What is the secret of the way we write numbers? When did scientists first discover how we see? What is the hidden meaning of the Elephant Clock? Find the answers to these questions and much more when you discover 1001 Inventions.
 

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The centerpiece of the exhibition is a 20-foot replica of Al-Jazari’s “elephant clock,” which dates to the 13th century. Other signature elements include a model of a ninth century flying machine and a scale model of a Chinese junk ship built in the 15th century.

Divided into seven zones, 1001 Inventions includes more than 60 interactive exhibits that delve into discoveries that shaped the home, school, market, hospital, town, world and universe. Visitors will learn when scientists first discovered how we see, how ancient approaches to health influence modern medicine, why East and West share so much architectural heritage, and the origins of everyday items like coffee, toothbrushes, soap, and much more.

1001 Inventions highlights how science has always been a truly global endeavour, by introducing visitors to European, African, Jewish, Arab, Persian, Indian, Chinese and Turkish pioneers who furthered scientific and technological understanding of our world during this thousand-year time frame. Their work is a legacy that has influenced future generations, right up to today. Among them are:

• Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham), the Arab polymath who invented the camera obscura during the 10th century. He was the first to accurately describe the various parts of the eye and give a scientific explanation of the process of vision. Recognised as the “Father of Optics,” he pioneered the Scientific Method still used by scientists and academics today.

• Maimonides (Musa ibn Maymun), the 12th century Jewish physician and philosopher from Cordoba, Spain, who was an acknowledged expert in the subjects of medicine and logic.

• Zheng He (Cheng Ho), the Chinese general of the 14th and 15th centuries who built wooden ships bigger than football fields and voyaged to new worlds – including, some suggest, the Americas.

•  Al-Jazari, the Turkish Master Engineer whose 12th century inventions include the crank mechanisms used in every plane, train and automobile.

• Piri Reis, the Turkish Admiral and cartographer, who created one of the oldest surviving map of the Americas in the 16th century.

• Abbas ibn Firnas, the first man to fly, who launched his flying machine over the Spanish city of Cordoba more than 1000 years before the Wright brothers took to the sky.

• Fatima Al-Fihri, the North African heiress who, in 859 CE, founded the world’s first modern university, which is still in operation today.

• Al-Jahiz, the 8th century African biologist who first developed the theories of evolution and introduced the world to concepts like natural selection, the food chain and animal psychology a thousand years before Darwin was born.

• Al-Khwarizmi, the 9th-century Persian mathematician who invented Algebra.

Admission to 1001 Inventions is free with regular NYSCI admission

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