The Archimedean screw pump is attributed to mathematician and inventor Archimedes who lived in the third century BCE. Archimedes was asked to design an instrument to remove water from the hold of a large ship. However, there is some evidence that screw pumps were used as irrigation tools as early as the seventh century BCE. Archimedes did not claim credit for the screw pump. It was Diodorus of Sicily, a Greek historian who wrote that Archimedes had invented the pump.

The Archimedean screw pump is still one of the most efficient pumps in the world today and is used primarily in for wastewater and drainage.