I came by accident across this book and its title, unavoidably, caught my attention. Written by Eirini Mpourdakou, the book goes back into ancient times providing an overview of ancient automation technology.
Via archaeological artifacts as well as scriptures detailing the design of such technology, the reader discovers that starting more than 2000 years ago with Greek civilization and pursued by Byzantin and Arab later on, the foundations of modern automation technology were being set. Predominantly based on simple hydraulic rules, inventions of incredible ingenuity could be designed from automatic maids and fountains for courtyards of nobles and kings to moving and speaking statues for religious use inside temples.
Being more than just an overview of such inventions, the book seeks to highlight the long standing desire of the human to create technology and tools capable of performing the toil inducing, repeatable tasks. Through ancient art and mythology, we witness this desire and human vision for mastering nature's laws and exploiting them at our service. Which is the very definition of "robot" today, namely, the worker who performs labor on demand.
A very nice read, rich with pictures and well documented.
ISBN: 960-7931-71-8
Year: 2001
Language: Greek