1.
Lock (water navigation)
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A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats, ships and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. Locks are used to make a more easily navigable, or to allow a canal to cross land that is not level. Later canals used more and larger locks to allow a direct route to be taken. Since 2016 the largest lock worldwide is the Kieldrecht Lock in the Port of Antwerp, a pound lock is a type of lock that is used almost exclusively nowadays on canals and rivers. A pound lock has a chamber with gates at both ends that control the level of water in the pound, in contrast, an earlier design with a single gate was known as a flash lock. Pound locks were first used in medieval China during the Song Dynasty, having been pioneered by the government official and engineer Qiao Weiyue in 984. The gates were hanging gates, when they were closed the water accumulated like a tide until the level was reached. The water level could differ by 4 feet or 5 feet at each lock, in medieval Europe a sort of pound lock was built in 1373 at Vreeswijk, Netherlands. This pound lock serviced many ships at once in a large basin, yet the first true pound lock was built in 1396 at Damme near Bruges, Belgium. A famous civil engineer of pound locks in Europe was the Italian Bertola da Novate, who constructed 18 of them on the Naviglio di Bereguardo between the years 1452 and 1458. When a stretch of river is navigable, a lock is sometimes required to bypass an obstruction such as a rapid, dam. In large scale river navigation improvements, weirs and locks are used together, a river improved by these means is often called a Waterway or River Navigation. Sometimes a river is made entirely non-tidal by constructing a sea lock directly into the estuary, in more advanced river navigations, more locks are required. Where a longer cut bypasses a stretch of river, the upstream end of the cut will often be protected by a flood lock. The longer the cut, the greater the difference in level between start and end of the cut, so that a very long cut will need additional locks along its length. At this point, the cut is, in effect, a canal, Early completely artificial canals, across fairly flat countryside, would get round a small hill or depression by simply detouring around it. However, locks continued to be built to supplement these solutions, all pound locks have three elements, A watertight chamber connecting the upper and lower canals, and large enough to enclose one or more boats. The position of the chamber is fixed, but its level can vary
2.
Wang Zhen (inventor)
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This article is about Wang Zhen, agronomist and inventor. For other historical figures with this name, see Wang Zhen, Wang Zhen was an official of the Yuan Dynasty of China. He was one of the innovators of the wooden movable type printing technology. His illustrated agricultural treatise was also one of the most advanced of its day, covering a range of equipment and technologies available in the late 13th. Wang Zhen was born in Shandong province, and spent many years as an official of both Anhui and Jiangxi provinces. From the years 1290 to 1301, he was a magistrate for Jingde, Anhui province, the wooden movable type was described in Wang Zhens publication of 1313 AD, known as the Nong Shu, or Book of Agriculture. Although the title describes the focus of the work, it incorporated much more information on a wide variety of subjects that was not limited to the scope of agriculture. Wang Zhens Nong Shu of 1313 was an important medieval treatise outlining the application and use of the various Chinese sciences, technologies. From water powered bellows to movable type printing, it is considered a masterpiece on contemporary medieval Chinese technology. Hence, a such as the Nong Shu could help rural farmers maximize efficiency of producing yields. The Nong Shu was a long book even for its own time. The Chinese during the Han Dynasty were the first to apply hydraulic power in working the bellows of the blast furnace in creating cast iron. This was recorded in the year 31 AD, an innovation of the engineer Du Shi, after Du Shi, Chinese in subsequent dynastic periods continued the use of water power to operate the bellows of the blast furnace. The 5th century text Shui Jing Zhu mentions the use of rushing water to power waterwheels, as does the Tang Dynasty geography text of the Yuan-he Jun Xian Tu Chi. Although Du Shi was the first to apply power to bellows in metallurgy. Wang Zhen is best known for his usage of wooden movable type while he was a magistrate of Jingde in Anhui province from 1290 to 1301. His main contribution was improving the speed of typesetting with simple devices, along with the complex. Wang Zhen improved the earlier experimented process by adding the methods of specific type cutting and finishing, making the type case and revolving table that made the process more efficient
3.
