HISTORY OF ROBOTICS
History:
Many
ancient mythologies include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants
built by the Greek god Hephaestus (Vulcan to the Romans), the clay golems of
Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend, and Galatea, the mythical statue
of Pygmalion that came to life. In Greek drama, Deus Ex Machina was contrived
as a dramatic device that usually involved lowering a deity by wires into the
play to solve a seemingly impossible problem.
In
the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a
mechanical steam-operated bird he called "The Pigeon". Hero of
Alexandria (10–70 AD), a Greek mathematician and inventor, created numerous
user-configurable automated devices, and described machines powered by air
pressure, steam and water. Su Song built a clock tower in China in 1088
featuring mechanical figurines that chimed the hours.
Al-Jazari
(1136–1206), a Muslim inventor during the Artuqid dynasty, designed and
constructed a number of automated machines, including kitchen appliances,
musical automata powered by water, and programmable automata. The robots
appeared as four musicians on a boat in a lake, entertaining guests at royal
drinking parties. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs
(cams) that bumped into little levers that operated percussion instruments. The
drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by
moving the pegs to different locations.
