A piece of artillery reconstructed by a Canadian researcher has knocked some theories of medieval warfare on the head. Ted Szwejkowski has built a working model of the 'traction trebuchet', a human-powered catapult that historians believed existed only in folklore. In a test run, Szwejkowski's machine launched cement balls weighing up to 5 kilograms at a rate of one every 15 seconds to distances of up to 145 metres-matching the best shots of ancient artillerymen.
The trebuchet is a rotating-beam siege engine, designed to hurl stones over city ramparts. There are also reports of armies using the trebuchet to launch skulls and parts of diseased bodies into cities in an early attempt at germ warfare.
Historians of science and technology could never quite place the traction trebuchet. It falls between two other models that are well documented. In the Roman version, power came from springs made of twisted bundles of ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.