The History of Water Innovation

摘要

Harnessing water has been a central focus for humankind over many millennia. The arc and pace of innovation across these thousands of years has been slow, with many of the original innovations still persisting in their more modern manifestations (e.g., aqueducts, pipes, wells). In his introduction to Ancient Water Technologies(2010), an excellent and interesting history of water technology, editor Larry Mays notes with appropriate reverence that "Hydraulic technology began during antiquity long before the great works of such investigators such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Evangelista Torricelli, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Daniel Bernoulli, and Leonhard Euler. The history of hydraulic technology even began long before Archimedes (287-212 BC). It is amazing to see what was accomplished in the application of water technology during antiquity, millenniums before the development of the concepts of conservation of mass, energy, and momentum used in present-day hydraulic design."