in half an hour's time. if you were looking at this from the outside you would really wonder what was going on but what is this gross is a religion that they have an in-depth exploration of global capitalism and our obsession with economic drugs this is still the center of capitalism there is no limits i view myself as a capital artist. trying to break through the world small small we don't want to base that realistic in the world we would rather have a fantasy growing pains coming soon. once upon a time the ideal of robots was the symbol of a futuristic world a world in which technology and machines would replace human labor to a large extent that world is with us today in the twenty first century but the idea of robots least to me to machines is much older than you might think during the heyday of a golden age of science between the fourteenth centuries engineers from across the

islamic world from the middle east to southern spain built many incredible devices to clocks automatic setting machines and a number of other innovative creations until now to levy a british professor of theoretical physics but born in baghdad i've been researching some of the mechanical wonders of this golden age of science and comparing them to the engineering and technological advances of the modern world. for years we've been promised that we'd have robots in our homes. he's carrying out

household chores and that hasn't really happened well here's something that might change all that in this lab to developing a prototype robot that we might sometime soon have in our kitchens at home. this is the molly kitchen a pair of fully computerized mechanical arms set in a purpose built capsule. the arms replicate the movements of a human chef and today the robots cooking the crab beaks. so you can see it moves not like a robot good martial law and it's going to very simple you're going to get a robot a very human fluid made using motion capture we've recorded the movements of a chef's hands while they're cooking a real recipe and then this system will reproduce those movements exactly so in

principle it should be exactly as good a cook as a master chef according to the chef is more consistent than a human chef so when a chef is cooking they called it was good the timing of the temperature is going to mount exactly right so if your goal is get the same comments around the soles with . the very bottom of the same drip because it's repeats is very nice needs like the same motions. i mean at the moment you have to have all the ingredients at exactly the right place because of course the robot is operating business is a blind deaf and not so confidently called see with history. one of the reasons robots have made it into the hardware is how difficult it is to deal with revision complex writing environments do all the planning actually intelligently being able to make decisions like all the solti is not where i fooled or insects and humans fall i did recognize it yes i didn't try to find. hiding behind something all mixed

in with things that look similar to the sort of things that we take for granted are very very easy for the future plans in iraq. so we've taken a much simpler approach for us to standardize everything in the kitchen and make it a very controlled environment controlled marci it's defined positions from the greens now we can just run this recipe and it works every single time. the last detail as to how a few drops of truffle oil. really go. if i'd. eaten it in a restaurant that is cooked by human chef. i guess i would be surprised that enjoy it for some reason i wasn't quite expecting it to taste so nice and to i mean this is exactly as a chef would cook it i mean i witnessed a robot making me

a very nice. of course this robot relies on the very latest technology but what was the state of the art at the beginning of the golden age well we find out in the kitab and or the book of tricks written around eight fifty eight by the three new muso brothers the book contains a range of ingenious inventions and contraptions everything from entertainment to making life easier things like water dispensing devices a self correcting lamp and lots of different mechanical tools they drew their inspiration from ancient greek chinese persian and indian engineering but it's believed that the inventions in the book go much further than anything else that had been seen before. the newseum of islam a continent they've an early copy of the key target in their collection.

i'm really excited about this. and the script will because it's probably one of the most famous texts of the medieval world the original was written in midnight century by the bunny moose brothers one was an astronomer one was a mathematician one was in the other. and they were really the center of scientific life in. the golden age of science the ambassador moon recognized the talents of the brothers from an early age and sent them to study in the house of wisdom in baghdad where great texts were gathered from across the globe and translated into arabic during their time in the house of wisdom and they grew an influence and even became patrons of other translators as well as translation they wrote many works of their rome including the book of tricks. it's called the tablet which literally means the tricks of trickery but they're not tricks in the sense of magic tricks these are contraptions and devices and executive toys is probably the

best term for it but i mean it's full of beautiful diagrams showing valves and leavers and gears and very very playable they employ these incredibly forward thinking process is things that weren't really adapted until many centuries later things like crankshafts they were using things like difference is in pressures in liquids and also in air to make things appear to move by themselves to act in their own volition there's the famous robotic flute player operates through sort of water pressure and there's the self trimming there's all these kind of things that must have seemed like magic at the time hence the idea of trickery i guess a lot of the our ideas do go back to the actual greek people at archimedes for instance but they're putting them together in a way that was slightly different yes it's not just a translation movement it's a rethinking movement as well the stuff in. this book is more than just.