Vitruvius
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His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body, led to the famous Renaissance drawing by Da Vinci of Vitruvian Man. By his own description Vitruvius served as an artilleryman, the class of arms in the military offices. He probably served as a officer of artillery in charge of doctores ballistarum. Little is known about Vitruvius life, most inferences about him are extracted from his only surviving work De Architectura. Even his first name Marcus and his cognomen Pollio are uncertain. Cetius Faventinus writes of Vitruvius Polio aliique auctores, this can be read as Vitruvius Polio, and others or, less likely, as Vitruvius, Polio, Vitruvius was a military engineer, or a praefect architectus armamentarius of the apparitor status group. He is mentioned in Pliny the Elders table of contents for Naturalis Historia, frontinus refers to Vitruvius the architect in his late 1st-century work De aquaeductu. Likely born a free Roman citizen, by his own account, Vitruvius served the Roman army under Caesar with the otherwise poorly identified Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius and these names vary depending on the edition of De architectura. Publius Minidius is also written as Publius Numidicus and Publius Numidius, as an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ballista and scorpio artillery war machines for sieges. It is speculated that Vitruvius served with Caesars chief engineer Lucius Cornelius Balbus, the locations where he served can be reconstructed from, for example, descriptions of the building methods of various foreign tribes. Although he describes places throughout De Architectura, he not say he was present. His service likely included north Africa, Hispania, Gaul and Pontus, the position of the camp, the direction of the entrenchments, the inspection of the tents or huts of the soldiers and the baggage were comprehended in his province. His authority extended over the sick, and the physicians who had the care of them and he had the charge of providing carriages, bathhouses and the proper tools for sawing and cutting wood, digging trenches, raising parapets, sinking wells and bringing water into the camp. He likewise had the care of furnishing the troops with wood and straw, as well as the rams, onagri, balistae, at various locations described by Vitruvius, battles and sieges occurred. He is the source for the siege of Larignum in 56 BC. The broken siege at Gergovia in 52 BC, and the siege of Uxellodunum in 51 BC. These are all sieges of large Gallic oppida, a legion that fits the same sequence of locations is the Legio VI Ferrata, of which ballista would be an auxiliary unit. Mainly known for his writings, Vitruvius was himself an architect, frontinus mentions him in connection with the standard sizes of pipes
4.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
5.
Chesterfield
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Chesterfield is a market town and a borough in Derbyshire, England. It lies 24 miles north of Derby and 11 miles south of Sheffield, the borough – which includes the settlements of Whittington, Brimington and Staveley – had a population of 103,800 in 2011. Chesterfield is the second largest town in the county of Derbyshire. Archaeological examination of the town has traced its beginnings to the 1st century AD and the construction of a Roman fort, later an Anglo-Saxon village grew up on the site. The name Chesterfield derives from the Anglo-Saxon words caester and feld, Chesterfield received its market charter in 1204. It still has a moderately sized market of about 250 stalls held three days a week, the town sits on a large coalfield, which formed a major part of the areas economy until the 1980s. Little visual evidence of the remains today. The towns best known landmark is the Church of St Mary and All Saints, popularly known for its crooked spire, Chesterfield was in the Hundred of Scarsdale. The town received its charter in 1204 from King John. The charter constituted the town as a borough, granting the burgesses of Chesterfield the same privileges as those of Nottingham. In 1266, it was the site of the Battle of Chesterfield, elizabeth I granted a charter of incorporation in 1594, creating a corporation consisting of a mayor, six aldermen, six brethren, and twelve capital burgesses. This remained the governing charter until the borough was reformed under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, the borough originally consisted only of the township of Chesterfield, but it was extended in 1892 to parts of some surrounding townships. In 1920 there was an extension when the borough absorbed New Whittington. Chesterfield benefited greatly from the building of the Chesterfield Line – part of the Derby to Leeds railway, during the work, a sizeable seam of coal was discovered during the construction of the Clay Cross Tunnel. This and the local ironstone were promptly exploited by Stephenson, who set up a company in Clay Cross to trade in the minerals, during his time in Chesterfield, Stephenson lived at Tapton House, and remained there until his death in 1848. He is interred in Trinity Church, in 2006, a statue of Stephenson was erected outside Chesterfield railway station. Chesterfield is located on the confluence and valleys of the River Rother and River Hipper at the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield. The town also lies in the foothills of the Pennines
6.
Late Middle Ages
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The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the modern era. Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt, a series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it was before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare, France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the Jacquerie and the Peasants Revolt, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict in the Hundred Years War. To add to the problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively these events are called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of progress in the arts. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would lead to the Protestant Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began, the rise of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, eroded the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire and cut off trading possibilities with the east. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the expedition of Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. The changes brought about by these developments have led scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of modern history. However, the division is artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result there was continuity between the ancient age and the modern age. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all, but rather see the period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance. The term Late Middle Ages refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages, along with the Early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People. Flavio Biondo used a framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire. Tripartite periodization became standard after the German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, for 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance, with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit
7.
