The paper considers some Medieval sources about imagined or actually studied automata, to make a contribution to the reconstruction of the cultural landscape of a period that, from the technological point of view, is commonly regarded as less interesting than others. It will be shown that the idea of an automatic device or system, capable of performing not necessarily simple tasks, of measuring its own state and of taking action based on it, was well established in the Medieval mind, even though sometimes connected with magic.

Wonder, sorcery, and technology : contribute to the history of medieval robotics / N. Ambrosetti - In: History of computing : learning from the past : IFIP WG 9.7 international conference, HC 2010, held as part of WCC 2010, Brisbane, Australia, September 20-23, 2010. proceedings / [a cura di] A. Tatnall. - New York : Springer, 2010. - ISBN 9783642151989. - pp. 16-25 (( Intervento presentato al 21. convegno IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference-History of Computing tenutosi a Brisbane nel 2010 [10.1007/978-3-642-15199-6].

Wonder, sorcery, and technology : contribute to the history of medieval robotics

N. Ambrosetti
Primo
2010

Abstract

The paper considers some Medieval sources about imagined or actually studied automata, to make a contribution to the reconstruction of the cultural landscape of a period that, from the technological point of view, is commonly regarded as less interesting than others. It will be shown that the idea of an automatic device or system, capable of performing not necessarily simple tasks, of measuring its own state and of taking action based on it, was well established in the Medieval mind, even though sometimes connected with magic.
automata ; design ; sorcery ; science ; technology ; feed-back control ; history ; magic ; robot ; robotics
Settore ING-INF/04 - Automatica
2010
International Federation for Information Processing
Australian Computer Society
Book Part (author)
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/146694
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