A Brief History of TMM (Theory of Machines and Mechanisms)

 
-Antikythera

---The Father of mechanisms, Archimedes of Syracuse (287B.Ch.-212B.Ch.) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, mechanical engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and the explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. Modern experiments have tested claims that Archimedes designed machines and mechanisms capable of lifting attacking ships out of the water and setting ships on fire using an array of mirrors. His pet symbol was the C3 couple sphere in cylinder and his pet mechanism was the Archimedes' screw, Archimedean screw, or screwpump which is a machine historically used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches.

-Ctesibius or Ktesibios or Tesibius (285-222 B.Ch.) was a Greek^[1] or Egyptian^[2] inventor, mechanical engineer, and mathematician in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt. He wrote the first treatises on the science of compressed air and its uses in pumps (and even a cannon). This, in combination with his work on the elasticity of air On pneumatics, earned him the title of "father of pneumatics." None of his written work has survived, including his Memorabilia, a compilation of his research that was cited by Athenaeus, but it has influenced the activity of Marcus Pollio Vitruvius.

-Philo of Byzantium (280B.Ch.-220B.Ch.), also known as Philo Mechanicus, a Greek writer on mechanics and mechanisms, flourished during the latter half of the 2nd century B.C. He was probably younger than Ctesibius, though some place him a century earlier.

-Marcus Pollio Vitruvius (80B.CH.-20B.Ch.) was a Roman architect and mechanical engineer.

-Heron_of_Alexandria, (10-70) was an ancient Greek mathematician and mechanical engineer who was active in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt. He is considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity^[1] and his work is representative of the Hellenistic scientific tradition.^[2]

Among his most famous inventions were the first documented steam-powered device, the aeolipile, and a windwheel, constituting one of the earliest instances of wind harnessing.^[3][4] He is said to have been a follower of the Atomists. Some of his ideas were derived from the works of Ctesibius.

Hero's wind-powered organ                                                                                                                                                                                Heron's syringe

Hero's fire-engine                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Heron's Aeolipile

-Zhang Heng (Chang Heng),  (78-139) was an astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan, and lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty (CE 25�220) of China. He was educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Chang'an, and began his career as a minor civil servant in Nanyang. 

Zhang applied his extensive knowledge of mechanics and gears in several of his inventions. He invented the world's first water-powered armillary sphere, to represent astronomical observation;^[1]water clock by adding another tank;^[2] and invented the world's first seismometer, which discerned the cardinal direction of an earthquake 500 km (310 mi) away.^[1][3][4]pi. In addition to documenting about 14,000 stars in his extensive star catalogue, Zhang also posited theories about the Moon and its relationship to the Sun; specifically, he discussed the Moon's sphericity, its illumination by reflecting sunlight on one side and remaining dark on the other, and the nature of solar and lunar eclipses.

-Ma Jun (220-265),^[1] styled Deheng (徳衡), was a Chinese mechanical engineer and government official during the Three Kingdoms era of China. His most notable invention was that of the South Pointing Chariot, a directional compass vehicle which actually had no magnetic function, but was operated by use of differential gears (which applies equal amount of torque to driving wheels rotating at different speeds).^[2] It is because of this revolutionary device (and other achievements) that Ma Jun is known as one of the most brilliant mechanical engineers and inventors of his day (alongside Zhang Heng of the earlier Eastern Han Dynasty). The device was re-invented by many after Ma Jun, including the astronomer and mathematician Zu Chongzhi (429-500 AD). In the later medieval dynastic periods, Ma Jun's South Pointing Chariot was combined in a single device with the distance-measuring odometer.
-Su Song (1020-1101) was a renowned Chinese statesman, astronomer, cartographer, horologist, pharmacologist, mineralogist, zoologist, botanist, mechanical and architectural engineer, poet, antiquarian, and ambassador of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Su Song was the engineer of a water-driven astronomical clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism.^[2][3][4][5] The escapement mechanism of Su's clock tower had previously been invented by Buddhist monk Yi Xing and government official Liang Lingzan in 725 AD to operate a water-powered armillary sphere, although Su's armillary sphere was the first to be provided with a mechanical clock drive.^[6][5][7] Su's clock tower also featured the oldest known endless power-transmitting chain drive, called the tian ti (天梯), or "celestial ladder", as depicted in his horological treatise.^[8] The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and sound the hours.^[9] Su Song's treatise about the clock tower, Xinyi Xiangfayao (新 儀 . 象 法 要), has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by many historians, such as Joseph Needham. However, the clock itself was dismantled by the invading Jurchen army in AD 1127, and although attempts were made to reassemble the clock tower, it was never successfully reinstated. Although the Xinyi Xiangfayaocelestial atlas of several star maps, several terrestrial maps, as well as a treatise on pharmacology. The latter discussed related subjects on mineralogy, zoology, botany, and metallurgy. 

