The Screw

Have you ever thought who has the idea of invented the screw? … and more important!!...Have you ever  thought how would be our lives without this invention?  How we will build our furniture? Our machines? How we would hang the stuff in our homes?

Well, in ChiosRadio.gr we know to who is attributed the invention of this useful object...but first let me tell you a little bit about the history of the screw!
By the 1st century BC, wooden screws were commonly used throughout the Mediterranean and also screw presses for pressing olive oil and the grapes in winemaking. Metal screws used as fasteners were rare in Europe before the 15th century, if known at all!! The metal screw did not become a common until machine tools for their mass production were developed toward the end of the 18th century.

The first screws were pioneered by the brothers Job and William Wyatt who patented in 1760 a machine that we might today best call a screw machine. Meanwhile, English instrument maker Jesse Ramsden invented the first satisfactory screw-cutting lathe. The British engineer Henry Maudslay gained fame by popularising such lathes with his screw-cutting. And the precision screws, for controlling motion rather than fastening, developed around the turn of the 19th century. This development was one of the central technical advances that enabled the Industrial Revolution.
Now that we all know the importance and history of the screw,  let me head back to our question to you ...do you think the screw was invented by the Greeks? Or do you think some other civilisation has the honour?