toys it tells us that what they were doing at this time is the mid nineteenth century in the very the senate of the golden age they were carrying out proper scientific experimentation. john scott is a mechanical engineer based in cambridge show in the u.k. . he builds and tests historic inventions and currently he's reconstructing one of the benue brothers most complicated devices the flukes which plays itself budgeteers the device. or you haven't got the little character yes so the brothers are said to have built

this or at least wrote about this place itself how much detail was there that you could get hold of to allow you to reproduce well there was a reason there are references but there are different apparently different translations so some things are not entirely clear and presumably modern scholars historians looking back at this there's a lot of guesswork in oh absolutely how they solve the problems they said talk me through how does this work right well the basic principle is that there is a driveway all here which operates this rotating drum that would have been water powered the right way and there are a series of effectively cams which lift little arms which then seal unseal the holes on the flute and there comes a passive throw air comes in here ok what can we have a demonstration yeah we hear a. little tone.

what you might call programs of major scale verticals. so you've got this just a scale but of course these could be a range yes in a sense this is an early programmable the show much though. and if you think it's way before musical boxes which were sort of sixteenth seventeenth century inventions but yes it's a very clever thing for the period but of course you use pressurized air supply to blow the air through how would the ben immiscible others have done this well far as we know from the references there are two ways one was apparently to provide a steam supply a very low pressure steam supply itself is what i think it is power yes the earliest seems sound that's right the other way of doing it was to use a system of chambers two chambers which could be filled up with water and emptied if you imagine the two chambers as one is filling up the other one is going down

this one filling up the air trapped is being fed into here and then this one starts to empty this all starts to fill in the air trapped in there is then provides the continuous flow right so it's like this operation much like a conventional bellows but this is a water powered by those so the whole contraption is continue our water really of water. moving the wheels and water also powering pushing the earth through it fits in with their general philosophy because they're obviously involved a lot in water lifting water movement devices so water was obviously as a motive power was very much in mind so i imagine when they came to develop this water power was the first thing they thought of to make it work. water played a key role in many medieval engineering projects both large and small this nomic world inherited many techniques of irrigation

a water supply from the egyptians greeks and romans this beautiful structure is an underground water reservoir in constantinople modern day istanbul it was built by the romans in the sixth century the engineers of the golden age preserved this they also modified improved. and constructed their own water projects they were develop new techniques to capture store and raise water. many sophisticated hydraulic pumps and water raising devices were developed by al jazeera one of the most prolific engineers obvious manic world. born in the trial century he served as a royal engineer at the are two clue palace in what is now turkey. at istanbul's museum of the history of science and technology in islam they have built working models of some of al jazeera water devices dr death left when turned

explains them to me. as you have a look inside this building you can see the donkey and this stone creamery roofing mechanism bringing into running these gears as you can see and then lifting the water up to these channels that's quite a sophisticated machine it is a surface. he was more fascinating engineering. water devices like hell gerry's were hugely important throughout the islamic world as their empire spread across the globe. engineers of the golden age built reservoirs and impressive dams many of which still survived today across the middle east and islamic spain as well as these dams in places like cord of iran and syria irrigation was also provided by nor ears from the arabic now which are giant

scooping waterwheels but as populations grew throughout the islamic world it became necessary to have more advanced devices and towards the end of the truss century developed sophisticated water pumps. so have all of this even more sophisticated water lifting devices as the water moves the water wheel round that's moving back because of course it's like a double piston pumping up the water through both pipes up right up to the tower it lifts and pumps the water up to a high of eleven meter. al-jazeera combined several sophisticated mechanisms the pump works via val's that creates a partial vacuum causing the wall. water to be sucked up from the river below this pump is also remarkable because it has a double action each side takes it in turn this double pumping makes it much more

efficient the machine is driven by the river itself which turns a water wheel and that water wheel is attached to gears and two pistons. water is sucked up from the river by the pistons which slide back and forth as the gear turns. by doing this al jazeera is converting the rotating movement of the water wheel into a side to side motion is possibly the earliest description of a crank slider a fundamental components of many modern machines including car engines. we know about al-jazeera these devices because he wrote about them in great detail and an early copy of his greatest work exists right here in istanbul.

the ottomans conquered constantinople modern day stumble towards the end of the golden age and when they took power many thousands of manuscripts are transferred here to istanbul. this is a wonderful text it dates back to the mid twelve hundreds the title of the book is. which translates as far as i can tell to the complete book of knowledge and work what is lovely about it is that throughout the text are these wonderful vivid color diagrams of his contraptions and devices they get increasingly complex and ingenious. this is a particular favorite of mine because it depicts an animal an ox or donkey which is

supposedly turning this axis and acting to pump the water but at least one account suggests that actually the animal isn't needed at all is only there so as not to scare people into thinking this some kind of magic essentially the water is in the river here and as it drops down below the river the energy the kinetic energy of the water turns this axis by a set of gears which operates a vertical axis and spins it that in terms of rates another gear which lifts the water in these vessels up to a higher level so it's self-sustaining it's beautiful and you don't need an ox or don't heat to operate it all. the way.

