figures, and the areas of plane figures.
             Archimedes invented the compound pulley, which brought him great fame from his contemporaries. Archimedes wrote a letter to King Hieron. He stated to the king that he could move an object of any given weight. Hieron was struck with amazement and asked
            
             Archimedes if he could prove this through a demonstration. King Heiron picked the biggest ship in his arsenal, which could not be drawn out of the dock without many men and considerable time and effort; and, loaded the ship with many passengers and freight. Archimedes set up his system of pulleys and sat himself down holding only the head of the main pulley. He drew the cords through the pulleys with considerable ease and pulled the ship in a straight line away from the dock.
             Archimedes was an outstanding engineer. He invented a device now known as the Archimed...