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Elephant Clock

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Re: Elephant Clock

#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 Engineer".

Re: Elephant Clock

#5
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.

Re: Elephant Clock

#7
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.

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.

Re: Elephant Clock

#8
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…

> 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

Re: Elephant Clock

#9
post #8
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…

> 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.
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