Over the years irrigation has been an important and well developed field of science because of its importance to crop growth. Well, you may have heard of an ancient Greek inventor called Archimedes. Archimedes was an inventor as well as a discoverer and a physicist. One of his most important inventions was the Archimedes screw, which draws up water. It is still in use today as a primitive water pump, but it is also used in many hydroelectric power stations to draw up huge volumes of water! The archimedes screw works by a rotating spiral of wood or metal inside a tube. When the spiral is turned water is drawn up the tube.