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Transcriber's Notes:

PRIVATELY PRINTED OPUSCULA.

AUTOMATA OLD AND NEW.

Automata Old and New

BY CONRAD WILLIAM COOKE, M.INST.E.E.

TO THEIR ODDSHIPS CHARLES HOLME, F.L.S. , PRESIDENT, 1890.

GEORGE CHARLES HAIT?, R.B.A., F.L.S. , PRESIDENT, 1891.

AND

WILLIAM MURRELL, M.D. , PRESIDENT, 1892.

AUTOMATA OLD AND NEW.

The word Automaton would in its strictest and most comprehensive sense include all apparently self-moving machines or devices which contain within themselves their own motive power, and in this sense such machines as clocks and watches, and even locomotives and steamships might be included. I shall, however, throughout this paper limit myself to the more restricted and more ordinarily accepted meaning of the term, namely, such self-moving machines as are made either in the forms of men or of animals, or by which animal motions and functions are more or less imitated.

As mechanics, next to mathematics and astronomy, is the most ancient of sciences, and as the scientific knowledge of the ancients was ever shrouded in mystery to conceal it from the eyes of the vulgar, and to confer upon the initiated power and profit by working on the credulity of the ignorant, it was but only to be expected that mechanical science should be early applied in the ancient mysteries by which the philosophers and the priests of antiquity maintained so much of their supremacy.

One of the very earliest allusions to mysterious self-moving machines is to be found in the eighteenth book of the "Iliad," wherein we are told of Vulcan that

"Full twenty tripods for his hall he fram'd, That, placed on living wheels of massy gold instinct with spirit roll'd From place to place, around the bless'd abodes, Self-mov'd, obedient to the beck of gods."

Several others of the ancient poets besides Homer have sung about the wonderful mechanical devices of Vulcan, among which were golden statues, the semblances of living maids, which not only appeared to be endued with life, but which walked by his side and bore him up as he walked. Aristotle also refers to self-moving tripods, and Philostratus states that Appolonius of Tyana saw similar pieces of mechanism among the Brahmins of India; but this must have been nearly four hundred years after Aristotle wrote, and some nine hundred years after the time of Homer.

Then again we hear of Daedalus making self-moving statues, small figures of the gods, of which Plato in his "Menos" says that unless they were fastened they would of themselves run away, and he puts this into the mouth of Socrates, who uses it as a figure to illustrate the importance of not only acquiring but of holding fast scientific truth that it may not fly away from us. Aristotle in referring to these statues affirms that Daedalus accomplished his object by putting into them quicksilver, but the learned mechanician Bishop Wilkins points out that "this would have been too grosse a way for so excellent an artificer; it is more likely that he did it with wheels and weights." We are moreover told by Macrobius that in the temple of Hieropolis at Antium there were moving statues.

A contemporary of Plato and, it is said, his master, was Archytas of Tarentum, the celebrated Pythagorean philosopher, mathematician, cosmographer, and mechanician, to whom is accredited the invention of the screw and of the crane. Archytas is said to have constructed of wood a pigeon that could fly about, but which could not rise again after it had settled; and Aulus Gellius , tells us in his "Noctes Atticae," that "many men of eminence among the Greeks, and Favonius, the philosopher, a most vigilant searcher into antiquity, have in a most positive manner assured us that the model of a pigeon, formed in wood by Archytas, was so contrived as by a certain mechanical art and power to fly; so nicely was it balanced by weights and put in motion by hidden and inclosed air. In a matter so very improbable we may be allowed to add the words of Favonius himself: 'Archytas of Tarentum, being both a philosopher and skilled in mechanics, made a wooden pigeon which had it ever settled would not have risen again till now.'" And I am bound to admit that in this point I agree with him.

The first illustration I shall show you from Hero's work is a bird which, by means of a stream of water, is caused to pipe or sing. This little automaton consists of a pedestal , which is in reality a water-tight tank fitted with a funnel , the stem of which reaches nearly to the bottom; to the right of this there is a little bush on which sits a bird, and a tube leads up from the roof of the tank and terminates in a little whistle, the end of which dips into a cup containing water. When water is poured into the funnel, the air in the tank is driven out through the tube and whistle and, bubbling through the water, sounds as if the bird were singing. Thus the well-known bubbling bird-whistle dates back to a century and a half before the Christian era or earlier.

