Elephant Clock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_clock

by raghava • 8 years ago

64 15 8 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Fifer82• 8 years ago

I found a video about it, pretty cool. http://www.1001inventions.com/media/video/clock

mito2• 8 years ago

Here’s a detailed animation of how the Elephant Clock works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCW_wp0dgF4

nicheasta• 8 years ago

And how is the disk at the top rotated? I'm talking about the one that shows the number of hours since the sunrise.

smudgymcscmudge2• 8 years ago

I was wondering the same thing. The wikipedia article discusses it a bit under the heading “passage of temporal hours”, but I couldn’t visualize it. I was hoping the video would clarify that.

cicero• 8 years ago

It appears that the dropping ball does something to advance it.

pbhjpbhj• 8 years ago

Al-Jazari's knowledge seems to have ultimately derived from a Baghdad library, via the Banu Musa brothers.

I find the history of those libraries fascinating https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom.

Kinda OT.

Apparently he was a Yazidi Kurd; that's what the circumstantial evidence shows, and there's no other evidence AFAICT.

It says "Muslim engineer", which would be like saying Steve Jobs was a "Christian Engineer".

Jedd2• 8 years ago

It says "Muslim engineer", which would be like saying Steve Jobs was a "Christian Engineer".

I note that Ismail al-Jazari's wikipedia article [1] describes him as muslim, and also an engineer -- which appellation are you concerned about here?

I'm unsure how that compares to describing Steve Jobs as either christian or an engineer, though I'd be struggling to try to substantiate either descriptor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_al-Jazari

smudgymcscmudge2• 8 years ago

Steve Jobs was a cultural engineer.

nf05papsjfVbc• 8 years ago

Slightly off-topic but if the "history of science" is a subject that interests, I can recommend "The Cambridge Illustrated History of Science". It's an expensive book but I was able to borrow a copy from a library near where I live and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

pavel_lishin2• 8 years ago

I'm a crap history student, but wasn't this during a time when a central Caliphate ruled over most Muslims? It might be more accurate to say that calling him a "Muslim engineer" is like calling Steve Jobs a "Western engineer". Specifying a particular region he was from might be like calling Jobs a "California engineer".

RickJWagner• 8 years ago

Cool article. My thanks to whoever posted it.

djsumdog• 8 years ago

If you are into horology, an interest podcast to listen to is S-Town. It's about a amateur horologist who lived in a shit-town. He made a lot of money restoring clocks.

pavel_lishin2• 8 years ago

Why was it a shit-town?

grzm• 8 years ago

https://stownpodcast.org/about

"Brian, a longtime This American Life producer, started reporting this story more than three years ago, when he got an email from John with the subject line “John B McLemore lives in Shittown Alabama.”"

You can listen to the podcast which includes John McLemore himself and why he described it so.

Elephant Clock

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