• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Automata / Automatons (Mechanical Figures): General / Historical

Has anybody any info. on earlier robots and automan?? Classical Corner in FT covered a few a while back and there was a book reviewed that I meant to buy but promptly lost the title of, that covered lots of them, like the chess-playing Turk etc....

Lovely site though, those illustrations are just the right side of faintly disturbing.
 
I hadn't heard of these before:

Built primarily to help their firm sell watches and mechanical birds into eastern markets The Automatons of Jaquet-Droz are still to this day some of the finest examples of human mechanical problem solving.

Constructed in the years around 1773 by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, His son Henri-Louis and associate Fredrik Leschot. The three surviving dolls still amaze visitors to the art and history museum in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

The simplest of the dolls takes the form of a young boy who draws pictures of the then crowned heads of Europe, George and Charlotte of England and Louis the XV of France. The doll also draws a picture of a Cupid riding in a cart pulled by a butterfly as well as a picture of a dog. This doll works on a simple system of cams making it the ancestor of the computer plotter.

His brother, quite a bit more complex, can write any 40 character sequence of the Roman alphabet. As far as functionality is concerned this little fellow is the worlds oldest computer. He has an input device, which is used to set tabs on what could be considered short term programmable memory, a stack of 40 cams (some upper case letters are not present) represents the read only program. A quill pen is the output device. All of which predates Charles Babage by about 50 years. Babage himself was familiar with dolls of this type and writes about them in his autobiography. he may have actually seen these dolls while visiting Switzerland.

The sister, which is my favorite, actually plays a small pipe organ. This is done so that the tips of each finger press the appropriate key. This is difficult to do even with computers.

These dolls are so complex that the word *Android* was created to describe them. While they do not actually mimic human process, the dolls are quite lifelike. There is also evidence that Marry Shelly, who created Frankenstein saw the dolls just prior to writing that fateful tale.
Click to expand...
http://www.delectra.com/jporter/jspMDA.html

A forum and FAQ:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/250823

A few colour pictures:
http://www.gimpnet.com/adn/ngallery/automat1.html
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
There is also evidence that Marry Shelly, who created Frankenstein saw the dolls just prior to writing that fateful tale.
Click to expand...

In the film Gothic about the writing of Frankenstein and that 'faithful' night in the Villa Diodati in 1816 Byron actually possesses an automaton of a stripping woman that he shows to Shelly. Unfortunately it appears to be an invention of that film as I can't find any evidence he ever did possess one and may just be a nod to the story quoted above.
 
Anyone else ever see a silver swan automoton that would "eat" fish and swing its head around? I remember a program from the early 90's that would showcase odd/fascinating places and things and this was on there.

People are still fascinated by automotons, only now, they're called "audio-animatronics".
Walt Disney brought the artform back in the 1950's using hydrolics/pneumatics and synchronized sound, starting with the very simple Tiki Birds, then moving on to an incredibly lifelike Abraham Lincoln. Current AA's are in their 3rd generation and have the ability to walk up steps, or have individual articulated finger joints and are capable of very realistic smooth movements (witness the Wicked Witch of the West from the Great Movie Ride, built in 1989, but still fools people into thinking its an actress!). There are even some large scale AA's like the carnotaurus dinosaur at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom in Florida, or the giant underground lava monster from Journey to the Center of the Earth at Tokyo's DisneySea theme park.
see it in action:
http://www.laughingplace.com/files/tdsjourney/video/clip2-lan.mpg
(1.5 meg movie file)

Recently, a company has begun producing at-home animatronic heads for... well, for whatever twisted purpose you like. The monkey head is particularly disturbing and can track your movement around a room!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1749442,00.asp

(yes, in case you were wondering, my avatar and quote both come from Disney's Haunted Mansion)
 
I saw the Bowes Museum Swan as a child. It was in the entrance hall and performed at specified times.

It was entrancing. I remember the water being made of long glass rods which rotated on their axes to give the shimmering impression. I had forgotton that it seems to catch a fish!

A very lovely thing.

M
 
I saw the swan on a program called "would you believe it?" a few years back.
All sorts of interesting, odd and grotesque things...
 
Some wonderful stuff here, especially the silver swan! I grew up in Blackpool and as a child would often visit the Tower with my family. During the 1950's - early 60's the Tower held a collection of coin-in-the-slot automata - does anyone remember these and/or know what happened to them? They were mainly small glass cabinets housing scenes that moved once an (old) penny had been inserted. I remember a "Haunted House" one as quite disturbing but this was through the eyes of a five year old child! They were works of art, though, I'm sure - I'd love to see them again.
 
Automata clearly came first in mechanised creations. Its grandson, Animatronics, was insanely hard to learn when I was an amateur special F/X artist in the late 80's early 90's .. those tricks were very closely guarded at the time so I still don't know most of them but it was all robotics .. making bits of rubber move around convincingly with wires, servos and cables etc inside ..
 
Not something to be cured with Preparation H.

The Wikipedia entry for automata has some very intriguing accounts from the ancient world of robotic men somewhat more elaborate than mere dolls....

