Best Automata
Hero of Alexandria (also known as Heron) was a Greek mathematician and engineer active in Alexandria during the Roman period, most likely in the first century AD. He described the aeolipile, a simple steam-powered reaction turbine, and authored treatises on pneumatics, automata, mechanics, and geome...
Dana Scott is an American logician and computer scientist whose work established the formal mathematical foundations of programming languages. He collaborated with Christopher Strachey to develop denotational semantics, which defines program meaning through mathematical functions, and later construc...
Michael Rabin is an Israeli computer scientist and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has made foundational contributions to theoretical computer science. He co-developed the theory of nondeterministic finite automata with Dana Scott, providing a fundamental mathematical model for p...
Jacques de Vaucanson was an 18th-century French inventor and engineer renowned for creating highly sophisticated mechanical automata. In 1738, he introduced his mechanical flute player to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, a device that successfully mimicked human breathing and finger movements to pl...
Al-Jazari was an Arab engineer and inventor of the 12th and 13th centuries. He created detailed designs for a remarkable collection of mechanical devices, primarily documented in his 1206 manuscript. These included automated water clocks, musical automata, and other complex machines representing ear...
The Messina Cathedral clock tower stands beside the cathedral in Messina, Sicily, and contains a large astronomical clock built by the Strasbourg firm Ungerer. Inaugurated in 1933, the mechanism combines clock and calendar displays with gilded automata representing religious and civic subjects. Its...
The Männleinlaufen is a mechanical clock and automaton mounted on the Frauenkirche overlooking the Hauptmarkt in Nuremberg, Germany. Installed in the early sixteenth century, it commemorates the Golden Bull of 1356: at noon, figures representing the seven prince-electors process before a seated Empe...
Mehryar Mohri is an Iranian-American computer scientist and professor at New York University, also affiliated with Google Research. He is known for foundational work applying weighted automata and finite-state transducers to speech recognition and natural language processing. His research in learnin...
