Title:
Archimes’ Square
Description:
The world’s oldest known puzzle, from 250 B.C. Archimedes lived from 287 to 212 B.C., a generation after Euclid. He was a great inventor (remember ”Eureka”?) and is credited with creating, 2200 years ago, the first puzzle ever known. Like all of his other ingenious inventions, his puzzle is brilliant and challenging even today. The most interesting fact is that his puzzle was discovered accidentally, in 1846, but lay in obscurity for over a century.
In October 1998, a manuscript containing some of Archimedes’s works, known to scholars as the Archimedes Palimpsest, resurfaced and was sold in New York for two million dollars.
This exciting artifact is a unique source of evidence for Archimedes’ thought and contains the oldest, by far, surviving description of Archimedes’ work in the original Greek. Among its many treasures is the only evidence we have for the treatise known as the Method, in which physics and mathematics are most intimately combined by Archimedes.
Another reason all this is so intriguing is that the Palimpsest is the only (albeit fragmentary) information from the original Greek we have on the dissection puzzle variously called the Loculus of Archimedes, Syntemachion or Loculus Archimedis, the Stomachion or Ostomachion, or simply Archimedes’ Square. Here is an illustration, courtesy of Prof. Chris Rorres, University of Pennsylvania, of how each tile has an area that’s an integer (whole number):
In October 1998, a manuscript containing some of Archimedes’s works, known to scholars as the Archimedes Palimpsest, resurfaced and was sold in New York for two million dollars.
This exciting artifact is a unique source of evidence for Archimedes’ thought and contains the oldest, by far, surviving description of Archimedes’ work in the original Greek. Among its many treasures is the only evidence we have for the treatise known as the Method, in which physics and mathematics are most intimately combined by Archimedes.
Another reason all this is so intriguing is that the Palimpsest is the only (albeit fragmentary) information from the original Greek we have on the dissection puzzle variously called the Loculus of Archimedes, Syntemachion or Loculus Archimedis, the Stomachion or Ostomachion, or simply Archimedes’ Square. Here is an illustration, courtesy of Prof. Chris Rorres, University of Pennsylvania, of how each tile has an area that’s an integer (whole number):
Number of Pieces:
14
Brand:
Kadon Enterprises
Theme:
Board
Artist:
Archimedes
Show More
Year:
2013
Material:
Plastic
Date Added:
2019-04-17 14:26:06
Date Added:
2019-04-17 14:26:06
