eureka opera house

In ancient Greece, King Hieron's new crown was to be made of pure gold, but to be sure, the court asked the mathematician Archimedes to determine if inexpensive metals had been used instead. To think the problem over, Archimedes took a bath. As he stepped into the tub, he noticed water spilling over the side. The answer suddenly came to him! A gold bar with the same weight as the crown should displace the same amount of water. If it didn’t, then the blacksmith had certainly cheated the king. The greatest scientist of the ancient era leapt from his tub and ran undressed toward the palace, proclaiming, “Eureka! I have found it!” More than 2,000 years later, that same exclamation was evoked by prospectors in the heart of the Great Basin Desert, and from their discovery, one of the West’s richest boomtowns was born.