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Elephant Clock

en.wikipedia.org

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Re: Elephant Clock

#11

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #4

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 Eng…

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.

Re: Elephant Clock

#12

Post by Jedd »

smudgymcscmudge wrote: post #9
Jedd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.wik…

Steve Jobs was a cultural engineer.

> Steve Jobs was a cultural engineer.

You mean like P. T. Barnum?

Re: Elephant Clock

#13

Post by djsumdog »

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.

Re: Elephant Clock

#14

Post by pavel_lishin »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #4

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 Eng…

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".

Re: Elephant Clock

#16

Post by grzm »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #15
djsumdog wrote: post #13

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.

Why was it a shit-town?

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.

Re: Elephant Clock

#17

Post by cicero »

nicheasta wrote: post #5
mito2 wrote: post #3

Here’s a detailed animation of how the Elephant Clock works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCW_wp0dgF4

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

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