The Al-Jazari mechanism is the pinnacle of engineering

Hello ATS!

My friends, what do we know about the technologies of ancient civilizations? Yes, practically nothing. Among the most fantastic are the diagrams of a 17th century rocket. There is still evidence of the supposedly hand-made robot of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Most likely we are talking about some kind of doll mechanism, there is no smell of a real robot there. More about mechanized columns in Indian temples, allowing you to open secret rooms. And that’s probably all.

In fact, everything is much more interesting! History textbooks, even in universities, very superficially describe the achievements of ancient engineers in the Arab world. But it was they who first invented a mechanized fountain back in the 9th century, as well as mechanisms in the form of birds that spread their wings and sang. Do we know anything about this? No. That's right, the modern average person is hammered into the head with the idea that the most developed and powerful civilization has always been the West. Although America is only 300 years old.



But we are actively told about Greece and Rome as centers of ancient culture. At the same time, forgetting the thousands of years of history of Rus', China and the Arab states. Thank God there is such a science as archeology. It clearly shows who is worth what. Here, I bring to your attention a unique box made in the 12th century by the Turkic Seljuk engineer Abu al-In ibn Ismail ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari.

It is based on several mechanisms that allow you to save content before entering the necessary code. In total, there are 16 different locking mechanisms, which allows you to program 4,294,967,296 combinations. That is, in order to unravel the required code, it would take decades, if not several lifetimes. And the most surprising thing is that it has not yet been opened.

X-ray examination revealed that the mechanisms consist of more than 800 parts and all of them are in working order. Inside there are three scrolls; who they belong to and what their contents are is anyone’s guess. The miracle of the Arab world that has survived to this day clearly shows that the ancient masters, including engineers, had completely modern views. And much of what they created works even after centuries.

Everything new is well forgotten old.

Thank you.

a reply to: RussianTroll
We could call it an ancient encrypted file safe..
There is a cool project for an AI-feed it all the info and x rays of the mechanism,and tell it to figure out how to open it.

It looks like an ancient peice of audio equipment-maybe a mixer.

It would be funny if the scroll contains instructions on how to open the box.

The Antikythera mechanism has you beat here i think.
A beautiful machine from 200bc.
en.wikipedia.org...

Another fabulous thread, thank you.
Who has this box now? I wonder if there is a way to quite literally safely damage the box to access those scrolls and therefore would it be even worth it? Perhaps it would be if we knew the original owner!
Rainbows
Jane

There was a time when the Arabs were very creative in both math and had a cutting age science for their time. Then they got Islam and Mohammad and everything changed to what hand you can wipe your butt with. Same thing with western society; just see what happened to Galileo.

a reply to: RussianTroll



Hydro-cycle.webstarts.com

As the dials seem to be marked the same, it looks to me to be a combination lock box. It would have been a elaborate novitly in it's time. A trinket box for the rich.

There doesn't seem to be any output indicators like the Antikythera mechanism has. Again, this indicates a combination lock box.

Why have the scrolls not been read by the x-ray scans? They don't have to unroll them now to read them.

a reply to: RussianTroll

Thanks for another interesting thread. However the object in question seems to have been made by a different person:

The Isfahan Boxes
None of the wonderful machines of al-Jazari survived the hundreds of years passed, and all we have are beautiful manuscripts. I fantasize about an extensive archaeological excavation in the Palace in Diyarbakir that would reveal remnants of the castle’s clock or any other monumental work. Until then, both boxes with alphabet locks from Isfahan in Iran dated to the late twelfth century are the closest thing to time travel, to see al-Jazari at his work. In the David Museum in Copenhagen, there is a fragmented brass box inlaid with silver and copper with four alphabet locks. The four dials are in a straight line and not in the four corners of a rectangle, but the similarity to al-Jazari’s chest is evident. Like al-Jazari each dial contains 16 letters. The letters which are used are without a diacritical mark. There is a resemblance to the locking process and the details of the mechanism. The box is simpler, and each dial has just two cylinders. Only eight letters (and not twelve) are required to open the crate. On the box there is the maker signature saying:

“Work of Mohammed b. [Ben] Hamid al Asturlabi

Al Isfhani in the year

Five hundred and ninety-seven [1200 AD]

And I have tested it[it works]”.

link


But that's not to take away from the obvious ingenuity of Al-Jazari. Here's an interesting article about him from National Geographic

Medieval robots? They were just one of this Muslim inventor's creations

he has been described as the “Leonardo da Vinci of the East,” a moniker that is in many ways a misnomer. It might be more accurate to describe Leonardo as the “al-Jazari of the West.”

a reply to: RussianTroll

Interesting RT I would give that box to a safe cracker with a stethoscope and let them have a go with it , there are a few people in that field who have a knack of opening tumbler locks in seconds .

Since I was a child I have figured out that history was not as presented and was lucky enough to have had school teachers who went of script to show us kids this

Well, that sounds believable. Thanks for sharing it! I had never heard of this one. I mean, there ARE people into fringe history and all who believe that a machine found in Baghdad, one which seems to do some sort of addition and subtraction, could have very possibly used the famous Baghdad Battery to run it and if so, then the year of the first computer would need to be altered some two thousand years, at least. Me, I would need to see the evidence, hands on, just because some people get very carried away with what they believe, once they sink a little too far into conspiracy theory. I DO BELIEVE, mind you, that this time we are in now is more than likely the ummph or ummteenth cycle in which se have reached the age of information but, seeing as how forgotten technologies like THAT would deteriorate and fade to nothing, even big steel boned skyscrapers, in just 500-1000 years leaving no trace of a civilization beyond that time unless it is what the civilization decided to build out of stone...

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

I have seen some of these projects somewhere in Europe. I forget at the moment exactly where. But there was a museum dedicated to historic robotics, I don't remember anything from the medieval period...mostly Renaissance to the Enlightenment and a few decades beyond that. It was called Museum of Automatons or something like that.