He was the author of numerous inventions, including the cagniardelle, a blowing machine, which consists essentially of an Archimedean screw set obliquely in a tank of water in such a way that its lower end is completely and its upper end partially immersed, and operated by being rotated in the opposite direction to that required for raising water.
The blanks are charged into a hopper at one end of the furnace and conveyed towards the other end by a revolving Archimedean screw.
The mensuration of the cube, and its relations to other geometrical solids are treated in the article Polyhedron; in the same article are treated the Archimedean solids, the truncated and snubcube; reference should be made to the article Crystallography for its significance as a crystal form.
Another group of polyhedra are termed the " Archimedean solids," named after Archimedes, who, according to Pappus, invented them.
Although this term is frequently given to the Archimedean solids, yet it is a convenient denotation for solids which have all their angles, faces, and edges equal, the faces not being regular polygons.