Muslim Scientist Abbas Ibn e Firnas Constructed First First Flying Machine

Muslim Scientist Abbas Ibn e Firnas Constructed First First Flying Machine 1000 Years Ago He is Known as the Father of Aviation. A thousand years before the development of powered aeroplanes, the polymath and engineer of the ninth century dared to create a heavier-than-air flying contraption.

Introduction

once upon a time the idea of robots was

the symbol of a futuristic world a world

in which technology and machines would

replace human labor to a large extent

that world is with us today in the 21st

century but the idea of robots were

least automated machines is much older

than you might think during the heyday

of a Golden Age of science between the

9th and 14th centuries engineers from

across the Islamic world from the Middle

East to southern Spain built many

incredible devices water clocks

automatic serving machines and a number

of other innovative creations

I'm Jim al-khalili a British professor

of theoretical physics but born in

Baghdad I've been researching some of

the mechanical wonders of this Golden

Age of science and comparing them to the

engineering and technological advances

of the modern world

Robot Kitchen

for years we've been promised that we'd

have robots in our homes carrying out

household chores and that hasn't really

happened well here's something that

might change all that

in this lab they're developing a

prototype robot that we might sometime

soon have in our kitchens at home

this is the Mali robotic kitchen a pair

of fully computerized mechanical arms

set in a purpose-built capsule the arms

replicate the movements of a human chef

and today the robots cooking me a crab

bisque

so you can see it moves not like a robot

beauty motion not on those kind of very

simple movements you get from a robot

but a very human and fluid movement

using motion capture we've recorded the

movements of a chef's hands while

they're cooking a real recipe and then

this system will reproduce those

movements exactly so in principle it

should be exactly as good a cook as a

master chef according to the chef it's

more consistent than a human chef so

when a chef is cooking they can't always

get the timings the temperatures and the

amount exactly right so you can always

get the same pattern of mess around the

saucepan that's a robot we get the same

drip because it's repeated the rise

leads exactly the same motions I mean at

the moment you have to have all the

ingredients at exactly the right place

because of course the robot is operating

line isn't it it's not blind death and

none so can't feel it can't see what

it's doing one of the reasons robots

haven't made it into the home yet is how

difficult it is to do all the 3d vision

in complex lighting environments and do

all the planning actually intelligently

being able to make decisions like all

the salt is not where I thought I was

going to go find it recognize it yes and

even try to find it hiding behind

something or mixed in with things that

look similar the sort of things that we

take for granted very very easy with a

computer finds shouldn't

so we've taken a much simpler approach

that's to standardize everything in the

kitchen and make it a very controlled

environment with controlled lighting and

defined positions for the ingredients

now we can just run this recipe and it

works every single time

the last detail is to add a few drops of

truffle oil there you go

hmm if I'd eaten this in a restaurant it

was cooked by a human ship I guess I

wouldn't be surprised I'd enjoy it for

some reason I I wasn't quite expecting

it to taste so nice and - I mean this is

exactly as a chef would cook it and he

had I've witnessed a robot making me a

very nice dish of course

this robot relies on the very latest

technology but what was the state of the

art at the beginning of the Golden Age

well we find our answer in the Kitab fer

or the book of tricks written around 850

ad by the 3-burner Musa Brothers the

book contains a range of ingenious

inventions and contraptions everything

from entertainment to making life easier

things like water dispensing devices a

self-correcting lamp and lots of

different mechanical tools they drew

their inspiration from ancient Greek

Chinese Persian and Indian engineering

but it's believed that the inventions in

the book go much further than anything

else that had been seen before at the

The Kitab

Museum of Islamic art in Qatar they have

an early copy of the katana they are in

their collection I'm really excited

about this manuscript bill because it's

probably one of the most famous texts of

the medieval world the original was

written in the mid 19th century by the

Banu Musa Brothers one was an astronomer

one was a mathematician and one was in

the other one engineer and they were

really the center of scientific life in

Baghdad during the Golden Age of science

the ambassador caliph al Mamoon

recognized the talents of the brothers

from an early age and sent them to study

in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad where

great texts were gathered from across

the globe and translated into Arabic

during their time in the House of Wisdom

they grew in influence and even became

patrons of other translators as well as

translation they wrote many works of

