ENGINEER

Life
Philo of Byzantium was one of the most important of the great Alexandrian engineers, and the connecting link between Ctesibius, with whom he studied, and Hero. The body of work he produced was vast, perhaps even greater than that of Ctesibius; and thanks to his students and successors it has survived almost in its entirety. The compendium of his works known as the "Mechanical Collection" not only gives us a full picture of Philo's own work, but also allows us to appreciate the whole range of problems in mechanics that occupied his contemporaries and their predecessors: truly a unique intellectual heritage. It is interesting to note that many of the texts in the Mechanical Collection were preserved in Arabic translation, and later translated into the Romance languages of Western Europe.


Work
Philo's work embraced almost every aspect of engineering and mechanics, and his treatises cover many important fields and special subjects: levers, pneumatics (the elasticity of the air and its potential uses), automata, highly developed tools and instruments, clepsydras, harbour construction, siege engines and other war machines, self-propelled wheels, coded communications systems, and probably much more besides. Some of his more important inventions included the chain-pump, the air pump (blower or bellows), the piston pump and a siren for lighthouses. He constructed a host of water-powered mechanical gadgets, most of them novelties and toys, but also including a treadmill-driven waterwheel and other machines. His Treatise on "Pneumatics" describes 78 mechanical constructions operated by hot air or steam. Another field in which he made an important contribution was that of weaponry, an area where mechanical technology was applied with impressive accuracy and extraordinary skill. He also continued Straton's work in physics (pneumatics, voids).

Fascinated by the precision of his descriptions, particularly those describing his hydraulic machines and pumps, French philologist and scholar Carra de Vaux translated his entire body of work into French, illustrating it with reconstructions of such fine quality that they have been reproduced in almost all subsequent works on ancient Greek technology.

Principal writings:

"Mechanical Collection": Encyclopaedia of applied mechanics in 5 books. Book 4, on "War Machines" (which includes a description of a missile-launcher powered by compressed air, invented by Ctesibius) is extant in Greek, as is a summary of Book 5.

"On levers": Treatise on levers and engineering mechanics.

"On the construction of harbours"

"Pneumatics": Describes 78 constructions operated by air or steam, extant in part.

"On the Seven Wonders of the world": Attributed to Philo.

His principle inventions include:

The air pump (bellows), the chain pump (with buckets), the missile-launcher (powered by compressed air) and the piston pump, as well as a number of water-powered gadgets and novelties, toys, a treadmill, and a siren for lighthouses. Some of his best-known mechanical gadgets were a horse that drank water, a girl that poured water and a drinking fountain.