I was working on creating a ship for my art...and decided I needed a new ballista, a light one, rather than big heavy one I had made previously.
Well, the Romans developed rapid firing, light ballistas, seriously. So I decided to build a 3d model of that..
And then decided heck, let's, make a video!
So this is a video presentation of the Roman ballista and how it works, 4 megs in size. Uses DIVX codec (www.divx.com if you don't have it)
For your edification and amusement, I present:
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/movies/ballista_light.avi
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/artofadreamer/3d_2/light_ballista.jpg
1) Only things I'm not to sure on is how they wound up and secured the torsion cables, and got the ratchet system *inside* the crank cases to work. Romans were pretty dern smart, but I don't know how they did this, so I took a guess on how to portray the crank system.
2) Yes yes, I know some "experts" will complain about the use of the word "ballista"...Roman naming of the various seige engines changed over the centuries..."ballista" will do ;)
3) Ballistas *were bloody powerful*, IIRC, at a seige, the Romans built one that fired 200lb balls...they installed it in a seige tower they built over the hulls of 2 ships...making it the most powerful weapon, accurate and reliable weapon ever built until cannons got reasonably "safe" around the 1600s...also the first "Cruise Missile Launcher", hm? A ballista fires projectiles at hellish velocity, compared to a standard catapult: about 300 to 500 mph, meaning they have an impact energy that makes a .44 magnum look like a kick in yer pants.
4) I do not know the exact time when these ratchet using ballistas came into use, only a vague reference to the 1st millenium.
5) there was also a SEMI-AUTMATIC firing ballista, chain driven...I'll work on that too some time.
6) Image is just to illustrate, it's not meant to be fine art ;)