Event Description

Durham History Research Seminar will host Rebekah Higgitt (National Museums Scotland) on “Cyclopes and the heirs of Archimedes: smiths, gunners and practical mathematicians at the Tower of London.”

The coat of arms of the Office of Ordnance, displayed on its building within the multipurpose, industrious site of the Tower of London, is supported by Cyclopes, the assistants in Vulcan’s forge who crafted thunderbolts for Jupiter. Holding smith’s forceps and a hammer, they represent the might and manual work that produced the guns and explosives supplied by the Ordnance to the English army and navy.

However, the smiths at the seventeenth-century Tower lived and worked alongside those who emphasised the role of mathematics and mathematical instruments in supporting the Ordnance’s work: whether improving the aim of gunners, or the mapping and fortifications of surveyors. They have been seen as the ‘heirs of Archimedes’, applying scientific knowledge to practical, especially military, problems. As this paper aims to show, the proximity and range of people, skills, interests and materials at the Tower – and the overlapping spaces that the Ordnance shared with the Royal Mint – could create productive interactions and opportunities, linking smiths to astronomy and mathematicians to gunpowder.

Wednesday, 20 January 2021, 15:00–16:30 GMT

Source: https://www.dur.ac.uk/conference.booking/details/?id=1622

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