their own including the book of tricks

it's called the Kitab you'll hear which

literally means the the book of tricks

of the book of trickery but they're not

tricks in the sense of magic tricks

these are contraptions and devices I

guess executive toys is probably the

best term for it but I mean it's full of

beautiful diagram showing valves and

levers and gears and very very clever

they employ these incredibly

forward-thinking processes things that

weren't really adapted until many

centuries later things like crank shafts

they were using things like differences

in pressures in liquids and also in air

to make things appear to move by

themselves to act into their own

volition there's the famous robotic

flute player and Zico right through sort

of water pressure yep and there's the

self trimming lamp there's there's all

these kind of things that must have

seemed like magic at the time hence the

idea of trickery I guess but a lot of

the ideas do go back to the ancient

Greeks people like Archimedes for

instance but they're putting them

together in a way that was slightly

different yes it's not just a

translation movement it's a rethinking

movement as well the stuff in this book

is more than just fun toys it tells us

that what they were doing at this time

it was the mid 9th century the zenith of

the Golden Age they were carrying out

proper scientific experimentation

The Flute

John Scott is a mechanical engineer

based in Cambridgeshire in the UK he

builds and tests historic inventions and

currently he's reconstructing one of the

Banu Musa brothers most complicated

devices the flute which plays itself

right Jim here's the device oh that's

fantastic oh you even got the little

character there yes so the menu Musa

brothers are said to have built this way

at least wrote about this this year

flute that plays itself yeah how much

detail was there that you could get hold

off to allow you to reproduce well there

was a reason about there are references

but there are different apparently

different translations so some things

are not entirely clear presumably modern

scholars historians looking back at this

there's a lot of guests working oh yeah

how they solve the problems they do yeah

so talk me through it how does this work

right well the basic principle is that

there is a drive wheel here which

operates this rotating drum that would

have been water powered or Riley and

there are a series of effectively cams

which lift little arms which then seal

or unseal the tone holes on the on the

flute and air comes yeah passes through

air comes in here okay well can we have

a demonstration yeah we can turn some

air on so you get a little tone

all right did you rotate that ah now in

the moment it's what you might call

program to make a scale but of course

you could make Tunes out of it by very

least

that's fantastic so you've got this just

as a scale but of course these could be

rearranged yes in a sense this is an

early programmable is very much and if

you think it's way before musical boxes

which were sort of 16th 17th century

mentions though yes it's it's a very

clever thing for that for the period but

of course you use pressurized air supply

to blow the air through how would the

Benham Musa Brothers have done this well

far as we know from the references there

are two ways one was apparently to

provide a steam supply a very low

pressure steam supply in itself is right

it is seen power yes the early steam

power that's right

the other way of doing it was to use a

system of chambers two chambers which

could be filled up with water and

emptied if you imagine the two chambers

as one is filling up the other one is

going down this one filling up the air

trapped is being fed into here and then

this one starts to empty this one starts

to fill in the air trapped in there is

then provides the continuous flow right

so it's like this operation much like a

conventional bellows but this is a

water-powered bellows so the whole

contraption is is continued at water

water powering moving the the wheels and

cogs yeah and yet water also powering

pushing you through it yeah yeah it fits

in with their general philosophy because

they were obviously involved a lot in

water lifting water movement devices so

water was obviously as a motive power

very much in mind so I imagine when they

came to develop this water power the

first thing they thought of to make it

work

water played a key role in many medieval

engineering projects both large and

small the Islamic world inherited many

techniques of irrigation and water

supply from the Egyptians Greeks and

Romans this beautiful structure is an

underground water reservoir in

Constantinople modern-day Istanbul it

was built by the Romans in the 6th

century the engineers of the Golden Age

preserved this that they also modified

improved and constructed their own water

projects they also develop new

techniques to capture store and raise

water many sophisticated hydraulic pumps

and water raising devices were developed

by al-jazeera one of the most prolific

engineers of the Islamic world born in

the 12th century he served as a Royal

Engineer at the Arthur clue Palace in

what is now Turkey at Istanbul Museum of

the history of science and technology in

Islam they've built working models of

some of Al Jazeera's water devices dr.

