![]() The earliest examples of known automatons appeared in the Islamic world in the 12th and 13th centuries. Some of the greatest inventors in history, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, have contributed to our fascination with these fabulous creations: The Al-Jazari automatons But their predecessors, the automatons (from the Greek automata, or “mechanical device that works by itself”), have been the object of desire and fascination since antiquity. The idea was introduced in 1921 by the Czech writer Karel Capek in his work R.U.R to designate a machine that performs tasks in place of man. The video below is in French, but you can still see the automata in action.The concept of robot is relatively recent. Together, the three are considered masterpieces of automation. She turns her head and lowers her eyes, leans forward and straightens up as she plays. She actually presses the keys with her fingers, and other movements make her appear to breathe. He draws a dog, a pair of royal lovers, a portrait of Louis XV and a picture of Cupid in a chariot.įinally, there is the musician: a lovely young organ player. Unlike the writer, these cannot be changed. The draughtsman is pre-programmed with four different images. He also dips his pen in an ink well, shakes the excess ink from his quill and his eyes follow the movement of the pen as he writes. The writer can write with a pen custom text up to 40 characters long since this text had to be adjusted letter by letter, it wasn't changed very often. Although the Jacquet-Droz family was renowned for its automata, "the Jacquet-Droz automata" refers to three dolls created by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, his son Henri-Louis and watchmaker Jean-Frédéric Leschot between 17: the writer, the musician and the draughtsman, respectively.Įach of these dolls performs a different automated task, running on cams. ![]() This was not the case with the Jacquet-Droz automata, which are the bona-fide real deal. Jacquet-Droz family, Jean-Frédéric Leschot ![]() The whistling mechanism has been constructed to replicate birdsong as closely as possible, and the result is stunning. When you pull the trigger, a tiny, feathered mechanical bird pops out of the barrel and tweets a song, flapping its wings and "dancing". ![]() The pistols - which sold for US$5,866,499 at Christies in 2011 - are crafted of gold, enamel, pearl, diamonds, brass and agate. Rich people have always liked strange toys - and, while we can appreciate the loveliness and extraordinary craftsmanship of these circa-1820 "singing bird pistols" by the Brothers Rochat, there's a small voice saying "But what is it for?" Nevertheless, they're ingenious bits of clockwork, and the only known matching pair in existence. In fact, for centuries, humans had been entertaining a fascination with the mechanical - and building magnificent and ingenious objects of clockwork, gears and weights that mimicked the appearance and movements of life. ![]() The word " robot" didn't make an appearance in our vocabulary until the 1920s, but, long before we had a word for them, we knew what they were. Welcome to the world of 17th-century automata: breathtaking devices of clockwork and porcelain, gold and silk, robots before the word was ever spoken. ![]()
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