Automata: The magical mysteries of the ancient world, the mechanical wonders of the Middle Ages, the modern wonders of master craftsmen. Well, enough alliteration.
Automata, automata, robot, automatic machine: All these words describe a class of machines that are considered relatively self-operating and can perform pre-programmed functions or operations due to a series of predetermined mechanical instructions.
Side note for grammar nerds: Automata and automata are both legal plural versions of automata; however, a “vending machine” is a kind of cafeteria that looks like a vending machine with food in a cubicle , It will open when a coin is inserted.
Automata can have various shapes and sizes, and can do almost anything that people can imagine and design into a mechanical system.
The automata I want to focus on are some complex versions that you may be familiar with, such as cuckoo clocks (birds popping out of the door to tell the time) or simple animal hand-cranked desktop toys (such as horses, birds or fish) and interesting Scenes.
Historical automata include music boxes with figurines, chirping birds, and highly complex and awesome human figures by Pierre Jaquet-Droz drawing pictures, writing phrases, or playing musical instruments creation.
I will introduce more examples later, but first let us understand the history of automata from the beginning.
Smart engineers and craftsmen have been building automata for a long time, and some records appeared as early as about 1000 BC, which is more than 3000 years ago.
Sadly, examples from ancient cultures such as China, Greece, and Rome have either been forgotten by history or can only survive through text, drawings, and paintings. People may include the ancient Antikythera mechanism around 100 BC in the discussion, but since this may not be an automatic machine, but a complicated counting and calculator, I will not include it here.
The earliest objects are usually created as religious machines to show the power of leaders or to evoke spiritual experiences when visiting sacred places such as temples. However, even in the first century AD, the hero of Alexander, known for his contributions to science, mathematics, and engineering, created a mechanical stage play using ropes, knots, gears, and other simple machines to complete it which allegedly lasted 10 minute.
Using his expertise in hydraulics, pneumatics, and mechanics, Hero invented machines that can perform tasks in addition to entertainment, such as programmable self-driving carts, vending machines, wind organs, and various war machines.
This is usually the parallel history of automata: the interesting side is combined with invention and engineering to inspire and show off mechanical progress in interesting and sometimes magical ways.
Depending on the time and place in history, superstitious civilians may view automata with suspicion, because many people do not have first-hand experience with such devices. This means that the story of a miraculous statue or miracle will spread throughout the crowd, but in fact it is an ingenious device designed to imitate a mysterious experience.
In the Middle Ages, most of the “Western” world lost the skills and know-how to make such machines. Byzantium and the wider Arabic world continued the traditions of the Greeks (and possibly the Chinese, thanks to trade with the Far East) ), create similar machines and write papers, such as “A Book on Ingenious Devices” in present-day Iraq around 850 AD.
The automata created by Muslim engineers and inventors are truly incredible, centuries earlier than many famous Western examples. The Islamic Golden Age between 780 and 1260 AD witnessed an explosion of scientific progress comparable to any period in history: they were the foundation of most Western scientific traditions.
Automata from time and geographic regions include man-made creatures such as wind statues, snakes, scorpions and singing birds, programmable flute players, boats with “four-person” robotic bands, and more practical hands-with modern Automatic washing machine with washing mechanism.
By then, China may have a two-thousand-year tradition of automata, and it is producing automata composed of roaring tigers, singing birds, flying birds, and even complex water clocks with timekeeping numbers.
There are descriptions of automatic mechanical puppet shows, automatic orchestras, and mechanical dragons, to name a few. Sadly, most of the things created or recorded were later destroyed by the conquered Ming Dynasty in the middle of the 14th century, causing many things to be forgotten by history.
Although there is still a tradition of automata in some parts of Europe, in the 13th century, there was a renewed interest in creations and devices designed to shock tourists, and these products and devices once again appeared in courts across Europe.
This time is believed to be largely influenced by the Greek texts translated into Latin and Italian, which stimulated interest in the creation of ancient mathematicians and inventors. The famous automata renaissance occurred during the Renaissance and Enlightenment era.
In the past, automata technology was powered by hydraulics (water), pneumatics (wind and steam), or gravity (by weight), which greatly limited the complexity and size of the equipment. Very small and complex automata require the emergence of new technologies.
With the widespread adoption of more advanced engineering, mathematical, and technological systems (such as watchmaking) and metallurgical science (used to make springs), the ability to create truly complex (and beautiful) machines has flourished.
For hundreds of years, we have entered what I consider to be the golden age of automata, when some of the most famous examples still exist. There are many good examples, and many people might think that the concept of automata is largely derived from that era.
From the early 15th century to the early 20th century, automata developed in parallel with clocks, watches, and industrial machinery, informally tracking the progress of innovation and mechanical invention.
Japan and China are still strong in this regard, and even after the turbulence of the dynasty, wonderful examples of this period are still being discovered. In Japan, the practice of mechanical “karakuri” puppets has a long tradition from the mid 1660s to the beginning of the 20th century.
Tool manufacturers, watchmakers, locksmiths, inventors, and even magicians have created some truly amazing automata, although they are still similar to those hundreds to thousands of years ago, but now more compact and complex.
Detail of the Astronomical Clock of Strasbourg Cathedral, France (Photo courtesy of Tangopaso/Wikipedia Commons)
The invention of the modern cuckoo clock occurred during this period, which may have evolved from the early examples of large city clocks, where animated characters are contained in famous machines such as the astronomical clocks in Strasbourg and Prague. The gilded rooster in the first version of Strasbourg’s most famous cathedral element, now located in the city’s decorative arts museum, is considered the world’s oldest automata.
