chinese engineer automatons

The previous pages have shown the development of Chinese machinery up to the end of the seventeenth century. Let’s compare the designs of the previous automatons with the reconstruction in Fig. 2.29 that is related to a fifth century BC chariot. The mechanism that operates the legs to simulate the horse’s gait is remarkable, even more if as the chariot transported heavy loads Marco Ceccarelli wrote in “An Historical Perspective of Robotics Toward the Future” (2001), [33]. It is remarkable how each technical field evolved. Agricultural, hydraulic, military, astronomical, or purely mechanical techniques evolved at a speed that was stimulated by illustrated books as previously described by the examples in the pages of this book, so revealing a technology that was barely accessible beyond its borders. It is evident that Chinese technical know-how surpassed the engineering skills in Europe or the Islamic world during the same period of time. It is also curious to reflect that some of their discoveries did not reach us (or were not reinvented in the West) until the middle or the end of the eighteenth century, being Chinese Society not involved with those inventions or reinventions.