Al-Jazari Automaton

[Ya Sam]

Al-Jazari is credited with creating an early design of a humanoid automaton 
in 1206. Al-Jazari's automaton was originally a boat with four automatic 
musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking 
parties. His mechanism had a a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) 
that bump into little levers that operated the percussion. The drummer could 
be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs 
were moved around.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jazari

Al-Jazari's machine was originally a boat with four automatic musicians that 
floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. It had two 
drummers, a harpist and a flautist. Professor Sharkey's machine has just the 
one drummer with a drum, cymbals, bells and no body. The flautist is 
replaced with an Irish penny whistle. He says he wouldn't risk taking this 
to any drinking parties round here.

The heart of the mechanism is a rotating cylindrical beam with pegs (cams) 
protruding from it. These just bump into little levers that operate the 
percussion. The point of the model is to demonstrate that the drummer can be 
made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs are 
moved around. In other words it is a programmable drum machine.

"Whether or not al-Jazari dynamically programmed his machines is an 
intriguing question", he says, "it is quite likely that he used this method, 
at the very least, for fine tuning the rhythm of the musicians".

http://www.shef.ac.uk/marcoms/eview/articles58/robot.html

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