AlShindagah Online

AlShindagah Online: "Throughout history, mankind has been naturally predisposed to look for ways of making life easier and more efficient. Many times this meant inventing tools to reduce the physical effort in daily tasks and, as time went by, man got creative and started thinking of ways to make tools work by themselves. This tendency brought about the dawn of automations, also known as automata. For the purpose of clarity hereafter, by “automata” we will generally refer to any of numerous mechanical objects that are moderately self-operating after being set in motion. The ultimate product of this development is of course the robots of today and tomorrow, but here we will concentrate on the specific historical contributions of Al Jaziri, a Muslim inventor of the 13th century AD. Understanding the importance of this Islamic innovator’s achievements in automata helps us take a sneak peek into the roots of today’s hi-tech automations."