[Deutschmark]

Now this is very interesting.

http://www.chonday.com/Videos/the-writer-automaton

Deutschmark

[madcat]

They are very interesting pieces of machinery, I saw one used in a Derren Brown show. He talk a bit about the history of them and said that they were popular about 200 years ago but most were not true automaton because they usually had a guy hiding inside of it lol

But I think they go back along way to the time of the Greeks over 2000 years ago, I think it was a in documentary called something like Robots of the Ancient World.

Talking of stuff like this watch this documentary The Two Thousand Year Old Computer about the Antikythera mechanism. It could calculate the position of the Sun and Moon and other astronomical information, such as moon phases, eclipse cycles, and theoretically the locations of the know planets. Makes you think do we underestimate how advanced ancient cultures could be?

PS: just found this on youtube; THE ANTIKYTHERA MACHINE I'm note shore if it the same documentary or not as I linked to above.

[Deutschmark]

That was very interesting to see about the antikythera it was worth the look.
Thank you.

Deutschmark

[wheelsup_cavu]

Amazing technological achievements for their day and goes to show that the "ancients" were not be as technologically challenged as we have been led to believe.


Wheels

[caldrail]

Isn't this something like the chess playing turk automaton that Napoeon was defeated by? In that case, it was a fake robot - there was a chess playing dwarf inside (who really ought to have been a general. He had after all defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at a game of strategy).