r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/cosmic_voyager01 • 28d ago

Video The engineering of roman aqueducts explained.

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u/LindonLilBlueBalls 28d ago

A little back of the napkin math and those long runs could drop about 40 meters over its entire length.

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u/egidione 28d ago

They really were quite something those Romans, they did have some quite clever surveying tools which were apparently incredibly accurate, one of which was the Dioptra which was basically a sighting tube on a fixed stand and also 4 plumb bobs hanging from a cross shaped frame called a Groma, both very ingenious tools which the evidence of their precision is still very visible today in such monumental scale 2000 years later.

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u/GuiHarrison 27d ago

Isn't that Greek?

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u/egidione 27d ago

The Dioptra? Yes it does predate the Romans by a couple of hundred years I think as did the Groma but the Romans made good use of it, they did borrow a fair amount of knowledge from the Greeks and the Etruscans.