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
Archimedes as Phidias, an astronomer about whom nothing else is known. Plutarch wrote in his "Parallel Lives" that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse. A biography of Archimedes was written by his friend Heracleides but this work has been lost, leaving the details of his life obscure. It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had children. During his youth, Archimedes may have studied in Alexandria, Egypt, where Conon of Samos and Eratosthenes of Cyrene were contemporaries. He referred to Conon of Samos as his friend, while two of his works ("The Method of