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Center of Gravity, Throughout History
The concept of Center of Gravity may have been first introduced by ancient scientist, Archimedes. Archimedes was born in Greece, although it is believed he spent some of his life studying in Alexandria. During his lifetime, Archimedes discovered the method of finding area, volume, and center of gravity of many geometrical shapes and figures, a feat which had not previously been accomplished.
Archimedes is credited as being the first to lay down "rational criteria" for finding the center of gravity, which he wrote about in "On Plane Equilibrium." In this book, he defined the parallelogram's, triangle's, and trapezium's center of gravity, and offered up seven hypotheses on how his center of gravity theory worked. Archimedes hoped that by studying the center of gravity for multiple bodies, he could learn how to find the center using mathematics and rational application.
Several centuries later, in 1600s, famed scientist Isaac Newton
expanded on these ideas of gravity, conducting his own experiments and theories. After becoming acquainted with Johannes Kepler's Laws about the Sun and why it attracts the planets around it. While Kepler believed this fact had to do with the Sun having divine properties, Newton found that the Sun and planets' positions in relation to each other had to do with the Sun's center of gravity. Newton also believed that the center of gravity of the planets and the Sun was the center of the world.
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