Eureka (word)

Eureka (Ancient Greek: εὕρηκα, romanized: héurēka) is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention.

Eureka comes from Ancient Greek εὕρηκα (heúrēka) 'I have found (it)', which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb εὑρίσκω heurískō 'I find'.

The initial /h/ is dropped in modern Greek and in several other European languages, including Catalan, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English, but preserved in others, such as Finnish, Danish, and German.

Archimedes' insight led to the solution of a problem posed by Hiero of Syracuse, on how to assess the purity of an irregular golden votive crown; he had given his goldsmith the pure gold to be used, and correctly suspected he had been cheated by the goldsmith removing gold and adding the same weight of silver.

This story first appeared in written form in Vitruvius's books of architecture, two centuries after it supposedly took place.

[5][6] For the problem posed to Archimedes, though, there is a simple method which requires no precision equipment: using a balance, compare the weight of the crown against pure gold.

In 1957 the state legislature attempted to make "In God We Trust" the state motto as part of the same post WWII anti-Communist movement that successfully added the term "under God" to the American Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, but this attempt did not succeed and "Eureka" was made the official motto in 1963.

Eureka is a considerable distance from Sutter's Mill, but was the jumping off point of a smaller gold rush in nearby Trinity County, California in 1850.