How Fountains in Rome Work

Built before the invention of electric pumps, fountains in Rome were powered through an ingenious system of gravity, cisterns, and aqueducts. Learn more about fountains in Rome in this HowStuffWorks podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com
where smart Happens him Marshall Brain. If you've ever been
to Las Vegas, you know that there are fountains everywhere.
They all depend on huge pumps driven by electric motors
to spray the water. If you've ever been to Rome,
you know that there are also many fountains. But some

(00:21):
of them have existed for two thousand years, long before
there were motors and pumps. So what powered the fountains
of Rome. The simple answer is gravity. Rome received all
of its water more than thirty million gallons a day
through a system of aqueducts. All water flowed to the
city by gravity because it was arriving from surrounding hills.

(00:43):
Water could be stored in large cisterns, very similar in
concept to today's water towers, except that the water came
into the cisterns from the top. Water flowed from the
cisterns either through pipes to individual houses or to public
distribution points. Fountains serve both decorative and functional purposes, since

(01:03):
people could bring their buckets to the fountain to collect water.
The cisterns provided the height needed to generate water pressure
for the Fountain's to Spray. Do you have any ideas
or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me
an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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