"While the Equiponderance treats of solids, or the equilibrium of solids, the book on Floating Bodies treats of hydrostatics. His [Archimedes'] attention was first drawn to the subject of specific gravity when King Hieron asked him to test whether a crown, professed by the maker to be pure gold, was not alloyed with silver. The story goes that our philosopher was in a bath when the true method of solution flashed on his mind. He immediately ran home, naked, shouting, "I have found it." To solve the problem, he took a piece of gold and a piece of silver, each weighing the same as the crown. According to one author, he determined the volume of water displaced by the gold, silver, and crown respectively, and calculated from that the amount of gold and silver in the crown. According to another writer, he weighed separately the gold, silver, and crown, while immersed in water, thereby determining their loss of weight in water. From these data he easily found the solution. It is possible that Archimedes solved the problem by both methods."
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p. 44.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_History_of_Mathematics
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A History of Mathematics
A History of Mathematics by Florian Cajori was the first popular history of mathematics written in the United States. It was published in 1893.
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