1000 Year Old Robotic Drummers!? Al-Jazari's 12th Century Mechanical Marvels

Drum History

In this solo episode, I take a deep dive into the 1000 year old automaton drummers that were created by 12th century Islamic inventor, Al-Jazari. These VERY early robots are amazing marvels of engineering and predominantly feature drummers who play kettle drums and cymbals to alert people in Mesopotamia (now Turkey) of the time of day with extremely elaborate clocks. These drummers are direct predecessors to modern day cars and machinery, as Al-Jazari is credited with the creation of turning rotary motion into linear motion with crank and connecting rods, which is essential for making pumps and engines possible. Basically, drummers are at the core of the history of everything :)

Here are the links:

History channel video - https://youtu.be/fxjh_yodeBo?si=uK82GB1mWRxzQGKL

Al-Jazari Book (free pdf) - https://archive.org/details/cover_20200113_2057/