 It might look like shop class, but University of Vermont sophomores Nick Horstmeier and Nico Centifanti are learning more than how to work with wood and operate power tools. They're studying ancient history in an honors college class called Ancient Inventions. The class is taught by Domenico Grasso, vice president for research and dean of the Graduate College at the University of Vermont and an engineer by training. My goals were varied for the course. I wanted to introduce students to technology in general and how technology and culture intersected and that this is not something new but it extends all the way back to ancient times and that there was a lot of creativity, innovation and brilliance hundreds, thousands of years ago. To deliver these lessons, Grasso gave lectures every week and brought in guest speakers but at the heart of the course was a book of illustrations. So I asked them to look at the book that was part of the course and look at the illustrations, find one that excited them, they worked in teams and they built it and there were no instructions in the book and they had to figure everything out themselves. For a group of mostly liberal arts students, that was no small challenge. History major Jonathan D'Angeles decided to build a crossbow with his partner, anthropology major Devin Halligan. When we started to design it and I was just sitting there with a blank piece of graph paper and I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing. D'Angeles and Halligan got over the hump by downloading plans from the internet and studying a real crossbow on display at the Fleming Museum. Then there was the small matter of how they and the other students in the class would actually build the devices. So I knew they couldn't do it the same way that the ancients did it. I thought I'd give them a leg up, allow them to use IMF where they had high tech equipment and some expert guidance. That's UVM's instrumentation and model facility on East Avenue which builds custom devices faculty use in their research. Students had access both to the IMF's tools and machinery and to skilled technicians like Doug Gomez. We want them to deal with the problem first and try to come up with a solution if they can't, you know, we're there to help them. The students chose a variety of odd and exotic inventions from an ancient Roman viaduct to a Baghdad battery to a ship shaker or Archimedes claw. Horst Meyer and Sente Fonte settled on a complicated contraption used by the Greeks and Romans in battle called the Belista. Half crossbow and half catapult, perhaps the most complicated machine in the book. Horst Meyer worked on the base of the structure and on the ramp their un-ancient projectile, a golf ball, would run along as it is being fired. Right now we're building this part right here. In our version it's the part that the arrow sits in and this little dip here is going to act like something that holds the claw. Sente Fonte concentrated on the firing mechanism. This caged section right here is actually this over here and these ropes right here, when they're twisted, they work like springs and these pull the bow arms back which is what fires the projectile. The day before the final in-class presentation, the moment of truth neared. Yeah, I mean, I really do think it's going to work. It's just a question of how well, you know, is it going to fly 10 feet? Can it fly 100 feet? No idea. The next day the students give their Belista a test run. I want to count it down there. Three, two, one. In earlier tests the ball went further but the pressure of the rope of the firing mechanism is put under each test. The ancients used cowhide, frayed and weakened it, but it was an unanticipated problem. In Grasso's mind, optimum performance wasn't the point anyway. The process was clearly as important as the found product. I would say it was more important than the final product. And the larger lessons he was after hit home squarely. When we started, we didn't have plans. It was hard to find some and we were trying to figure it out, looking at pictures and stuff and we couldn't think of it. The fact that back then they couldn't do research, it was kind of just from like a hands-on basis and they kind of, they must have learned it all themselves and trial and error and just the fact that they made these to such a massive scale, it's kind of, it's amazing. It's hard to believe. What does it tell you? I think they were more intelligent than we were. But according to Grasso, just arriving at the end of the semester was perhaps triumph enough. The concept that they were able to take something that they had never done before and that they thought was totally far afield from what their expertise was. And they were able to do it. And they were able to do it because they were bright kids and they were dedicated and they were hard working. They had the right work ethic and they were willing to ask questions and do it. And that was exciting to see. Yeah, I'm going to go get this cycling jacket. You need the arm in that on point, right? Yeah, but you can attach it first. You get the arm in. So you're going to attach it and then I'm going to put this together.