Technical Marvels, Part 9: Program-Controlled Musical Picture Clocks
Parts of the painting, such as people, animals, and windmills, move in some picture clocks.
Herbert Bruderer
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Technical Marvels, Part 8: Historical Surveying Instruments
Geometrical instruments in the 17th century focused on measuring distances and heights.
Technical Marvels, Part 7: Musical Clocks and Organs
Many clocks, automaton figures, furniture, and jewelry have built-in musical mechanisms.
Technical Marvels, Part 6: Musical Automatons
Music automatons range from singing birds and music boxes to barrel organs and self-playing pianos.
Technical Marvels, Part 5: Chess Automatons
Chess has been a touchstone for artificial intelligence.
Technical Marvels, Part 4: Leonardo da Vinci’s Robots
Polymath Leonardo da Vinci designed a wide range of machines and instruments over 500 years ago.
Technical Marvels, Part 3: The Yupana
Yupanas were not only calculating devices, they were possibly also used as architectural models for urban planning.
Technical Marvels, Part 2: Lebombo and Ishango Bones
A look at some of the earliest mathematical instruments.
The Dangers of Digitization, and The Importance of Data Backup
Digitization excludes many people from social or economic life, while the importance of data backups cannot be overestimated.
This series presents selected technical marvels from the fields of computing technology, mathematics, astronomy, surveying, time measurement, looms and automatons (automaton figures, chess-playing machines, musical automatons, automaton writers, drawing automatons, automaton clocks, picture clocks, globes, historical robots). The examples are largely from the 15th to 20th centuries and do not claim to be exhaustive. In […]
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