"In ancient China, a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork (Wade-Giles spelling):

The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.[12]"
 
Even taking into account exaggeration and mis-recorded detail, one thing that appears in most of the accounts of human or animal/bird automatons in the ancient world reported in the Wikipedia entry is that they nearly all include them singing/roaring/talking or what have you. This fascinates me, as it implies some form of recording surely...mere mechanical movements of metal and wood or whatever might make musical sounds..but bird song? Human speech?
 
I've every expectation that in the same way as the Antikytheria mechanism pre-empted 14th/15th century clockwork by a millennium, I would consider accepting assertions that Ancient Chinese and classical Greek inventors were able to pre-empt musical boxes and player-piano musical automata.

The well-established technique of using horns as accoustic amplifiers for stringed instruments, coupled with bellows and the use of chordal trunnion strings (pulled and slide-fretted, not plucked) could've made some highly-convincing roars and calls.

Saw blades (as well as being bow-played under compression, along the back) or other toothed blades can also be auto-played with trundle-wheels along the teeth, to create disembodied laughing and growling.

Ingenuity knew no bounds, back in in the pre-Christian, pre-internet, pre-present era.
 
Don't cuckoo clocks work with a tiny bellows?
Isn't there that little tin with a diaphragm inside and when you turn it upside down it sounds like a cow mooing?
And there's a bird whistle that when you put water in it makes a delightful chirrup.

And let's not forget the sounds an old organ can produce. (Ooooer)

Edit... a roar can be produced by pulling some resin-coated string through a hole in a cardbox box or a drum.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Creating-a-Lions-Roar/
 
Last edited:
From tin men to Terminator: Robots reviewed
February 8, 2017 | 5:51 pm | Posted by Barbara Kiser Posted on behalf of Celeste Biever


Animatronic baby, John Nolan Studio.

PLASTIQUES PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF THE SCIENCE MUSEUM

The baby’s skin looks soft and its hair downy as it blinks and stretches out its arms. Then I spot the plug and mass of wires protruding from its back.

Brainchild of London-based John Nolan Studio, the animatronic infant is a fitting start to the blockbuster Robots exhibition at London’s Science Museum. Its impressively comprehensive array of automatons is a reminder both of machine-like qualities in people, and of the challenges of imitating humans in mechanical form.

Historical automata crowd the first section, ‘Marvel’. A small, hand-carved mechanical monk from the 1560s was crafted to walk and beat its breast in contrition. Is this really a robot? Yes, says chief curator Ben Russell, who has long pondered this question: “A robot is a machine that looks life-like or behaves in life-like ways.” This summary proved a tough but useful curatorial filter, he says.


Clockwork ‘Silver Swan’, John Joseph Merlin, 1773.

Another highlight here is the Silver Swan, a life-sized clockwork bird on a glass pool crafted in 1773 by Belgian inventor and instrument-maker John Joseph Merlin, whose work inspired Charles Babbage. (The automaton is on loan from the Bowes Museum in county Durham, northern England.) In his 1869 travelogue The Innocents Abroad, American writer Mark Twain noted the avian wonder ‘swimming’ as “comfortably and unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop”. The lifelike movements of its serpentine neck still impress – but visitors beware: to preserve the delicate machine, it will only play at certain times. ...

http://blogs.nature.com/aviewfromthebridge/2017/02/08/robots-the-long-dream/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's an iPlayer programme about Automata.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0229pbp/mechanical-marvels-clockwork-dreams

Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life.

The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today.

As well as the automata, Simon explains in great detail the world in which they were made - the hardship of the workers who built them, their role in global trade and the industrial revolution and the eccentric designers who dreamt them up. Finally, Simon reveals that these long-forgotten marriages of art and engineering are actually the ancestors of many of our most-loved modern technologies, from recorded music to the cinema and much of the digital world.

First shown: 9pm 3 Jun 2013
60 minutes.
 
Anonymous said:
Has anybody any info. on earlier robots and automan?? Classical Corner in FT covered a few a while back and there was a book reviewed that I meant to buy but promptly lost the title of, that covered lots of them, like the chess-playing Turk etc....
Click to expand...

We have these threads addressing early game-playing 'automata':

'The Turk': Chess Playing Automaton
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-turk-chess-playing-automaton.5265/

Psycho (Maskelyne's Whist-Playing Automaton)
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...nes-whist-playing-automaton.5391/#post-601370
 
JaneD said:
the Bowes museum Swan.
Click to expand...

I saw that many times as a child! wonderful item. I don't know if they still run it? back then it ran three times a day!

My favourite part was the water made of glass, and the fish in the beak which swivelled to appear as if the swan had plucked it from the stream :)
 
Frideswide said:
I saw that many times as a child! wonderful item. I don't know if they still run it? back then it ran three times a day!

My favourite part was the water made of glass, and the fish in the beak which swivelled to appear as if the swan had plucked it from the stream :)
Click to expand...
They run it once a day at 2pm - or they did when it was open last. It’s fab. Yes the fish is a master stroke. Btw there is an automata elephant at Waddesdon manor which is also fab (but not quite as fab as the swan) when you wind it up its eyes and tail move
 
Frideswide said:
I saw that many times as a child! wonderful item. I don't know if they still run it? back then it ran three times a day!

My favourite part was the water made of glass, and the fish in the beak which swivelled to appear as if the swan had plucked it from the stream :)
Click to expand...

Try this one, which l’ve seen in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg:


The Peacock Clock.

maximus otter
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top