The original diagram of Su Song's clock tower, featuring an armillary sphere
powered by a waterwheel, escapement mechanism, and chain drive
-Jacopo and Giovanni de'Dondi (father and son) were scholars active in 14th century Padua, Italy, and are remembered today as being pioneers in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, designed and built by Giovanni de'Dondi over a period of 16 years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed only 60 or so years after the very first mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the solar system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication.
Giovanni de'Dondi's Astrarium. Tracing of an illustration origionally from his 1364 clock treatise, Il Tractatus Astarii.
It doesn't show the complex upper section with its many wheels, but just the weights, escapement, and main gear train.

-Turret Clock, English, 1392. The third-oldest surviving clock in the world, it was in use at Wells Cathedral in Somerset from 1392 until 1835.




-Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1436) was the architect and engineer of the Duomo in Florence and he is known to have created construction models, including machines and mechanisms.

-Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian polymath (scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, etc...). He has been the first mechanical engineer who has invented the first mechanical transmissions, engines, machines, robot and mechanisms.

Design_for_a_Flying_Machine.jpg‎





Helicopter

A Flying Ship




A war ship

The First Shovel

A bicycle

the Archimedes' screw (or the screw without end)

 





-More complicated were the wheel-cutting engines for producing the gear wheels that clocks required. Juanelo Torriano of Cremona completed a clock for Charles V of Spain in 1543 that needed 1800 gear wheels – a means of producing gear wheels accurately in large numbers was thus essential.



Lancashire pattern wheel-cutting engine, nineteenth century. Lancashire was an important region for the manufacture of tools and watches from early times.

-Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a Tuscan physicist, mathematician, mechanical engineer, etc. He was the first mechanical engineer specialist in dynamics.
‎The phases of Venus, observed by Galileo in 1610

-Sir Isaac Newton, (4 January 1643 - 31 March 1727) [OS: 25 December 1642 � 20 March 1726])^[1] was an English physicist, the greatest mechanical engineer, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His Philosophi� Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, is considered to be the most influential book in the history of science. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.

In mechanics, Newton enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum. In optics, he invented the reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes whitelight into a visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.

The famous three laws of motion:

Newton's First Law (also known as the Law of Inertia) states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force.

Newton's Second Law states that an applied force, , on an object equals the rate of change of its momentum, , with time. Mathematically, this is expressed as

Because this relation only holds when the mass is constant, that is, when , the first term vanishes, and the equation can be written in the iconic form

                              where                            

This equation states that a force applied to an object of mass m causes it to accelerate at a rate .

This equality requires a consistent set of units for measuring mass, length, and time. One such set is the SI system, where mass is in kilograms, length in metres, and time in seconds. This leads to force being in newtons, named in his honour, and acceleration in metres per second per second. The English analogous system is slugs, feet, and seconds.

Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that any force exerted onto an object has a counterpart force that is exerted in the opposite direction back onto the first object. The most common example is of two ice skaters pushing against each other and sliding apart in opposite directions. Another example is the recoil of a firearm, in which the force propelling the bullet is exerted equally back onto the gun and is felt by the shooter. Since the objects in question do not necessarily have the same mass, the resulting acceleration of the two objects can be different (as in the case of firearm recoil).

A popular story claims that Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation by the fall of an apple from a tree. Cartoons have gone further to suggest the apple actually hit Newton's head, and that its impact somehow made him aware of the force of gravity. John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:

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In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.[38]

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The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation".

A replica of Newton's 6-inch (150 mm) reflecting telescope of 1672 for the Royal Society

-Christopher Polhem (1661-1751) was a Sweden who created a mechanical alphabet of models for machines.

-In 1680 Christian Huygens designs the first engine with internal combustion.

-In 1769 Nicolas Joseph CUGNOT, presents his steam-driven vehicle.

This was the first steam-engine (use on vehicles).

-James Watt (1736-1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer. His steam engine was the base in both Britain and the world industrial Revolution.

Steam engine designed by Boulton & Watt. Drawing from 1784.

-George Stephenson (1781-1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives and is known as the "Father of Railways".

-Fusée engines made the smaller spring-driven clock practicable, making the ‘fusée’ that, with its tapered shape, compensated for the progressive weakening of a coiled spring as it unwound. This helped ensure that the clock kept time.
By 1775, with industry expanding, engineers were beginning to respond to the call for large, accurate machine tools: Britain stood on the brink of an engineering revolution.

Small clockmaker’s fusée engine, c.1800. In front is a large example of a fusée, as used in spring-driven clocks.

-Richard Roberts (22 April 1789 - 11 March 1864) was a British engineer whose development of high-precision machine tools contributed to the birth of production engineering and mass production.

-The Reverend Dr Robert Stirling (October 25, 1790 � June 6, 1878) was a Scottish clergyman, and inventor of the stirling engine.

Cut away diagram of a rhombic drive beta configuration Stirling engine design.
Pink - Hot cylinder wall
Dark grey - Cold cylinder wall (with coolant inlet and outlet pipes in yellow)
Dark green - Thermal insulation separating the two cylinder ends
Light green - Displacer piston
Dark blue - Power piston
Light blue - Linkage crank and flywheels
Not shown: external heat-source, and external heat-sinks. In this design the displacer piston is constructed without a purpose built regenerator.


Illustration of a low temperature differential (LTD) hot air engine. 1. Power piston, 2. Cold end of cylinder, 3.Displacer piston 4. Hot end of cylinder Q1. Heat in , Q2. Heat out.

-In 1794 one founds the Polytechnic School from Paris where one makes for the first time in the world many mechanical engineers.

-Robert Willis (1800-1875) of Cambridge was also known for his kinematics teaching models including determining the velocities of the planetary gears.

-1807 - Francois Isaac de Rivaz of Switzerland invented an internal combustion engine that used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Rivaz designed a car for his engine - the first internal combustion powered automobile. However, his was a very unsuccessful design.
-In 1811 M. Hachette published  "The Elementary Works of Machines", having in view the ideas of his master G. Monge.

-William John Macquorn Rankine (July 5, 1820 � December 24, 1872) was a Scottish engineer and physicist. He was a founding contributor, with Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson (1st Baron Kelvin), to the science of thermodynamics. Rankine developed a complete theory of the steam engine and indeed of all heat engines. His manuals of engineering science and practice were used for many decades after their publication in the 1850s and 1860s.

-Pafnuti Livovici Cebasev (1821-1894) was a Russian scientist known by his structural form in mechanisms.

-1824 - English engineer, Samuel Brown adapted an old Newcomen steam engine to burn gas, and he used it to briefly power a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London. 

