Engineering · a Light

A palace engineer drew fifty machines and how to build them

In 1206, at the Artuqid court in Diyarbakir, al-Jazari finished the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. It describes about fifty machines with exploded diagrams and step by step instructions: water clocks including an elephant clock combining Indian, Greek, Chinese and Arab parts, hand washing basins that pour and refill, musical automata, and pumps for raising water. Historians of technology point to his use of the crankshaft joined to a connecting rod, and of segmental gears and a camshaft, in working machines. He wrote that he would describe nothing he had not built and tested himself. He died the year the book was completed.

Al-Jazari · Diyarbakir, 1206 CE