death left Quinton explains them to me

as you have looked inside this building

you can see donkey and this donkey

moving mechanism bringing into running

these gears as you can see and then

lifting the water up to these channels

that's a quite a sophisticated machine

it is a surface air I mean an Jesu a he

was a more fascinating engineering water

devices like Al Jazeera's were hugely

important throughout the Islamic world

as their empire spread across the globe

engineers of the Golden Age built

reservoirs and impressive dams many of

which still survives today across the

Middle East and Islamic Spain as well as

these dams in places like Cordoba Iran

and Syria irrigation was also provided

by nuria's from the arabic na hora which

are giant scooping water wheels but as

populations grew throughout the Islamic

world it became necessary to have more

advanced devices and towards the end of

the 12th century al-jazari

developed sophisticated water pumps so

have a look on this even more

sophisticated water lifting devices as

the water moves the water wheel round

that's moving backwards a force it's

like a double piston pumping up the

water through both pipes up right up to

the tower it lifts and pumps the water

up to a height of 11 meter al-jazari

combines several sophisticated

mechanisms the pump works via valves

that create a partial vacuum causing the

water to be sucked up from the river

below this pump is also remarkable

because it has a double action each side

takes it in turn this double pumping

makes it much more efficient the machine

is driven by the river itself which

turns a waterwheel and that waterwheel

is attached to gears and to Pistons

water is sucked up from the river by the

Pistons which slide back and forth as

the gear turns by doing this al-jazeera

is converting the rotating movement of

the water wheel into a linear

side-to-side motion it's possibly the

earliest description of a crank slider a

fundamental component of many modern

machines including car engines we know

Book of Knowledge

about al-jazeera's devices because he

wrote about them in great detail and an

early copy of his greatest work exists

right here in Istanbul

the Ottomans conquered Constantinople

modern-day Istanbul towards the end of

the Golden Age and when they took power

many thousands of manuscripts were

transferred here to Istanbul this is a

wonderful text it dates back to the mid

12 hundreds the title of the book is

kitab ajoomma

fil n me well amal which translates as

far as i can tell to the Complete Book

of knowledge and work what is lovely

about it is that throughout the text are

these wonderful vivid color diagrams of

his contraptions and devices they get

increasingly complex and ingenious this

is a particular favorite of mine because

it depicts an animal an ox or donkey

which is supposedly turning this axis

and acting to pump the water but at

least one account suggests that actually

the animal isn't needed at all it's only

there so as not to scare people into

thinking this some kind of magic

essentially the water is in the river

here and as it drops down below the

river the energy the kinetic energy of

the water turns this axis by set of

gears which operates a vertical axis and

spins it that in turns operates another

gear which lifts the water in these

vessels up to a higher level so it's

self-sustaining it's beautiful and you

don't need an ox or donkey to operate it

at all

in Islam followers of the faith are

required to pray specific times during

the day and so knowing the time

accurately is very important today

clocks like this outside a mosque give

the precise times for prayer

LJ's re and other engineers of the

Golden Age devised a great many clocks

which were more accurate and elaborate

than what had gone before al Jazeera

wrote about clocks that relied on

candles were driven by weights or were

regulated by water but his most famous

creation was the extravagant elephant

Elephant Clock

clock

professor Attila beer is one of the

foremost scholars of the engineers of

the Golden Age he studied the original

description of the clock written in Al

Jazeera's great text we worked up that

book system in miniature a major survey

between detail Adam editor who made Judy

Tyler Easton Adam boom O'Dell einen

coupled to all the details about the

mechanisms are all written preserved in

this book the elephant clock not only

showcases the height of sophistication

in mechanics at the time it's also an