-Franz Reuleaux (1829-1905) of Berlin created the world's largest collection of kinematics models at the Technical University of Berlin with over 800 models. Most of this collection was destroyed in the Second World War. However, Reuleaux authorized the reproduction of approximately 360 mechanisms by the model maker Voigt. Another model maker, Schroeder of Darmstadt, also created kinematics models based on the books of Reuleaux and Redtenbacher. Some of the models of Schroeder and Voigt are in collections in Europe, North America, and Japan.

-Francesco Masi (1852-1944) addressed his attention to TMM, but also to the fields of Hydraulics, Technical Drawing, Mechanics of Agricultural Machines, and teaching activity in technical Colleges and at Bologna University, where he publish "Cinematica Applicata"  and "Teoria dei Meccanismi".

-Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, (13 June 1854 � 11 February 1931) was a British engineer, best known for his invention of the steam turbine. He worked as an engineer on dynamo and turbine design, and power generation, with great influence on the naval and electrical engineering fields. He also developed optical equipment, for searchlights and telescopes.

Compound Steam Turbine, circa 1887

-1858 - Belgian-born engineer, Jean Joseph �tienne Lenoir invented and patented (1860) a double-acting, electric spark-ignition internal combustion engine fueled by coal gas. In 1863, Lenoir attached an improved engine (using petroleum and a primitive carburetor) to a three-wheeled wagon that managed to complete an historic fifty-mile road trip.
-Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (March 18, 1858 � last seen alive September 29, 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the compression ignition engine that bears his name.



-1862 - Alphonse Beau de Rochas, a French civil engineer, patented but did not build a four-stroke engine (French patent #52,593, January 16, 1862).
-Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 - April 7, 1947) was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model Tautomobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of the Ford Company he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", that is, the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line, coupled with high wages for his workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace.
-1864 - Austrian engineer, Siegfried Marcus*, built a one-cylinder engine with a crude carburetor, and attached his engine to a cart for a rocky 500-foot drive. Several years later, Marcus designed a vehicle that briefly ran at 10 mph that a few historians have considered as the forerunner of the modern automobile by being the world's first gasoline-powered vehicle (however, read conflicting notes below).
-1866 - German engineers, Eugen Langen and Nikolaus August Otto improved on Lenoir's and de Rochas' designs and invented a more efficient gas engine.
-August Horch (12 October 1868 - 3 February 1951) was a German engineer and automobile pioneer, the founder of the manufacturing giant which would eventually become Audi.
-Frederick William Lanchester, (October 23, 1868 - March 8, 1946) was an English polymath and engineer who made important contributions to automotive engineering, aerodynamics and co-invented the field of operations research.
-In 1870 was realized the first patent in geared transsmisions by the English men Starley and Hillman.

-Traian Vuia (August 17, 1872 - September 3, 1950) was a Romanian inventor, who designed, built and flew the first self-propelling heavier-than-air aircraft in the world, in 1906.

Traian Vuia's flying machine (March 18, 1906)


A postcard with Vuia and his airplane

-Prof. Dr. Ing h.c. Ferdinand Porsche^[1] (September 3, 1875 � January 30, 1951) was an Austrian automotive engineer. He is best known for his contributions to advanced German tank designs: Tiger I, Tiger II and the Elefant.
-1876 - Nikolaus August Otto invented and later patented a successful four-stroke engine, known as the "Otto cycle".

-1876 - The first successful two-stroke engine was invented by Sir Dougald Clerk.

-Andre-Gustave Citroen (5 February 1878-3 July 1935) was a French entrepreneur of Dutch and Polish descent. He is remembered chiefly for the make of car named after him, but also for his application of double helical gears.

-George (or Gogu) Constantinescu (1881 - 1965) was a Romanian scientist, engineer and inventor. During his career, he registered over 130 inventions. He is the creator of the Theory of Sonics, a new branch of continuum mechanics, in which he described the transmission of mechanical energy through vibrations.

Born in Craiova and settled in the United Kingdom from 1912, Constantinescu was an honorary member of the Romanian Academy.

