A Review of Early Muslim Control Engineering

During the period of Islamic-Arabic extraordinary activity in Science and Technology (9th-13th century), there are some recorded contributions to the area of Automatic Control mainly in the development of water clocks using float valve regulators, different level controls using float valves or combination of syphons and the development of On-Off control. In this short survey, Professor Dr Mohamed Mansour, former Professor of Control Engineering At ETH Zürich surveys the subject by investigating the words of Banu Musa, Al-Muradi, Ridhwan al-Sa’ati and Al-Jazari.