Crossbow
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A crossbow, also known as horizontal bow, is a type of weapon based on the bow and consisting of a horizontal bow-like assembly mounted on a stock. It shoots projectiles called bolts or quarrels, the medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which were derived from the word ballista, a torsion siege engine resembling a crossbow. Historically, crossbows played a significant role in the warfare of East Asia, Europe, the introduction of the crossbow in ancient China caused a major shift in the role of projectile weaponry. The traditional bow and arrow had long been a weapon that required a considerable training, physical strength. A crossbow is a bow mounted on a stick with a mechanism in it that holds the bow string. The earliest designs featured a slot in the stock, down into which the string was placed, to shoot this design, a vertical rod is thrust up through a hole in the bottom of the notch, forcing the string out. This rod is attached perpendicular to a rear-facing lever called a trigger or tickler. A later design implemented a rolling cylindrical pawl called a nut to retain the string and this nut has a perpendicular center slot for the bolt, and an intersecting axial slot for the string, along with a lower face or slot against which the internal trigger sits. They often also have some form of strengthening internal sear or trigger face and these roller nuts were either free-floating in their close-fitting hole across the stock, tied in with a binding of sinew or other strong cording, or mounted on a metal axle or pins. Removable or integral plates of wood, ivory, or metal on the sides of the stock kept the nut in place laterally, nuts were made of antler, bone, or metal. Bows could be kept taut and ready to shoot for some time with little effort, the bow of early crossbows was made of a single piece of wood, usually ash or yew. Composite bows are made from layers of different material, often wood, horn and these composite bows made of several layers are much stronger and more efficient in releasing energy than simple wooden bows. As steel became more available in Europe around the 14th century. The crossbow prod is very short compared to ordinary bows, resulting in a draw length. This leads to a draw weight in order to store the same amount of energy. Furthermore, the thick prods are a bit less efficient at releasing energy, traditionally, the prod was often lashed to the stock with rope, whipcord, or other strong cording. This cording is called the bridle, the strings for a crossbow are typically made of strong fibers that would not tend to fray. Whipcord was very common, however linen, hemp, and sinew were used as well, in wet conditions, twisted mulberry root was occasionally used
8.
Anchor
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An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, used to connect a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ancora, which comes from the Greek ἄγκυρα. Anchors can either be temporary or permanent, permanent anchors are used in the creation of a mooring, and are rarely moved, a specialist service is normally needed to move or maintain them. Vessels carry one or more anchors, which may be of different designs. A sea anchor is a drogue, not in contact with the seabed, used to control a drifting vessel, anchors achieve holding power either by hooking into the seabed, or via sheer mass, or a combination of the two. Permanent moorings use large masses resting on the seabed, semi-permanent mooring anchors and large ships anchors derive a significant portion of their holding power from their mass, while also hooking or embedding in the bottom. Modern anchors for smaller vessels have metal flukes which hook on to rocks on the bottom or bury themselves in soft seabed, the vessel is attached to the anchor by the rode, which is made of chain, cable, rope, or a combination of these. A10,1 scope gives the greatest holding power, Anchoring with sufficient scope and/or heavy chain rode brings the direction of strain close to parallel with the seabed. If necessary, motoring slowly around the location of the anchor also helps dislodge it, anchors are sometimes fitted with a tripping line attached to the crown, by which they can be unhooked from rocks or coral. The term aweigh describes an anchor when it is hanging on the rope and is not resting on the bottom and this is linked to the term to weigh anchor, meaning to lift the anchor from the sea bed, allowing the ship or boat to move. An anchor is described as aweigh when it has broken out of the bottom and is being hauled up to be stowed. Aweigh should not be confused with under way, which describes a vessel which is not moored to a dock or anchored, the earliest anchors were probably rocks, and many rock anchors have been found dating from at least the Bronze Age. Pre-European Maori waka used one or more hollowed stones, tied with flax ropes, many modern moorings still rely on a large rock as the primary element of their design. However, using pure mass to resist the forces of a storm only works well as a permanent mooring, the ancient Greeks used baskets of stones, large sacks filled with sand, and wooden logs filled with lead. According to Apollonius Rhodius and Stephen of Byzantium, anchors were formed of stone, such anchors held the vessel merely by their weight and by their friction along the bottom. Iron was afterwards introduced for the construction of anchors, and an improvement was made by forming them with teeth, or flukes, the Admiralty Pattern, A. P. or simply Admiralty, and also known as Fisherman, is the anchor shape most familiar to non-sailors. It consists of a shank with a ring or shackle for attaching the rode. At the other end of the shank there are two arms, carrying the flukes, while the stock is mounted to the other end, when the anchor lands on the bottom, it will generally fall over with the arms parallel to the seabed
9.
