Modernbiomimesismakes solar cells grow like plants , molecules walk like the great unwashed , and artistic creation run like centipede . But it ’s a very old scientific discipline . Take a look at ancient engineers who made pictorial machines fight , talk , flirt , and yes , poop .
Biomimesis is the science of imitating living . Today , scientist replicate the mechanical functions of a body to makerobots that can take the air , and the functions of a mind tocreate artificial intelligence . This is one of the forefronts of modern engineering science , a kind of final frontier .
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But it turns out that engineers and scientists have been nail down that frontier for one thousand of years . Mary Shelley assumed that the creation of life was travel to happen through the skill of biology . These multitude wanted to create it through car-mechanic .
One of the most illustrious of those scientists was Heron ( or Hero ) of Alexandria , who lived around 100 advertising . Like many of the Greeks , he decided that he was get going to be the forefather of something , and not one of those dazed , impermanent ‘ children ’ that everyone was peach about . Instead he decided to be the father of pneumatics , the science of using pressurized steam to get move . His notebooks curb sketches of fountains and siphons , but he really made his name with his so - called ‘ miracles ’ . They were statue that used steam power to move , and they made a self-aggrandizing splatter in temple , where hoi polloi gathered to view conniption of legend re - enacted by experience statue .
Looking at the conniption , it ’s not difficult to know what ’s get to happen . Until the dragon lobby increase power , the man with the club is always exit to wack the monster a skilful one . What was impressive about this digit is , if the man turn apart , a suction was created which provide the dragon to ‘ drink ’ any urine that was presented to it . Then the man turned back and smack it again . Life is n’t fair , sometimes .
Dragons got a better insistency in China around a thousand years by and by , where they got to unleash hell on their human oppressors . Engineers actually managed to make a flying lizard - shaped rocket engine that spit ardour on opposing forces .
That was a step back for the Chinese , who in 1000 BC had robots walking around . Yan Shi , an technologist , made a walking , tattle , lecherous human figure and presented to the reign king . It had to be take away apart when it purportedly started making advances on the tycoon ’s ladies . Other inventions around the same clock time include a horse that moved on springs and birds that fly .
All well and dependable . Motion was an first-class thing , but the great unwashed be intimate that mechanically skillful part go . And tattle was amazing , but most beau monde had wind pawn and could recognize them . That wassail statue was a good spot , but there was one criteria for life-time that only people without indoor plumbing could really understand : does it poop ?
In the seventeen hundreds , a proud Frenchman step forward and check the masses that yes , yes it does . Jacques de Vaucanson was a well - know maker of automaton . He was also obsess with frame , and wanted to make models of it that in reality moved . In 1730s , he exceed himself . He presented a duck which flapped its wings , be active around , wag its tail , quack , ate , and after eating did what all living beings do . hoi polloi were amazed , and Vaucanson tour Europe , getting multitude to pass on over a portion of money to see a duck Irish bull .
Although sketches of Vaucanson ’s duck still outlast , the genuine good example is operate . There is some dispute over how exactly the duck’s egg digest its food , but most people go with the simplest solvent . In a sentence when there was n’t a large stretch of highway between people and their solid food , it was n’t toilsome for a rich cat to get clutches of some duck poop . One of the internal compartment probably was store for it . Still , the mechanical duck had hundreds of go function , and persist a high point of other biomimesis .
Makes you happy that now we ’re focusing on brainpower now , though , does n’t it ?
ViaCal Arts , Handworx , History of Hydraulics , andChina History Forum .
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