Palintonon stone throwing Greek catapult

The Greek catapult was developed by Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse around 350 BC.  Dionysius actually called the machine Katapaltai, and they are mentioned in the Siegecraft (Poliorkētika) treatise of Aeneas Tacticus.  Originally, because of their large bulk and problems with portability, they were used mainly in seige warfare.  Alexander the Great is thought to be the first to use them for cover fire for ground troops in addition to seige warfare, essentially introducing artillary to the military world.

While Rome is also known to have use artillary (the ballista and onegar mainly), their standard use in battle dates from the time of Julius Ceasar.

Catapults soon went out of use with the introduction of the trebuchet in Medieval times, and went out permanently with the widespread use of gunpowder shortly thereafter.  At this time, cannons became the weapon of choice in seige situations.

The catapults themselves were generally constructed of wood and were assembled on site by engineers.  There was usually not much in the way of materials transported, as most time wood could be chopped down from nearby trees for use in construction.

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Bull Lyre invented by Ancient Sumarians of Iraq

The bull lyre is one of three excavated from the royal cemetery of Ur. Each lyre had a different animal head protruding from the front of the sound box to denote its pitch: the bull lyre was bass, the heifer lyre was tenor and the stag lyre was alto, with all three being made of wood. The bull lyre stood roughly 1.2 meters high. The sound box was defined by a broad border of mosaic in shell, lapis lazuli and red paste, and this border continued onto the rectangular upright arms. The strings were tied to the crossbar and strung down over the bridge to connect at the base of the sound box. Researchers believe the notes constituted the same scale as Queen Shub-Ad’s harp and were achieved by the tension of the strings rather than the length.

The Sumerians were also believed to have invented their own system of writing, as well as the wheel. However, it can be difficult to give distinct credit because other civilizations have also “invented” the wheel and systems of writing, without prior contact to the Sumerians. As such, it can be assumed that they were invented independently of one another.

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First, if you are still a student, then there are numerous contests that will provide scholarships, and sometimes cash, for winning. Check out the collegiate inventors competition and the NCIIA.


If you are out of college and you still would like funding, you can do a few things to help make your idea a reality. First, starting a business and obtaining a business loan is a very good way to get financial backing. The downside is that you will need to pay this back eventually, so if your idea fails, you could be on the hook for thousands of dollars.

Government grants are another method of getting money. The upside is that you can get a good bit of money, and you don’t have to pay it back. However, grants like this can be extremely competative, and you have to make sure that your invention covers an area where a grant is currently open.

If you have some connections, you can also try to contact a venture capital firm – they will invest and fund your invention in order to bring it to market. The downside of this is that they’ll want a share in the profits, and they may want to become more involved, which can comprimise your original vision.

While it is difficult to get financial help to make your invention a reality, it is definately not impossible.

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Bifocal Lens

As most people know, Benjamin Franklin had numerous inventions that ranged from small convienences to incredible things that changed how people lived. The bifocals didn’t necassarily change how people lived, but they were more than a small improvement for anyone who had multiple sets of glasses to wear.

He is credited with the invention somewhere in the 1960’s, with the first evidence of them coming in a 1964 political cartoon. His first reference to his double spectacles came in a letter in 1984, quite a few years after the original invention.

His original design had the more convex lens placed on the bottom of the glasses (close viewing), while the lesser convex lens was placed on the upper half. Originally the lens’s were actually 2 seperate ones put into the same frame – it wasn’t until the 20th century that lenses were fused together to create bifocals.


While the bifocals are a great convienence for many, they are known to cause dizziness and headaches because of the differing perspectives. This is similar to how you may feel after wearing glasses that aren’t your prescription for an extended period of time.

By their very nature, bifocals offer a limited field of vision for the differeing distances. This can cause wearers to move reading material instead of their heads when reading, to make sure that what they are reading stays in the correct perspective.

This is just one of the examples of how Ben Franklin took a problem that people had, and found a solution.

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