Building an ancient robot from scratch with handtools

March 17, 2024 2:05 PM

"Revisiting Greek Automata: Clockwork Robots from the Ancient World" is a video from @fraserbuilds, in which John Fraser makes one of 1st century Greco-Roman engineer Hero of Alexandria's self-driving cars self-propelled automata, with some help from a hand made blow-torch powered by olive oil and pit fired pottery.
posted by gwint (3 comments total)

The pot firing was very interesting...
posted by Czjewel at 2:59 PM on March 17

Clickspring’s build of a reproduction of the Antikathera Mechanism is probably something you’d be interested in. He’s an “amateur” horologist (seems pretty professional to me) and is trying to explore how the mechanism could have been built. Eleven episodes so far. He’s very good and interesting and has almost gotten me interested enough to buy a metal lathe. But not quite, because “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

There are some auxiliary videos about making tools and things too. They’re all accessible from his main page thing, whatever Guugle calls it.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:31 PM on March 17 [2 favorites]

I am fascinated by the oil-powered blowtorch, but I'm curious what region his accent is from. He pronounces "both" with a long O, but words like "torch", "more", or "pores" come out with a schwa. It seems like the 'r' is the common factor in this. Is this a New England thing?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:42 AM on March 18