Water well
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A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring, or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by a pump, or using containers, such as buckets, placing a lining in the well shaft helps create stability and linings of wood or wickerwork date back at least as far as the Iron Age. Wells have been sunk by hand digging as is the case in rural developing areas. These wells are inexpensive and low-tech as they use mostly manual labour, a more modern method called caissoning uses pre-cast reinforced concrete well rings that are lowered into the hole. Deeper wells can be excavated by hand drilling methods or machine drilling, using a bit in a borehole, drilled wells are usually cased with a factory-made pipe composed of steel or plastic. Drilled wells can access water at greater depths than dug wells. A collector well can be constructed adjacent to a lake or stream with water percolating through the intervening material. The site of a well can be selected by a hydrogeologist, Water may be pumped or hand drawn. Impurities from the surface can easily reach shallow sources and contamination of the supply by pathogens or chemical contaminants needs to be avoided, Well water typically contains more minerals in solution than surface water and may require treatment before being potable. Soil salination can occur as the water falls and the surrounding soil begins to dry out. Another environmental problem is the potential for methane to seep into the water, hand-dug wells are excavations with diameters large enough to accommodate one or more people with shovels digging down to below the water table. The excavation is braced horizontally to avoid landslide or erosion endangering the people digging, a more modern method called caissoning uses reinforced concrete or plain concrete pre-cast well rings that are lowered into the hole. A well-digging team digs under a ring and the well column slowly sinks into the aquifer. Hand-dug wells are inexpensive and low tech as they use mostly manual labour to access groundwater in rural locations in developing countries and they may be built with a high degree of community participation, or by local entrepreneurs who specialize in hand-dug wells. They have been excavated to 60 metres. They have low operational and maintenance costs, in part because water can be extracted by hand bailing, without a pump. The water is coming from an aquifer or groundwater, and can be easily deepened. The yield of existing hand dug wells may be improved by deepening or introducing vertical tunnels or perforated pipes, drawbacks to hand-dug wells are numerous
10.
Isidore of Seville
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He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo, the Visigothic legislation that resulted from these councils influenced the beginnings of representative government. His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an encyclopedia which assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. Isidore was probably born in Cartagena, Spain, a former Carthaginian colony, to Severianus, both Severianus and Theodora belonged to notable Hispano-Roman families of high social rank. His parents were members of a family who were instrumental in the political-religious manoeuvring that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Catholicism. A younger brother, Saint Fulgentius of Cartagena, served as the Bishop of Astigi at the start of the new reign of the Catholic King Reccared and his sister, Saint Florentina, served God as a nun and allegedly ruled over forty convents and one thousand consecrated religious. This claim seems unlikely, however, given the few functioning monastic institutions in Iberia during her lifetime, Isidore received his elementary education in the Cathedral school of Seville. In this institution, the first of its kind in Iberia, a body of learned men including Archbishop Saint Leander of Seville taught the trivium and quadrivium, Saint Isidore applied himself to study diligently enough that he quickly mastered Latin, and acquired some Greek, and Hebrew. Two centuries of Gothic control of Iberia incrementally suppressed the ancient institutions, classic learning, the associated culture entered a period of long-term decline. The ruling Visigoths nevertheless showed some respect for the trappings of Roman culture. Arianism meanwhile took deep root among the Visigoths as the form of Christianity that they received, scholars may debate whether Isidore ever personally embraced monastic life or affiliated with any religious order, but he undoubtedly esteemed the monks highly. After the death of Saint Leander of Seville on 13 March 600 or 601, on his elevation to the episcopate, he immediately constituted himself as protector of monks. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded, Isidore practically eradicated the heresy of Arianism and completely stifled the new heresy of Acephali at its very outset. Archbishop Isidore strengthened religious discipline throughout his See, Archbishop Isidore also used resources of education to counteract increasingly influential Gothic barbarism throughout his episcopal jurisdiction. His quickening spirit animated the educational movement centered on Seville, Saint Isidore introduced Aristotle to his countrymen long before the Arabs studied Greek philosophy extensively. In 619, Saint Isidore of Seville pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who in any way should molest the monasteries, through the enlightened statecraft of his two brothers, the Councils of Seville and Toledo emanated Visigothic legislation which influenced the beginnings of representative government. The Acts of the Council fully set forth the nature of Christ, countering the conceptions of Gregory, based on a few surviving canons found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Saint Isidore is known to have presided over an additional provincial council around 624. The council dealt with a conflict over the see of Ecija, and wrongfully stripped bishop Martianus of his see and it also addressed a concern over Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity by Sisebut failing to present their children for baptism
