Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 10:36:41 -0500
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Interesting Inventions
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

"Strong, Lee" wrote:

>         One of my favorite interesting invention stories was the Roman
> investor who discovered that Romans loved seafood which was scarce and
> expensive due to contemporary transportation problems.  So he built
> artifical oyster farms on the roofs of several buildings he owned -- the
> first known case of seafood farming.

The Romans did come up with some of the durndest things.  I think my
favorite is the Syrian icemaker.  The Romans loved ices, and would haul
large amounts of snow from the Alps to Rome in the summer.  In Syria
(hot, dry desert), there were no local (even by Roman standards)
mountains, somebody came up with a way of making ice in the summer.

Take a large shallow pond.  Water will evaporate, cooling it.  Cover it
with straw during the day to keep it from warming up.  Remove the straw
at night to expose the pond to the sky (radiation temperature about -268
degrees C (5K)).  The water will freeze.

Note that for spending money, the Romans made our current dotcom
millionaires look like Trappist monks.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."