SS Archimedes SS Archimedes SS "Archimedes" was a steamship built in Britain in 1839. She is notable for being the world's first steamship to be driven by a screw propeller. "Archimedes" had considerable influence on ship development, encouraging the adoption of screw propulsion by the Royal Navy, in addition to her influence on commercial vessels. She also had a direct influence on the design of another innovative vessel, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's , then the world's largest ship and the first screw-propelled steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The principle of moving water with a screw has been known since the invention of
Screw wire or rod is then cut to the proper length for the type of screw being made; this workpiece is known as a "blank". It is then cold headed, which is a cold working process. Heading produces the "head" of the screw. The shape of the die in the machine dictates what features are pressed into the screw head; for example a flat head screw uses a flat die. For more complicated shapes two heading processes are required to get all of the features into the screw head. This production method is used because heading has a very high production