Programming the Gods and harnessing the Wind.

Last installment we looked at Hero of Alexandria, his temple miracles and his sound novelties.

But Hero was not just interested in simple novelties, he invented many complex mechanisms for the Greek Theater, the most advanced of these were amazing automatic stages, called Automatic Theaters, that would ‘walk out’ to a prescribed position on stage and proceed to show a series of moving scenes.
Even more ‘fantastic’ to the masses was one of these ‘walking’ pedestals  that held a statue of Bacchus.
Once in position the god would animate, at different times causing milk and water to spout out of the top of the god’s staff, fire to erupt on two different alters to Jupiter, wine to be spilt on a Jaguars head from the gods cup and four of his acolytes would dance around the god to the sound of drums and cymbals. The stage would then return back to the recesses of the stage.

Image from the Greek Newspaper Eleftherotypia

Some of these shows would last almost ten minutes, they were controlled by a binary like system of ropes, knots and simple mechanics that were powered by a rotating cog wheel.
It is for inventions of such programmable devices as these that he is considered the father of Cybernetics.

In this clip you can discover how Hero made his “robot’s’ walk onto the stage starts abour 5mins in..

He also described an apparatus that made use of sequence control.
It used drums and with pins and gears, to control events that laid ahead, enabling the creator to program a series of events forward in time. This lead directly to such inventions as Europe’s later immensely popular Music Boxes.

Sequence control is defined as a lower generation of computer programs.

Hero was also directly responsible for keeping Ktesibios’ invention of the Hydraulis, alive by describing it in some of his writings on mechanics of pneumatics.

As were the Banu Musa Brothers 700 years after Hero’s time, in their book  “Ingenious Devices”  In this book amongst 100 other inventions they described Ktesibios’ water organ, and the final invention of Hero’s that we will look at today, the Wind powered organ.

As a side note, the historical role of the Banu Musa Bros and their book of Ingenious Devices should be noted. The 3 brothers worked at the “The House Of Wisdom” . The Book was published in 850 AD in Baghdad. It was commissioned by the Caliph of Baghdad

“to acquire all of the Greek texts that had been preserved by monasteries and by scholars during the decline and fall of western civilization.”

It was through this work that industrious Arabs rebuilt the water organ and began modifying it which would eventually lead to the modern church organ we have today.

Now back to the final invention that we honor Hero for today, the Wind Powered Organ.

Taking the basic engineering principals of Ktesibios’ water organ, Hero created an organ who’s power came from the wind. It’s broad arms could pivot to catch any direction the wind was blowing and through a piston mechanism  would operate a bellows that were connected to a keyboard that when displaced would release the air into the proscribed pipe or flute.

Once again, Hero’s invention was far ahead of his time, apart from creating a way to transfer power from a rotating shaft to a reciprocating piston, his organ is currently not only the first but also the only known documented windmill type mechanism in antiquity.
Harnessing the power of the wind does not make it’s reappearance until the 12^th Century, 1100 years later!

So how does Hero fit into the evolution of electronic music?

He created an instrument who’s sound was generated without human power.  He created musical devices who’s sound was created automatically from the power of nature alone.
Hero even created special effects like thunder, and while none of this is synthesized music, it is the very thought processes, this evolutionary discovery of new ways to make and organize sound that we see time and time again throughout history that brought us to electronic music.
It was this thinking of his, such as his work on programmable devices that were even the beginnings of programming which of course led to the computers that we use today.

So Hero of Alexander, we tip our metaphorical hat and salute you!

In our next episode we look at Ancient Elevator music for people without elevators.  CLICK HERE

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CLICK HERE for the INDEX of The History Of Electronic Music