in islam followers of the faith are required to pray at specific times during the day and so knowing the time accurately is very important today clocks like this outside the mosque give the precise targets for prayer. s. l jaziri and other engineers of the golden age devised a great many clocks which were more accurate and elaborate what had gone before al jazeera he wrote about clocks that relied on candles which driven by weights or were regulated by water but his most famous creation was the extravagant elephant clock.

professor attila beer is one of the foremost scholars of the engineers of the golden age he studied the original description of the clock written in al-jazeera his great text. book system and me are two major written the title of the media to whom it would it i learn is to know them well more than i know when you're pulled it so all the details about the mechanisms are all written something reserved in this book the elephant clock not only showcases the heights of sophistication in mechanics at the time it's also an early representation of the multiculturalism that existed during the golden age. park and mood crowd can't believe your conclusion we believe you are mostly goodness. cino known mitchell only. in san marino along the feeling you realize this is them and.

i missed them l.o.l. ability to be a dick or as you want to be a fop mechanism us or to each shoulder. the clock tell us the time with an indicator at the top show. in the number of hours since sunrise but the main mechanism for this clock is hidden inside the elephant's belly a ball that floats for the water tank and every half hour creates an eye catching display the bowl slowly fills with water from a hole in its bottom and sinks off to half an hour when it sinks it tugs a series of pulleys and strings which run all the way to the top of the clock. they connect the ball to a channel of boards which is concealed in the top of the tugging of the pulleys and strings causes the channel to tilt and so one ball is released this makes the bird on the top spin round and the time indicator advances the ball travels through and fall from a full can speak into

a serpent's mouth causing it to tilt and this causes the elephant driver to beat the elephant. as the mechanisms inside the clock are triggered the floating bowl is pulled back up and starts filling with water again for the next half hour. there's another inventor who's been associated with perhaps one of the most extravagant claims of the golden age. lived in the ninth century the same time as the brothers and came from. a mug's as a chief ment's he studied bloss extensively devising a new method of manufacturing colored glass and even making elly corrective lenses a precursor to reading glasses but there's one story about him which if true is

absolutely remarkable. human current has always dreamt of flights since long before the wright brothers built their first airplane if that we know that back in the fifteenth century in order to vinci drew diagrams of gliders. supposedly seven. before davinci. had already taken to the skies. and green is a pilot with the british royal air force and i want to get his opinion on whether it could have made himself fly over a thousand years ago. and. the story goes that had been for years of his life to build a. wooden bird feathers account say that he jumped off a tower a hillside and remained. sailing over the flat lands outside court about. just how likely is this story to have been true i'd love to think it was possible

but he's got some big challenges in doing that and a thousand years ago having the engineering structural technology to be able to produce the wings the materials at the time would have left him with a very heavy flying machine he would have had to run quickly to get it on even faster to survive the landing. having the center of gravity exactly the right place and actually having the control to be able to control the roll pitch your you know there's a hundred years of design and development going into the technology on this airplane right now. what also makes even more challenging is that supposedly he didn't even have a tail attached to his wings which would have made landing pretty problematic i guess well very simply without this pace this airplane will not fly or indeed you

won't be able to control a lift when you come into landing. i would love to believe that it is possible he could have done this but more importantly he is recognized as one of the. sick. might be apocryphal but it's what he stood for as as an innovator as an inspiration to later generations the simpleton he is falls off the amazing story of. we don't know whether or not the story is true but what we do know is that there were incredible engineers and inventors during this time a quote in the golden age men like al jazeera and the brothers who created incredible mechanisms to build intricate and detailed inventions over

a thousand years ago. next time we look at how the scholars of the golden age started to develop the field of chemistry all while we see how they created new equipment and industrialized chemical processing. they put the people want to hear. and how they began to turn to superstition of alchemy into the science of chemistry so important to our lives today. taiwan. a sovereign island state or a renegade province of china that must soon return to mainland control. as the battle for taiwanese hearts and minds intensifies. people in power investigates the tactics of those to whom reunification is only

a matter of time. taiwan spies laws and prostrate. on a. when the news breaks and the story that's when people need to be heard and the story needs to be told. with exclusive interviews and in-depth reports. al-jazeera has teens on the ground to bring you more award winning documentaries. and life needs on air and online. russian filmmaker under a necklace of continues his journey across his homeland to discover what life was like under putin during his travels he meets christians and muslims patriots and separatists i told the locals in the southeast world when i arrived i don't do something completely different someone to leave putin's russia but for other

russian passport means hope and the challenge of happens in search of putin's russia on al-jazeera. new yorkers are very receptive to. because it is such an international city they are very interested in that global perspective that al-jazeera provides. this is al-jazeera. carry this is the news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes. the right to underwritten to the no use to the left four hundred thirty two british m.p.'s vote by a landslide to reject prime minister theresa may steal to leave the european union

as the u.k.'s worst political crisis and decades intensifies. at least five people are dead and it got involved a tack.