The sphere is the only closed surface satisfying the fixed-width Archimedean property

Among Archimedes’ many celebrated discoveries is a striking fact: the region of the unit sphere between two parallel planes, both meeting the sphere and separated by a distance $h$, has area $2\pi h$. We prove that, among connected smooth closed embedded surfaces in ${\mathbb{R}}^3$, this property characterizes the unit sphere for a single fixed width.