Scientific American. 1995. July. – 66 – 71 рр.Recent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time.
Centuries before the development of effective cannons, huge artillery pieces were demolishing castle walls with projectiles the weight of an upright piano. The trebuchet, invented in China between the fifth and third centuries B.C.E., reached the Mediterranean by the sixth century C.E. It displaced other forms of artillery and held its own until well after the coining of gunpowder. The trebuchet was instrumental in the rapid expansion of both the Islamic and the Mongol empires. It also played a part in the transmission of the Black Death, the epidemic of plague that swept Eurasia and North .Africa during the 14th century. Along the way it seems to have influenced both the development of clockwork and theoretical analyses of motion.