early representation of the

multiculturalism that existed during the

Golden Age CEO Park Amboseli Park and

visit socotra nobility your most

rigorous Buddha singing along holidays

that I hid in Seminole and the filigree

rose versus Tamela that era best system

allow ability to preserve the decoration

maybe show mechanism assaulted shoulder

the clock tells the time with an

indicator at the top showing the number

of hours since sunrise but the main

mechanism for this clock is hidden

inside the elephant's belly a bowl that

floats on a water tank and every half

hour creates an eye-catching display the

bowl slowly fills with water from a hole

in its bottom and sinks after half an

hour when it sinks it tugs a series of

pulleys and strings which run all the

way to the top of the clock they connect

the bowl to a channel of balls which is

concealed in the top the tugging of the

pulleys and strings causes the channel

to tilt and so one ball is released this

makes the bird on the top spin round and

the time indicator advances the ball

travels through and falls from a fault

can speak into a Serpent's mouth causing

it to tilt and this causes the elephant

driver to beat the elephant as the

mechanisms inside the clock are

triggered the floating bowl is pulled

back up and starts filling with water

again for the next half hour

Infernus

there's another inventor who's been

associated with perhaps one of the most

extravagant claims of the Golden Age a

passive infernos lived in the 9th

century the same time as the burner Musa

brothers and came from Andalusia among

his achievements he studied glass

extensively devising a new method of

manufacturing colored glass and even

making early corrective lenses a

precursor to reading glasses but there's

one story about him which if true is

absolutely remarkable humankind has

always dreamt of flight since long

before the Wright brothers built their

first aeroplane in fact we know that

back in the 15th century Leonardo da

Vinci drew diagrams of gliders but

supposedly 700 years before da Vinci

Abbas had been for NASA had already

taken to the skies Andy green is a pilot

with the British Royal Air Force and I

want to get his opinion on whether urban

furnace could really have made himself

fly over a thousand years ago

the story goes that if Infernus devoted

years of his life to building wings made

from wood and bird feathers accounts say

that he jumped off a tower or a hillside

and remained airborne for minutes

sailing over the flat lands outside

cordoba just how likely is this story to

have been true I'd love to think it was

possible but he's got some big

challenges in doing that in a thousand

years ago having the engineering

structural technology to be able to

produce the wings the materials at the

time would have left him with a very

heavy flying machine he would have had

to run awfully quickly to get it

airborne even faster to survive the

landing

having the center of gravity in exactly

the right place and actually having the

controls to be able to control the roll

the pitch for your you know there's a

hundred years of design and science and

development have gone into the

technology on this airplane right now

what also makes it even more challenging

is that supposedly he didn't even have a

tail attached to his wings which would

have made landing pretty problematic I

guess well very simply without this

piece this airplane will not fly or

indeed you won't be able to control the

lift when you come into landing I would

love to believe that it is possible he

could have done this but more

importantly he is recognized as one of

the pioneers of aviation and that's it

it might be apocryphal but it's what he

stood for as an innovator as an

inspiration to later generations that's

important he is part of the amazing

story of aviation

we don't know for sure whether a passive

and furnaces story is true but what we

do know is that there were incredible

engineers and inventors during the

Islamic world in the Golden Age men like

al jazeera and the vaanu Moussa brothers

who created incredible mechanisms to

build intricate and detailed inventions

over a thousand years ago next time we

look at how the scholars of the Golden

Age started to develop the field of

chemistry oh wow we see how they created

new equipment and industrialized

chemical processing we put the pure

olive oil here

and how they began to turn the

superstition of alchemy into the science

of chemistry so important to our lives

today