Baghdad, 850: A Flute That Played Itself

A flute that played itself, described in Baghdad around 850 by three brothers, and the only copy of their treatise that survived ended up in a school library in Beirut with every diagram left out. By the end you'll see why a wooden cylinder with teeth on it is software, not clockwork, and how they got the music onto it by tying string to a living man's fingers. How the Banu Musa's flute player works, part by part: a box of two chambers that compresses air with nothing but falling water, a one-way valve and a pressure sphere, one flute with nine holes and eight levers, a pinned cylinder where the ring is the pitch, the angle is the time and the tooth's length is the note's length, a water wheel that turns it, a leaking cup that speeds the tune up and slows it down, and a float that slides the barrel sideways to a second tune. Plus the wax drum that recorded a real flute player, the argument over "the first programmable machine", and the line from this barrel to the music box, Jacquard's punched cards and a computer terminal of 1963. Chapters 0:00 A program from Baghdad, 850 1:01 A bandit's three sons 2:05 The instrument which plays by itself 2:57 Breath that never stops 3:36 Compressing air with falling water 4:55 One pipe, nine holes 5:56 The pinned cylinder 6:30 A tooth is a note and its length 7:18 A water wheel turns the barrel 7:53 A tempo set by a leaking cup 8:29 Not swapped: a sliding barrel 9:27 Recording a flute player in wax 11:08 Is it the first program? 12:00 The brothers were not saints 12:32 From music box to Jacquard 13:20 A Teletype, and the statue's lie Sources H. G. Farmer, The Organ of the Ancients from Eastern Sources, W. Reeves, London (1931), pp. 85-118: the complete English translation of the Banu Musa's "The Instrument which Plays by Itself" M. Sanjakdar Chaarani, L'orgue hydraulique des Banu Musa (The Hydraulic Organ of Banu Musa), Muslim Heritage (2013) T. Koetsier, On the prehistory of programmable machines: musical automata, looms, calculators, Mechanism and Machine Theory 36(5) (2001) N. Sharkey, The programmable robot of ancient Greece, New Scientist 2611 (7 July 2007), and the reader's reply "If program, then...", New Scientist (2007) Wikipedia: Banu Musa brothers, Book of Ingenious Devices, Water organ, Music box, Barrel organ, Jacquard machine, Teletype Model 33, Teleprinter Images (Wikimedia Commons unless noted) Pinned street-organ barrel, Gebrüder Bruder of Waldkirch (two views): Plenuska · CC BY-SA 4.0 Jacquard loom with its punched cards, National Museum of Scotland: Stephencdickson · CC BY-SA 4.0 Folios from the Maqamat of al-Hariri, Baghdad, 1237: public domain Pages from copies of the Banu Musa's Book of Ingenious Devices: public domain Folio from the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, Cairo, 1354, Aga Khan Museum: public domain Reconstructed Roman hydraulis from Aquincum, Budapest: Kaboldy · CC BY-SA 3.0 Two Roman bone flutes, Museum het Valkhof, Nijmegen: Carole Raddato · CC BY-SA 2.0 Boxwood recorder: Dominic Ibbotson · CC BY 3.0 Player-piano roll: Draconichiaro · CC BY-SA 4.0 Camshaft: Elmschrat · CC BY 4.0 Rice Grist Mill water wheel, Norris Dam State Park, Tennessee: David Ratledge · CC BY 4.0 Frati "Cornettino" fair organ (1880), Music House Museum: H. Michael Miley · CC BY-SA 2.0 Brown wax cylinder record: John Curtis · CC BY-SA 4.0 Samarra, April 1909: Gertrude Bell, Gertrude Bell Archive · public domain Carillon pin barrel, Frauenkirche Meissen: Numiscontrol · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Barrel piano, George Hicks, c. 1860, Metropolitan Museum of Art: CC0 Five- and eight-hole punched paper tape: TedColes · public domain Teletype Model 33 answer-back drum: Douglas W. Jones · CC0 Music: YouTube Audio Library. यह video Hindi में — Gyandu:    / @gyanduofficial   #coding #programming #tech #robot #software #musicbox #history #ancientmachines