Who has helped science and technology?

Brief

This lesson asks you to describe how science and technology are used at home and in the community, and to look at what different communities have contributed. The museum offers two examples from the Muslim world; the class adds examples from its own homes and communities. ¹

Whose work do you use without noticing?

Think of a clock, a tool or a device at home. Ask who first made something like it, and in which community that knowledge was kept and passed on.

Go deeper

Imagine a book that teaches you how to build a machine. Al-Jazari wrote one. The TDV encyclopaedia says it has coloured drawings and letters that mark the parts. It explains the general shape first, then how to make the parts, put them together and run the machine ². A man named Nasir al-Din Mahmud asked for the book to be written ².

Think about it

Al-Jazari's book has drawings, letters on the parts and steps for making them. Why would that help someone who has never seen the machine?

Into the museum

Al-Jazari: the engineer whose book has six parts, from clocks to water-raising machines.
Ibn al-Shatir's sundial: a large marble sundial on the northern minaret of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

Try this

Choose one clock or timer at home. Draw it, and next to it draw the sundial of Ibn al-Shatir described on this page. Write one thing each of them does for the people who use it.