Desktop Scorpio Kickstarter

[galenus]

This little guy was brought to my attention this morning. It looks like he's already reached his pledge goal, but he's using the extras to fund an onager. For those of us who have to pretend we aren't Romans from 9-5...

Desktop Ballista

[M. Demetrius]

I started a thread on this, too, but I'll delete mine. Good find, man, first rate fun.

[D B Campbell]

This little guy was brought to my attention this morning.

They've created such a nice model that I hesitate to point out that it's a catapulta (or scorpio), not a ballista. (Heck, there are plenty of "experts" who still don't know the difference. :roll: )

[galenus]

He actually acknowledged that in a recent update; the explanation being that the decision to call it a ballista was essentially marketing:

"This small siege engine should actually be called a "catapulta". A ballista was a much larger weapon that was used to throw stones. The model in this project was also called a "Scorpion" or "Scorpio". I chose to call it Ballista for this kickstarter project because the average person has a different picture in their head when they see the word "catapult". And Scorpion conjures another image entirely, whereas the shape of a ballista to most people matches up with the form of my project."

[Robert Vermaat]

That last shot was a mistake - now they can brand it as a dangerous weapon!!

[M. Demetrius]

If only they had skewered an armored cockroach instead of a poor, defenseless fruit.

[M. Caecilius]

Looks to be great fun. Pity I have been to busy to see this whilst the funding was ongoing. Does anyone see how they did the torsion system?

[Dan Howard]

Somewhere during the middle ages the terms reversed. What the Romans called a catapulta was called a ballista in medieval texts and vice versa. In modern books I see more of the medieval terms rather than the Roman ones. A catapult throws stones and a ballista throws large bolts.

[Nathan Ross]

Somewhere during the middle ages the terms reversed.

Ammianus Marcellinus also calls a bolt-shooter a ballista. Extra confusingly, he says the single-arm stone throwing onager was previously called a scorpion! So the term reversal (unless Ammianus was using obscure terms on purpose, or was just confused himself...) seems to have happened at some point before that.