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Ctesibius's Water clock
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Ctesibius or Ktesibios is an
Alexandrian and he wrote down all his inventions in a book. He is the son of a barber.
When he was small, he dropped a lead ball in a tube and the air
escaped with a loud sound because the ball compressed the air.
Because of this finding, Ctesibius realized that air was also a
substance, so his inventions were based on this fact.
Ctesibius invented a water organ, which was an air pump with valves
on the bottom, a tank of water in between them and a row of pipes on top.
Another invention of Ctesibius was a water clock.
It consisted of a cylindrical container with a hole on the bottom
so water could pass through it and kept at a constant water level. On the water, a rack, floating, could turn a toothed wheel to
a number of “parerga: whistling birds, moving puppets, ringing bells,
and the like.”, but this did not work.
Afterwards, he reconstructed the water clock and this time he made
a pointer, which moved at steady rate.
This pointer would mark hours at different length of lines traced
on a vertical cylinder.
Ctesibius
invented other less known devices, but the most important invention is the
principle of pumping air to make other things work
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