Ancient Automatons Upcoming Lecture

Courtney Ann Roby, Associate Professor, Cornell University will give a talk on ancient automatons this Thursday (7:00 pm January 25th) at Alumni Hall, University of King’s College, Halifax. Dr. Roby is the author of Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature: The Written Machine between Alexandria and Rome (2016) and Hero of Alexandria (forthcoming).

Abstract: Hero of Alexandria, known for his works on topics from theoretical mechanics to catapult design, describes his theatrical automata as the culmination of mechanics. This lecture will introduce these automata and the mechanisms that drove them, consider what it means to think of “programming” in terms of concrete materials rather than as abstractions of bits and bytes, and trace the cultural value of Hero’s automata from the Roman world to the Renaissance.