I was finally able to stop in today and pick up my trivia prize from the Center for Medieval Studies here at the U. The question was: Al-Jazari (1136–1206) was an incredibly prolific inventor and author of The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. He created many humanoid automata, but his finest achievement may have been a group of four “programmable robots.” What did they do?
Answer: Al-Jazari invented a robot band. His four “programmable robots” (two drummers, a harpist and a flautist) performed in a boat for royal pool parties and surviving descriptions indicate that the mechanisms that drove them could be altered to change what they played.
My fabulous prize was a set of cool note cards with images from manuscripts from the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML is a fabulous library. I went to manuscript camp last year, so I know how totally cool it is!).
Here are a few images of my prize and a few images of campus (flowers and construction).
