Animation of Al-Jazari's Elephant Clock (1001 Inventions)

[Music] is this a clock you asked how does it tell the time how does it work I will tell you now [Music] the number of hours since sunrise is shown on the silver and black discs at the top of the clock and the number of minutes into the hour is shown by the scribes pen the movements of the clock are regulated by a most wonderful mechanism that sits in a tank inside the elephant's body a perforated floating bowl there is a small hole in the floating bowl that regulates the speed at which it sinks as it slowly submerges over half an hour it tugs via a system of pulleys the scribe and his pen when it is completely submerged the bowl quickly tilts sinks and triggers a more dramatic sequence of events inside the cupola at the top of the clock a channel of balls is tilted so that a stopper is lifted to allow one to fall hitting a fan that turns the Phoenix the ball then drops out of one of the Falcons beaks into the Serpent's mouth as the serpent falls rotating around its pivot the weight of the ball tugs a rope that resets the bowl back to the surface of the water the ball drops again into a VARs that triggers them a hoot smell it and hits a symbol which sounds the half hour as the ball collects in a trough the float begins to submerge again and the whole process repeats itself with subtle adjustments for the second half of the hour [Music] [Music] [Music] this ingenious device is the work of buddy al zaman Abdul s eben isma eel even our Azaz al Jazeera who was a Muslim engineer who lived north of Baghdad under the IUB dynasty shortly after salad in the Magnificent al-jazari built a large number of mechanical devices that revolutionized engineering he described many of them in his book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices

Channel: 1001Inventions

Views: 161,604

Keywords: aljazari, 1001inventions, losthistory, islamicscience, automata, clocks, ancient machines, time, ancients, middle ages

Id: MCW_wp0dgF4

Length: 3min 16sec (196 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2018