The stock of Archimedes is an invention of the ancient Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes . Initially, this type of weapon was created for a specific purpose - to protect the city walls of Syracuse from Roman invaders. The claw looked like a giant crane equipped with large cat hooks. Later, for the first time after the Punic War , the "claws of Archimedes" were designed and created in the III century BC. e.
The principle of operation of the entire mechanism was as follows. The claw automatically caught the enemy’s ram , raised it to a height accessible to the crane and threw it down. As soon as the enemy ship approached the walls of Syracuse, a huge hook caught on his nose and lifted above the water: the ship either sank from a critical longitudinal heel, or broke off from critical longitudinal loads; damage was caused by the fall of the ship. From clashes with the claws of Archimedes, the Romans left a lot of notes, from which it is clear that the camouflage of the cranes was up to the mark and the Romans considered that the gods opposed them.
Claw of Archimedes is often called the superweapon of the ancient world. It was a huge crane with tenacious hooks at the end, which automatically captured large bodies of various shapes and reliably released them when they reached the desired height. The work of the gun was to raise the enemy ram from the ground to the maximum height, from where it would inevitably fall after the hooks were opened. Another principle for using the claw is to drop huge logs from the heights onto enemy ships and troops.