Automatic Servants and Desert Ice Houses: 5 Amazing Inventions From Antiquity

Did you know the ancient Greeks designed a rudimentary robot? It's not the only amazing invention from antiquity either - let's take a look at...

• The Wine-Pouring Automatic Servant of Philon
• The Seismoscope Detecting Earthquakes Nearly 2,000 Years Ago
• The Bradmore Arrow Extractor
• Yakhchāl - Persia's Ancient Eco-Friendly Ice Houses
• The Aeolipile or Hero's Engine

The Wine-Pouring Automatic Servant of Philon

The last place you'd think to look for a robot would be ancient Greece... but it seems that they had a simple, single-task automaton capable of mixing a drink!

The design was recorded by Philo of Byzantium, and at first glance resembled nothing more than a life-sized female statue with a jug in her hand. If a cup was placed in her other hand, she would automatically pour wine and top it up with water.

So how did the servant operate? The answer is tied up in the clever use of weights, two airtight tanks of liquid and a set of pipes running throughout the figure.

When the cup was placed in her hand, the weight would move the arm and "open" an air tube connected to a vessel containing wine. The wine would start to drain from the tank, running down another tube and "pouring" from the lip of the jug (think of it like putting your finger over a straw and lifting it from a drink, then taking your finger away so the liquid falls back out.)

As the cup filled, it would get heavier and shift the arm down even further. This would eventually cut off the air tube to the wine tank (and stop the wine from flowing) but open a similar tube to a water tank - resulting in a watered wine drink. Removing the cup allowed the arm to return to the default position, cutting off the flow.

You might be thinking that this was just a flight of fancy on the part of a bored Greek engineer, but modern reproductions of the servant prove it would have worked!

The Seismoscope Detecting Earthquakes Nearly 2,000 Years Ago

Earthquakes can be pretty awe inspiring - which is probably why they intrigued the Chinese philosopher Chang Heng. A curious man, he built the earliest known seismoscope in C.E. 132 - and not only was it functional, it was something of a work of art.

The device was a large urn featuring eight dragon heads (each holding a ball) and eight toad heads (positioned to catch a ball.) In the event of an earthquake, the nearest dragon would drop the ball, thus indicating which way the earthquake was coming from.

The theory goes that a pendulum inside the urn would be set swinging by an earthquake. The pendulum would be slightly slower than the urn in responding to the shockwave, effectively "moving" towards the side of the urn closest to the quake... which knocked a ball into motion.

The ball would roll down a groove (each dragon had a groove leading to it) in the direction it was knocked and hit a lever... causing the dragon facing the quake to release the ball it was carrying. Supposedly the device detected an earthquake occurring around 400 miles away!

Yakhchāl - Persia's Ancient Eco-Friendly Ice Houses

Keeping cool in the desert sun is difficult enough - so how did the Persians manage to produce ice (and even sorbets) without the benefit of modern refrigeration technology?

The answer is the yakhchāl. The design of these ice houses varied, but each used physics to drastically reduce their inner temperatures. They were usually conical (sometimes with a spiraling channel running around the outside) with a hole at the top - this allowed hot air and evaporating water to escape into the blowing desert winds, helping keep the interior cool. Meanwhile, the dome lost heat into the dry, clean air via a process known as radiative cooling.

The walls themselves were made out of waterproof mortar, sometimes perforated with holes at the base to allow comparatively cool air to drift in (especially during the desert nights.)

The yakhchāl also had their pits and pools, subterranean areas that sometimes reached sub-zero temperatures and were ideal for storing (or creating) ice!

The Bradmore Arrow Extractor

When Henry V of England was stuck by a bodkin arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, his fate looked sealed. The arrow had entered his head on the left side of the nose and driven six inches through the cheek, lodging at the base of the skull - and while the arrow shaft had been removed, the head remained in the wound.

Now, this should have been a death sentence. The injury was deep and the wound would fester - if the prince was to have any chance of survival, the head would have to be removed... but taking it out without killing the already weakened man would be a monumental challenge. Whoever performed the operation would have reach deep into the royal head to grasp the bodkin and avoid opening the carotid artery... all without anesthesia.

Enter John Bradmore, a physician with a side-line in metalwork. Bradmore had been in prison (possibly due to coin clipping) but his unusual skill set gave him an edge in this situation. He designed a special set of narrow tongs that could fit inside the wound - and could be opened or closed using a screw rather than a standard grip.

The operation was a success and the prince made a full recovery - elements of the Bradmore design can be seen in modern surgical implements!

The Aeolipile or Hero's Engine

Hero (sometimes Heron) of Alexandria was another Greek ahead of his time. Amongst his other inventions and contraptions was his engine, possibly the earliest device to convert steam into rotary motion.

The aeolipile was a fairly simple contraption, consisting of a hollow, rotatable sphere held up by two pipes. These pipes were connected to a water-filled kettle that fed steam into the sphere when it was boiling.

Two other tubes mounted on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the steam to vent, resulting in the ball rotating like a Catherine wheel firework!

Though functional, Hero's engine probably never got past the status of curiosity or toy - it didn't produce enough power to be practical, and it's not like the Ancient Greco-Romans lacked for manpower!

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Sources and Further Info:

• Ancient Greeks Created First Robot
• The automatic servant of Philon
• Therapaenis - Servant by Heron and Filo
• What was the first instrument that actually recorded an earthquake?
• Discover the World’s First Earthquake Detector, Invented in China 2,000 Years Ago
• The First Seismoscope (3D Animation)
• The Yakhchal: How did Ancient Persia make Sorbet in the Desert?
• Yakhchāls: Ancient structures used to make and preserve ice in the deserts of Persia
• Experimental procedure on a royal skull base
• Aeolipile: Steam Turbine
• Why Heron's Aeolipile Is One of History's Greatest Forgotten Machines