The next illustration shows a more elaborate arrangement, in which there are four small birds being watched by an owl; the moment the owl's back is turned the birds begin to sing, but cease as soon as he turns towards them. In this apparatus the birds are made to sing in precisely the same way as in the last illustration, namely, by the displacement by water of the air in the tank, but as soon as the level of the water in the tank reaches the top of a concentric siphon the water is discharged into a bucket, the birds cease to sing, and the bucket, owing to its increased weight, lifts the counterbalance weight , and in doing so turns the spindle which supports the owl . When the bucket is full its contents are discharged by a small siphon within it and it is drawn up by the weight the owl turns its back to the birds, and the cycle of operations is repeated.

In the next figure a still more elaborate effect is produced. Here is a pedestal upon which are four little bushes each having a bird sitting in its branches; when water is allowed to flow into the funnel the first bird begins to whistle, and after a few minutes leaves off, when the next bird begins, and when he has finished the third bird sings, after a little time the fourth takes up the song, and when he has finished the first begins again, and so on as long as water is flowing into the funnel. These effects are produced in the simplest possible manner, by a combination of as many superposed tanks as there are birds to sing, the one emptying into the other by siphons. The illustration explains itself.

We now come to a different class, in which heat is employed for obtaining an increase of air pressure whereby certain automatic actions are produced. Here we have a priest and priestess officiating at an altar; and the effect of lighting the fire thereon is to cause the two figures to pour libations onto the sacrifice. In this case the altar consists of an air-tight metallic box in communication, by means of a central tube, with a larger box forming the pedestal. Into this lower reservoir is poured the wine or other liquid through the hole marked M. When the fire is lighted the air in the altar is expanded, and pressing on the surface of the liquid in the pedestal, forces some of it through the tubes which pass through the body and down the right arm of each figure. In the next view we see how this principle was employed by Hero for the opening of the doors of a temple, the tradition being that when a sacrifice was offered on her altar the goddess Isis showed her invisible presence by throwing open the doors of her sanctuary. In this case the altar consists of an air-tight metallic box communicating by means of a tube with a spherical vessel partly filled with water. When the altar becomes hot the contained air is expanded, thereby increasing the pressure on the surface of the water, some of which is therefore forced through the bent tube into the bucket , which descends by its increased weight, thereby unwinding the cords from the two spindles that perform the function of hinges to the temple doors, at the same time winding up the counterweight on the left. When the fire goes out the altar cools, assuming its ordinary atmospheric pressure, and the water in the bucket is forced back into the vessel , and the weight counterbalancing the empty bucket, closes again the doors.

But Bate was not the only pirate of Hero's work; a few years after Bate had written, that is, in 1659, there appeared another curious book by Isaak de Caus, upon Water Works, and in that book we find our old friend the owl keeping the small birds in order, the only difference being that this is a more indulgent owl, or perhaps he is a teacher of singing, for in this case the birds sing while he is looking at them and cease the moment he turns his back.

Another pretty conceit of Hero's is shown in Fig. 8, in which there is a bird which not only makes a noise but at certain times will drink any liquid which is presented to it. The flow of water being intermittent, the cistern forming the pedestal is alternately filled and emptied. While it is being filled the air escapes through a whistle and causes the bird to sing, and when it is being emptied, by means of a siphon, a partial vacuum is produced and liquid presented to it is drawn up through the beak.

The next automaton from Hero is very ingenious and interesting, because it combines hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical actions. Here is a figure of Hercules armed with a bow and arrow; there is also a dragon under an apple tree, from which an apple has fallen to the ground. Upon the apple being lifted, Hercules discharges the arrow at the dragon, which begins to hiss and continues to do so for some minutes. In this apparatus there is a double tank having a connection by a valve , which is attached by a cord to the apple , another cord, passing over a pulley, connects the apple with a trigger in the right hand of Hercules. Upon lifting the apple the trigger is released, and at the same time the valve is opened, allowing the water in the upper tank to flow into the lower, by which means air is forced through a tube into the dragon's mouth, producing a hissing sound, and this will continue until the upper tank is empty. Here is Bate's version of the same device, but very inferior to that from which it was taken.

