6 THE MACHINE: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION neering in the Thalassic (great seas) societies of ancient Greece and Rome. They did not know much about marketing, but they did know the users of their products. They had continuous feedback concerning their acceptance and performance. Dur- ing the manufacturing phase they kept in touch with the prospective users, and they were always in line with the contemporary ideas about acceptable appearance and utility. Moreover, conception, design, and manufacture were the work of a single person. Consequently, these products were simple and of human proportions. Much later, mass production caused the breaking of this process into distinct smaller ones and led to the separation of design from manufacturing. However, the principles underlying design activity were investigated very early in history. The first design theory was part of aesthetics, where aesthetic (beautiful) included also functional (useful) and ethical (the good) attributes. Function and ethics were in- separable from form. This society simply could not afford spending resources only for aesthetic pleasure. It was able, however, to afford a pleasing appearance for the useful goods of everyday life and to pay attention to more general societal needs. Rapid advancement in natural sciences was followed by systematic attempts to organize knowledge in engineering and, in particular, in machine design, devel- oping this body of knowledge beyond the level of a mere craft. Kinematics and machine design have a distinct place in the history of engineer ing because they comprised the very first of its divisions to receive a mathematical foundation. Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 550-475 Bc) appears to have been the first to separate the study of motion itself from dynamics, the forces causing the motion, and introduced the principle of retribution, or change, in the motion of celestial bodies. The first known written record of the word “machine” appears in Homer and Herodotus to describe political manipulation (Dimarogonas 1999). The word was not used with its modern meaning until Aeschylus used it to describe the theatrical device used to bring the gods or the heroes of the drama on stage; whence the Latin term deus ex machina. Mechanema (mechanism), in turn, as used by Aris- tophanes, means “an assemblage of machines.” None of these theatrical machines, made of perishable materials, is extant. However, there are numerous references to such machines in extant Greek plays and also in vase paintings, from which they can be reconstructed. They were large mechanisms consisting of booms, wheels, and ropes that could raise weights perhaps as great as one ton and, in some cases, move them back and forth violently to depict traveling through space, when the play demanded it. The designers and builders of these mechanisms were called by Aristophanes mechanopoioi (machine-makers), meaning “machine designers” in modern termi- nology and identical with the corresponding German term for mechanical engi- neers, Maschinenbauingenieure. They designed and built the mechane not by evolution or invention but to the order and specifications of the playwright, Aes- chylus in this case, and they truly deserve to be called the first mechanical design- ers. Very few details are known about the mechane, but it is certain that they were substantial mechanisms for path and motion generation. They were probably several meters high and operated above the stage and roof of the theater. In a fully retracted position a mechane was hidden behind the stage, so it would have to have more than one moving link and it could carry substantial load. In Aeschylus’s Prometheus10 THE MACHINE: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION mathematical rigor was used by Archimedes, Hero applied numerical methods. Hero reported on these in his Metrica, a treatise on numerical methods for area computations and the approximation of roots. Archimedes (ca. 287-212 nc) was born in Syracuse, Sicily, a relative of its ruler Hieron. He studied mathematics at the Museum in Alexandria, and returned to Syracuse to devote his life to the study of mathematics and the design of ma- chines. He introduced the windlass, gears, and the screw and ‘wrote treatises on mathematics and the design of several types of machinery. He is the founder of statics and of hydrostatics, and his machine designs fascinated subsequent writers, who attributed to Archimedes, for example, a machine by which he could lift the ships of the besieging Roman fleet and de- stroy them by dropping them from a high level, which prob- ably is an exaggeration. He did design and build, however, Syracusia (“The Lady of Syracuse”), the largest ship of his times, 80 m long, 4,000 ton displacement, with three decks. The ship made only its maiden trip to Alexandria because it was too slow and there were no harbor facilities anywhere to handle her. Archimedes was killed during the capture of the city by the Roman general Marcellus while trying to solve a mathe- matical problem. To the soldier who ordered him to stand up, he answered, “Do not disturb my circles.” The soldier, not knowing who he was (and against the orders of Marcellus), killed him. Archimedes systematized the design of simple machines and the study of their functions. He was probably the inventor of the compound pulley and developed a rigorous theory of levers and the kinematics of the screw. Plutarch and Polybius describe giant mechanisms for lifting ships from the sea, ship-burning mirrors, and a steam gun designed and built by Archimedes. The last allegedly fascinated Leonardo da Vinci. However, the validity of these stories is questionable. Philo of Byzantium wrote a treatise on artillery (Technology of Arrow Making) in which he described an analytical method for the design of ballistae (heavy stone throwers). Such machines were used by the peoples in the East. In the 2 Chronicles 26:15 for example, as mentioned above, Uzziah, the King of Judah, talks about such machines. Philo stands out because he devised a design equation obtained empirically on the basis of certain assumptions. In the case of the ballistae, Philo’s equation was d= (11/10)¥/100m, where d is the diameter of the twisted gut skeins providing the potential energy, in dactyls, and m is the mass of the stone, in hun- dreds of drachmas. In conjunction with this formula, Philo introduced the idea of similitude, stating that larger machines can be designed on the basis of the dimen- sions of smaller ones with the formula d,/d, = (m,/m,)''°. Moreover, Philo's for- mula for the balistae was the first developed design equation in the contemporary sense that directly related the design objective (the payload) to the design parameter (the torsional spring diameter). In Philo’s formula, the cube root relationship was derived empirically while the numerical constant 100 was derived from the units14 THE MACHINE: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION Renard Series for standard sizes of Roman Pipe “s + Roman Standard Size e° + Diameter, em yo t AT |- ‘ * “ a We, w . aT ee Size designation Figure 1.5. Roman lead pipe standard sizes. responsible for lead poisoning. It is also known that noise pollution was a problem in ancient Rome and vehicles were not allowed to operate in the center of the city during certain hours. 6. MACHINE DESIGN IN THE ARAB WORLD The Arabs played an important role in the preservation of the Greek science and engineering and made substantial contributions of their own, They devised ingen- ious mechanisms with a high degree of automation and control. One of the Arabic writers of this era was Ibn al-Razzaz Jazari, who in his extensive and beautifully illustrated treatise on machines, Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical De- vices (1206), described a great number of ingenious mechanisms and automata. One aspect of Jazari’s book which has gone largely unnoticed is the systematic development of design concepts for particular design tasks. He divided his book into different Categories, each one describing a great variety of solutions to a specific problem. Category I describes six different clocks based on the principle of water flow and four of them employing the burning of a candle. Category II considers 10 solutions to the problem of facilitating the drinking of water. Cate- gories II, IV, and V deal with the problems of hand washing and phlebotomy (10 solutions), fountains and perpetual flutes (10 solutions), and the raising of water (5 solutions), respectively, Later writers who commented on Jazari’s work considered his designs as inventions of devices intended mostly for the entertainment of Mus- lim feudal lords. Many even dismissed Jazari’s work altogether as exercises in toy- making, but the multiplicity of solutions given in the various categories (5 or 10) clearly indicates to the knowledgeable reader that his work contains studies of design alternatives embodying a certain design principle. Thus, all Jazari’s work is really a study in systematic machine design! Another, earlier book, The Book of Ingenious Devices, written by the brothers Ahmad and Hasen bin Musé Ibn Shakir (ca. 850 ab), also contains a wealth of