Ancient/Classical Cube Root Mechanism

[Trinopus]

A friend of mine, whom ordinarily I trust, has said that the Ancient Greeks had a device, something with sliding rods on hinges, that let them calculate cube roots.

(Not the Antikythera mechanism, apparently.)

The trouble is that he can’t give me a good reference to it, and I’ve Googled madly and failed to find anything. (I am, alas, a Google dunce.)

Does anyone have any idea what this mechanism might be?

[Saint_Cad]

Could it be the tomahawk that allowed them to trisect angles?

[septimus]

About 3/4 of the way down this page is a diagram of a

Cube Root extractor, a simple mechanical contrivance invented by an unknown Greek geometer in the third or fourth century B.C., [which] made it possible to design a stone-throwing catapult to scale by solving a formula stating in effect that the diameter of the cord bundle in dactyls was equal to 1.1 times the cube-root of 100 times the weight of the stone in minas. In order to find the cube-root of some value W, for example, one …

[Trinopus]

@Saint_Cad

Could it be the tomahawk that allowed them to trisect angles?

Ooh, I know that one! I think Martin Gardner put it in one of his “Mathematical Games” columns!

@septimus

About 3/4 of the way down this page is a diagram of a

Sooper-dooper! That’s it! And it’s amazingly simple! I’m impressed as all dickens!

Thank you!