Driven by the philosophical thinking of René Descartes and others, life-size and more miniature machines have appeared. He believed that animals are just complex biomechanical machines that can be built.
Digestive duck drawn by Jacques de Vaucanson (photo shared by Scientific American/Wikipedia)
This is not a completely new idea, but it does lead to an emphasis on animal automata, some of which are beyond the scope of previous considerations. An interesting example is the digestive duck, which resembles a duck in many ways, but the most unique is that it eats granular food and then seems to have a bowel movement.
For modern audiences, it is not surprising that the automata does not actually digest food, but the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson clearly used that to pursue the primitive realism of nature.
We shouldn’t laugh too hard: de Vaucanson was a pioneer in many fields (including the invention of the automatic loom and the construction of the first all-metal lathe), he built what is believed to be the first biomechanical automaton, a flute player, It can play twelve different songs. He also built a tambourine player. The inspiration for these two automata came from the anatomy course of a French surgeon.
This was also the era of the famous watchmakers Pierre Jaquet-Droz and Henri Maillardet, who created some of the most impressive humanoid automata that could Draw pictures, sign and write simple messages.
The mid-nineteenth century (about 1860) to about 1910 was considered to be the “golden age of automata” (there was even a book of the same name), because the industrial revolution caused a large number of standardized mechanical parts to emerge, and the number of companies producing automata proliferated. Easy to manufacture. Thousands of automata and mechanical songbirds were exported all over the world, and they were still popular with collectors until the eve of the First World War.
Unsurprisingly, the global economic dilemma and conservative attitudes brought about by the destructive tragedies of global wars have changed the priorities of the entire Europe (one of the automata production centers), and the creation of automata no longer applies to wider practice. Although it never completely disappeared in Europe, Asia or the United States of America, mechanical invention gave way to the artistic side of things, because advances in electricity and manufacturing technology made automata relatively easy to produce.
For a while, companies were either focused on creating elegant art with automata, or on making cheap toy-like devices. Now in the Internet age, we have seen a renaissance of these projects because people are re-exposed to the impressive but interesting aspects of automata-you can find many interesting and cheap examples on the Internet.
Although it may be a bit frustrating for those who like the artistic craftsmanship and incredible engineering of automata, the affordable price allows people to easily enter the world of engineering principles through interesting automata.
This gave me a detailed understanding of how simple mechanical principles combined to create some of the most spectacular inventions in history.
For anyone who pays attention to high-end automata today, it is obvious that extraordinary engineering can be combined with impressive artistic craftsmanship to achieve wonderful goals. But even in the highest-quality examples, the principles of driving automata are basically the same as those used for centuries, because most of them are based on very simple mechanical principles to generate motion.
I want to say that 95% of automata use five basic mechanical principles to create motion, and only in rare cases are things used that don’t fit these categories. The categories are as follows: wheels, pulleys, gears, cams and connecting rods. If I were a stickler, I could combine wheels, pulleys and gears into a larger group. But the actions they create are somewhat different and can be used for unique actions, so let’s stick to the five general categories.
The first is the wheel. In many cases, it simply drives on an axis to allow the object to rotate, or creates a linear motion for the entire machine based on an automaton, drives it like a passenger car or a train, or uses hidden wheels to create animals The illusion of movement.
The wheel can be the internal drive of another mechanism, or it can be just the final component in a mechanical chain. A good example of the end component being a wheel is a cuckoo clock, which is characterized by a character ring that emerges from the inside of the clock body, usually attached to the side of a simple wheel.
Pulleys are the evolution of wheels because they can be smooth or toothed and mesh with chains or belts to transmit rotation to distant objects. Depending on the setting, the pulley can transmit rotational movement at a certain angle through a flexible belt (usually found on various older industrial machines) and can provide some impact protection for the mechanism.
The diameter change between the two pulleys can increase or decrease the speed, but more importantly, it can actually change the amount of force applied. This solves the problem that the input is too weak to directly move large components or is too powerful and needs to be reduced to protect the mechanism.
In a further development, the gears are basically toothed pulleys, they are made very accurately and can be directly meshed with another toothed pulley.
The earliest gears were absolutely inaccurate. One of the gears had two parallel wheels with evenly spaced rods connecting them. These wheels meshed with a single wheel that protruded from the rim at evenly spaced rods. These can be found in the oldest automata in ancient China or Greece, and are the main components of some of the most famous large clocks in the world.
But with the advancement of technology and the further understanding of gear geometry, the very precise gears you will recognize today came into being, which can transmit very large forces very accurately, and, like pulleys, can be used to change speed, force or Provide a precise timing mechanism ratio (obviously). The invention of precision gears allowed very complex machinery using basic levers to reach its full potential.
The cam is another oldest mechanism because, in the simplest terms, it is a wheel with an eccentric shaft. This produces unconventional repetitive motion, which can be used to drive linear motion. The basic principle uses special-shaped wheels, usually in the shape of a circular leaf or spiral snail, with a cam follower (a simple finger or tooth resting on the periphery) to convert the motion to another wheel or connecting rod, thereby forming A backward and-fourth movement. This can be an extremely basic or extremely complex movement, but the principle is the same.
The last building block is the connecting rod, which includes the cam follower, the lever, and the basic pivot arm. These structures are very simple, but they are actually the main features that create movement in automata. The connecting rod is composed of a rod that rotates around a single axis, connects two axes at both ends, or connects three or more axes to create a complex motion path.
Post time: Dec-08-2021
