This is an old revision of the document!


An Art Robots Timeline

Era of magic, weights and pulleys

The earliest instances of robotics all seem to have been created for artistic reasons, and were usually in the form of automatons, generally for theatrical and musical use.

Philo of Byzantium: Wrote Mechanike syntaxis (Compendium of Mechanics), which contained a chapter on Automatiopoeica - mechanical toys and diversions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_of_Byzantium

Mechanical Orchestra & Toys: Ancient China, Han Dynasty.

The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time…As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial…The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Mu_of_Zhou

More cases of ancient Chinese automatons listed here: http://clearharmony.net/articles/200407/20619.html

Hero of Alexandria (known as Michanikos, the Machine Man) wrote “On Automatic Theaters, On Pneumatics, and on Mechanics, probably a continuation of Philo of Byzantium's work, and constructed an automaton theatre which was powered by weights and slowly emptying containers of sand.

Scene 1 from Nauplius, on Hero's Automaton Theater

“The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices”: Al Jazari

Era of the coiled spring and clockwork

Era of electricity

Senster: 1970-1974 http://www.senster.com/

  • art_robots.1231930331.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 2009-01-14 10:52
  • by davegriffiths