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Ctesibius was probably the first head of the Museum of Alexandria . Unfortunately, very little is known of his life and work. He is said (by Diogenes Laertius?) to have started life as a barber who made a clever counterweighted adjustable mirror. He invented a water organ and an improvement on the water clock, called a clepsydra, that kept more accurate time than any clock invented until the 17th century, when the Dutch physicist Christiaan HuygensChristiaan Huygens ( April 14, 1629 July 8, 1695) was a Dutch mathematician and physicist; born in The Hague. Huygens is commonly associated with the scientific revolution. He was the son of Constantijn Huygens. Christiaan is generally given minor credit showed how a pendulumA gravity pendulum is a weight on the end of a rigid rod, which, when given some initial lift from the vertical position, will swing back and forth under the influence of gravity over its central (lowest) point. A torsion pendulum consists of a body suspe could be used to regulate a clock.
His work is chronicled in VitruviusMarcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He was the author of De Architectura known today as The Ten Books of Architecture a treatise in Latin on architecture, and perhaps the first work about this, Athenaeus, Philo of ByzantiumPHILO OF BYZANTIUM Greek writer on mechanics, nourished during the latter half of the 2nd century B. according to some, a century earlier). He was the author of a large work Mrj\aviKri owrafis), of which the fourth and (in epitome) fifth books are extant, who repeatedly mentions him, adding, with an almost audible sigh, that the first mechanicians had the advantage of being under kings who loved fame and supported the arts. ProclusProclus Lycaeus ( February 8, 412 April 17, 487), surnamed "The Successor" ( Greek Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος #x50;róklo, the commentator on EuclidEuclid of Alexandria ( Greek: Eukleides (circa 365 275 BC) was a Greek mathematician, now known as "the father of geometry". His most famous work is the Elements widely considered to be history's most successful textbook. Within it, the properties of geom and Hero of Byzantium the last of the engineers of antiquity also mention him, though nothing of his has survived.