December 26, 2017 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Story of Vaucanson
Not only was Vaucanson successful in making
the nobleman part with his money, but very soon he even started constructing
machines, tending more towards automatic machines.
Within ten years of having started his
workshop he had constructed a robot that he named The Flute Player.
This Flute Player was a life-sized figure
of a shepherd, one that played the pipe and the other the tabor.
Tabor is a portable snare drum that is hung
around one’s shoulder and is played with one hand.
He showed his inventions to the visiting
politicians and government officials who had dropped in by his town.
Not only they were not impressed with
Vaucanson’s robots (throughout the human history this has been the recurrent
theme and fate that geniuses have encountered), they even labeled his work as
“profane” and ordered his workshop to be destroyed.
Such were the state of affairs in Europe
then.
Vaucanson was neither deterred nor dismayed
by the reception of his inventions, because I imagine he must have realized
that his work was way beyond the grasp of average mortals of his time.
So instead of politicians and government
officers, he next presented his work to scientists at the Academie des Sciences.
Slowly but surely his inventions started
getting the deserved attention and even got accepted as revolutionary.
In spite of his remarkable contribution to
mechanical automatic machines his nation that was under the reign of Emperor
Louis XV failed to capitalize on his endowed expertise.
Instead one of the ministers of the Emperor
appointed him as an inspector of the manufacture of the Silk in France.
This took place in the year of 1741.
Silk manufacturing and weaving at that time
was a matter of both the national economy and pride.
At the same time there was growing concern
in the mainland Europe including France that they were lagging behind the
industry flourishing in England and Scotland.
It was on this background that Vaucanson
decided to apply his ideas of automation to the looms as he considered it the
need of the hour in every sense.
From 1747 onwards he began to study the contributions
that were added to the loom machines by Basile Bouchon and Jean Falcon.
I hope you recall what changes Bouchon and
Falcon had made in their attempts to automate the looms.
Hooks that had been devised to lift the
warp threads were lifted using series of horizontally placed needles.
The needles in their turn were pressed
against a sheet of punched paper (punching depending on the desired pattern)
that was draped around a perforated drum.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment