Wooden ships routinely sprang leaks and the accumulation of water within a large hull had to be bailed out by hand, a slow and sometimes dangerous task. It was a job made easier by the invention of the force pump. The Greek inventor, Cteisibius of Alexandria, developed the theories about compressed air that made this device possible, earning him the soubriquet “the father of pneumatics”. The device was made up of two cylinders, a series of pipes and connected pistons that sucked the water into one cylinder to push it out of the second.
