Is it defying the law of Archimedes?

I think his theoretical relationship between the speed of light and the index of refraction was shown to be wrong earlier, because he thought light was composed purely of particles, not waves, so that, for example, he thought light would move faster in glass than air. But I might be wrong about the dates. I think his alchemical work was supplanted by later developments a good deal earlier. He also did some mystical work, which I don't know about in detail.

We tend to give older science and technology short shrift. E.g., in the introductory physics texts I read, Aristotle was only criticized, with no recognition of his very real contributions. But much of modern mathematics and science was developed using Aristotle's principles and methods of formal logic, with only minor modifications. Even a few of his empirical results are still used. Aristotle was only criticized so much because much of his basic methodology held up fairly well for millennia, to the point that many people resisted challenges to it in areas where it failed. To some extant the same occurred with Newton, but Newton is still honored in contemporary physics books.

Many university students, possibly including my father, around WWII, carried meter long slide rules in their back pockets. There were even longer ones, some even warped into cylindrical or helical forms to reduce length. e.g., here. They must have involved a lot of work to make.

50 years ago may be too recent. My father used a mechanical calculator with spinning gears for his PhD thesis, somewhat after WWII. But he worked in agriculture and soil chemistry, not boat design.

During WWII, the Naval Research Lab had an electronic digital computer that was used to estimate projectile trajectories. I wouldn't be surprised if it or others were also used for ship design.

Even today, I suspect most recreational boat hulls aren't actually constructed to more than 3 or 4 significant figures accuracy. Perhaps the benefit isn't worth the cost?

 

Mitchgrunes, Let me compliment your writing style. I found I was able to read every word you wrote without feeling lost. I don't understand Relativity, my University Physics course skipped over all the new stuff and stuck to classic mechanics with only an introduction to Relativity.

In my Geometries class where we studied non-Euclidean geometries, Euclid is still the man.

-Will