Banu Musa

The Banu Musa were three Persian brothers, Muhammad, Ahmad and al-Hasan ibn Musa, polymaths and engineers active in ninth-century Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age, where they worked at the House of Wisdom. Their Book of Ingenious Devices described roughly one hundred mechanical inventions, many of them automated trick vessels for pouring and mixing liquids at parties, built using float valves, delay mechanisms and other water-pressure-driven controls that were not surpassed in sophistication until the modern era. Among their devices was what is considered one of the earliest programmable machines, an automatic flute player whose tune could be changed by altering a pinned cylinder.