Inventions and Heritage of the Islamic era - the clock

alJazari's 800 year old automatic Scribe clock using water technology. An example of the Muslim orgins of modern automation and robotics.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Science
• inventions
• technology
• clock
• History
• discovery

[cannissolis]

(cont'd from previous post) from a philosophical standpoint this is not a bad stance and even today if one consider Heisenbergs uncertainty principle and that by looking one is affecting the world being observed, it is arguably still valid.

[wallidjan]

During the Middle Ages the Islamic World had a very significant impact upon Europe, which in turn cleared the way for the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. In the Medieval age, Islam and Muslims influenced Europe in a number of different ways. One of the most important of these subjects was Science.

[wallidjan]

The Catholic Church (which at the time was the strongest institution in Europe) successfully convinced Christian Europe that the Muslims were infidels. This caused Europeans to think that Muslims were culturally inferior to Europe and thus Europe was unable to benefit from the new scientific discoveries being made in the Islamic lands before the 1100s. By doing this Europe kept itself in the Dark Ages while from China to Spain Islamic Civilization prospered.

[wallidjan]

Ever since Islam was born, Muslims had made immense leaps forward in the area of Science. Cities like Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Cordoba were the centers of civilization. These cities were flourishing and Muslim scientists made tremendous progress in applied as well as theoretical Science and Technology. In Europe, however, the situation was much different. Europe was in the Dark Ages. It had no infrastructure or central government.

[wallidjan]

A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries.

[wallidjan]

In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

[cannissolis]

Re. your "The Catholic Church" post. Yes that is another, terrible, indoctrinated, belief system. But at least the Catholic church have apologised for the inquisition and have also agreed that evolution is true!

[cannissolis]

Wallidjan, I sought to correct a factual error not start a war about Islam! I am sorry that your insecurity gives you the desire to denigrate other great cultures; your attempted derogation of an ancient philosophical hypothesis by using modern ideas to make it sound ridiculous is a little childish (re. rays, like a laser a 20th C. Acronym) The Ancient Greeks believed that the sun and moon lit the world and that sight was like a beam of light emitted from the eyes. (cont'd next post)

[wallidjan]

The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays,like a laser, which enabled us to see.The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician,astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture,he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura(the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room)

[wallidjan]

How Islamic inventors changed the world

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life.

(Independent newspaper)