Among his inventions are a mechanical torque converter, a sonic engine and a hydraulic machine-gun synchronizer (or interrupter gear) - which allowed airplane-mounted-guns to shoot between the spinning blades of the propeller). The Constantinesco synchronization gear (or "CC" gear) was first used operationally on the D.H.4s of No. 55 squadron R.F.C. from March 1917, during World War I, and rapidly became standard equipment, replacing a variety of mechanical gears. It continued to be used by the Royal Air Force until World War II - the Gloster Gladiator being the last British fighter to be equipped with "CC" gear.

He was the designer of the Constantinesco, a French-manufactured car, and of the Constanţa Mosque (a project completed by the architect Victor Ştefănescu).

-1883-French engineer, Edouard Delamare-Debouteville, built a single-cylinder four-stroke engine that ran on stove gas. It is not certain if he did indeed build a car, however, Delamare-Debouteville's designs were very advanced for the time - ahead of both Daimler and Benz in some ways at least on paper.

-1885 - Gottlieb Daimler invented what is often recognized as the prototype of the modern gas engine - with a vertical cylinder, and with gasoline injected through a carburetor (patented in 1887). Daimler first built a two-wheeled vehicle the "Reitwagen" (Riding Carriage) with this engine and a year later built the world's first four-wheeled motor vehicle.

Daimler and Maybach in their first automobile.


The first motorcycle (1885)

The first Daimler (without BENZ) motor carriage and transporter - 1899

-1886 - On January 29, Karl Benz received the first patent (DRP No. 37435) for a gas-fueled car.

In 1885 Karl Benz designed and built the first vehicle intended from the ground up to be powered by an internal combustion gasoline engine.

    An 1886 Benz Motorwagen.

Engine of the Benz Patent Motorwagen

Catch the bus

The first bus. On 13 November 1894, it was agreed that poor transport connections between Siegen, Netphen and Deuz could be improved by a motorised bus service. The original bus service was operational on 18 March 1895, using one of the first bus models produced by Karl Benz. A ticket for the complete journey cost 70 pfennigs.


Karl Benz introduced the Velo in 1894, becoming the first production automobile


The first speedercar. 1909 Blitzen Benz - built by Benz & Cie., which held the land speed record for ten years

-Henri Marie Coandă (June 7, 1886 � November 25, 1972) was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer and the builder of world's first jet powered aircraft, the Coanda-1910. He gives his name to the Coandă effect.

The Coandă-1910 was the first jet-propelled aircraft ever built. It was constructed by Romanian inventor Henri Coandă and exhibited by him at the Second International Aeronautical Exhibition in Paris around October 1910.

-1889 - Daimler built an improved four-stroke engine with mushroom-shaped valves and two V-slant cylinders.

-Igor Sikorsky (25 May 1889 � 26 October 1972)^[1] was born Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (Russian: Игорь Иванович Сикорский). Sikorsky was a Russian-American pioneer of aviation who designed and flew the world's first multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft, developed the first of Pan American Airways' ocean-conquering flying boats in the 1930s, and developed the first successful American helicopter.

-1890 - Wilhelm Maybach built the first four-cylinder, four-stroke engine.

-Felix Heinrich Wankel, Hon. DEng (August 13, 1902 � October 9, 1991) was a German mechanical engineer and the inventor of the Wankel engine.

Wankel engine, type DKM54 (1957)

Design

-Yuan-Cheng Bert Fung (born 1919) is a modern scientist, regarded as a founding figure of bioengineering and the "Founder of Modern Biomechanics"^[1].

-In 1931 TMM become for the first time a fundamental discipline at the Sorbona University from Paris.

-The birth day of IFToMM (International Federation on Theory of Machines and Mechanisms) is September 27. In 09.27.1969 in Poland at Zakopane, 13 delegates from 13 countries (Australia, Bulgaria, RDG, RFG, Hungary, India, Italy, Poland, Romania, United Kingdom, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Yougoslavia) sign a document to create IFToMM.