History of the Science of Eydraulics. 193 



HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE OF HYDRAULICS, 



BY W. J. L. NICODEMUS, A. M., C E. 

 Professor of Civil Engineering in the University of Wiscontin. 



Although some of the fundamental principles of the science 

 of hydraulics were discovered and applied by Archimedes, 

 the progress of this science was almost imperceptible until 

 about the fourteenth century. And this, notwithstanding we 

 read that Rome in A. D. 98 was supplied with water by nine 

 aqueducts, whose discharge was 27,000,000 cubic feet per day, 

 and whose aggregate length was 250 miles. About the begin- 

 ning of the fourteenth century, great damage was experienced 

 by the overflowing of the mountain streams of Italy, which 

 resulted in disastrous litigations, arising from the stringent 

 laws enacted for the protection of property. This called the 

 attention of practical and scientific men to the necessity of in- 

 venting some means of preventing these inundations and ren- 

 dering the streams more navigable. This resulted in the in- 

 vention of the canal lock, which was first applied to the canal 

 between the Ticino and Milan, which is at the present day irr 

 a perfect state of preservation. From this date hydraulic 

 engineering was ranked as a science, and has steadily pro- 

 gressed to the present time. The successive stages of this* 

 progress it is now proposed to follow. 



Towards the last of the fifteenth, or the beginning of the six- 

 teenth century, Leonardo da Vinci, one or the architects en- 

 gaged upon the construction of the cathedral at Milan, first ap- 

 plied his invention of the mitre-sill gate to the lock above- 

 mentioned. Canals were now rapidly constructed throughout 

 all parts of Italy. In 1628, Castelli first introduced the mefch- 



