Sources

Nothing on this site is cited with a number in brackets, but every claim opens to its source and every number from the model names its run. This page is the whole register at once: 513 works, graded, with what was taken from each, and 1,735 recorded facts behind them.

Downloads

The reportEngineering the Trebuchet: From Ancient Siege Warfare to Optimal Design. Five pages and a page of references. PDF, 0.3 MB. The long draftEngineering the Trebuchet, in full: ten chapters, five appendices, 17 figures, 449 citations. PDF, 3.5 MB. The sources registerEvery source with its grade and use, every fact with its claim, pinpoint, quote and confidence, and the list still to fetch. Excel, 0.6 MB. ReferencesThe full bibliography as a BibTeX file, 513 entries.

How the sources are graded

Each work carries a credibility grade. A is a peer-reviewed article or book, a scholarly edition or translation of a primary text, or an official record. B is an expert or institutional source without peer review: a museum, a heritage body, a scholarly review, a dictionary. C is the press, a documentary, a company’s own publicity or a popular account. D marks a weak source or a tool credit. A story counted as verified only on one A or B source, or two independent C sources that agree, and a number resting on a single C source stayed out of the paper’s facts.

Each fact in the register records the claim, the source and page, a short quotation where there is one, and a confidence (High, Medium or Low) with its reason. Numbers from ancient and medieval authors are recorded as what they reported, not as measurements. Numbers from the project’s own model carry a run identifier such as P7-R12, which names the record in the project files. Model ranges are about 10 to 15% optimistic at laboratory scale.

The register

Images and credits

Photographs, manuscripts and engravings on this site come from Wikimedia Commons and open museum collections under the licences below. The project’s own figures and diagrams, the simulator and this site were made with Claude from the project’s data; each figure carries the credit “Image created by Claude”.

The background music, switched on from the button at the bottom left, is “Teller of the Tales” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0.