OIL LAMPS OF BANU MUSA

One of the most important topics in the field of engineering is automatic control of industrial systems with feedback or without it. Most of the university teachers and students think that the subject of automatic control is relatively a young branch of engineering.In this paper it is shown that the idea of automatic control has a long background in the history of engineering, and one of the most prominent Iranian engineers is the van of automatic control.With the aim of familiarizing teachers and students with the background of automatic control engineering, this paper introduces four oil lamps with the automatic control invented by Banu Musa and are described in his book entitled Keta-al-Heyal. With a reference to the history of automatic control of engineering, three of the four Banu Musa’s oil lamps are briefly introduced. As an example, oil lamp with self-regulated wick is described in detail. It is proposed that by using Banu Musa models of auto-control designs the subject of automatic control can be better taught.