This figure illustrates a very elaborate automaton, representing one of Vulcan's workshops in which you will see a smith forging a piece of iron, and assisted by three hammermen. The smith first puts his iron in the fire and then lays it on the anvil when the hammermen begin to hammer it; then they leave off, and the smith turns round again to the fire. All these effects are produced by the machinery below the floor, and shown in the illustration. A shaft is driven by means of a water-wheel on the right, and on this shaft are projections or cambs which, by striking the ends of three levers , pull the chains by which the arms of the hammermen are lifted. While this is going on the bucket is slowly filling, and when a sufficient weight of water has accumulated in it, it lifts the counterweight , and, in doing so, rotates the vertical shaft to which the figure of the smith is attached, turning him round to the fire, and at the same time, by swinging round the conduit pipe , cuts off the water from the wheel, and the hammermen cease to work until the smith is again ready for them. I think you will agree with me that this machine offers very fair evidence of the mechanical ingenuity of a man who flourished more than 2,000 years ago.

The last automaton of Hero to which I shall refer is perhaps the most ingenious of all, and it is one that those who were present when Brother Manning gave us his discourse on Robert-Houdin have already seen, I mean the little figure whose head cannot be severed from his body no matter how many times a knife be passed through his neck. Thanks to the kindness of my good friend I can show you one of these beautiful figures presented to me by him, and it will, I think, be of interest to him and to you to know that this device was invented nearly 2,000 years before Robert-Houdin was born, and a description of it with accompanying figures may be seen to-day in the British Museum in a Greek manuscript of the fifteenth century, which is a copy of Hero's ???????????, and I now throw on the screen a carefully made facsimile of the figure given in that manuscript .

I have now done with Hero of Alexandria, but, before passing to another period, I cannot resist showing you an invention of his which although not an automaton is too interesting in the light of modern civilization to omit. This is Hero's automatic penny-in-the-slot machine for giving a drink in exchange for a coin. If a "coin of five drachmas" be dropped into the slot it falls on a little plate at the end of a lever thereby opening a valve and allowing the liquid to escape through the nozzle.

There can be no doubt that puppets or dolls are of great antiquity; they were common with the ancient Egyptians, and here is an illustration of a doll from Thebes which is now in the British Museum, and you will notice that the head is covered with holes which served for the insertion of strings of beads to represent hair. Puppets were also in use with the Greeks, and afterwards found their way to Rome, and it is an interesting fact that, about three years ago, while the ground was being excavated for the foundations of the new Palais de Justice at Rome, at a spot not far from the Vatican, a stone coffin was discovered containing the skeleton of a young girl of about fifteen years of age, who had teeth of great beauty, and in her arms was a beautifully modelled wooden doll with jointed limbs which was dressed in a rich material. The interment had taken place in the time of Pliny, who refers to the child, and mentions that she was engaged to be married, a statement which is supported by the fact that on one of the fingers is a doubly-linked gold ring, besides other ornaments. The coffin, with its contents as they were found, is now in the museum in the Capitol and it is, I believe, the only instance of an ancient doll having been found in Rome, although moving puppets or marionettes were known in very ancient times, and are referred to by Xenophon, Aristotle, Horace, Antoninus, Galen, and Aulus Gellius.

The earliest forms of moving puppets were set in motion by strings pulled by hand which were afterwards supplanted by cylinders turned by a winch, and the transition from that arrangement to the use of weights and springs was inevitable and was only a question of time.

Records of speaking androides or talking heads reach us from very early times. At Lesbos there was a head of Orpheus which delivered oracles and predicted to Cyrus his violent death, and we have it on the authority of Philostratus that the head was so celebrated for its oracular utterances, among both the Greeks and the Persians that even Apollo became jealous of its fame.

Then again the mighty Odin had among his mystical possessions a speaking head, believed to be that of Minos, which Odin preserved by encasing it in solid gold. He is said to have consulted it on all occasions, and its utterances were regarded as oracles.

In more modern times we hear of the eminent Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester , experimenting upon the transmission of sound; and Evelyn, in his "Diary," writing on the 13th of July, 1654, says, "We all dined at that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins's, at Wadham College. He had contrived a hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words"; and in his "Mathematicall Magick," which was published in 1648, Wilkins refers to the speaking figures of the ancients.

A contemporary of Wilkins was the celebrated Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, who in his "Century of Inventions" gives as his 88th device: "How to make a Brazen or Stone-head in the midst of a great Field or Garden, so artificial and natural that though a man speak never so softly, and even whispers into the eare thereof, it will presently open its mouth, and resolve the Question in French, Latine, Welsh, Irish or English, in good terms uttering it out of his mouth, and then shut it untill the next Question be asked."--But, unhappily, he does not tell us how it may be done.

The great period for the construction of automata began at the close of the fourteenth century, and reached its climax at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. One of the earliest mechanicians who devoted his skill to automata was Johann M?ller, of K?nigsberg, commonly known as Regiomontanus. This eminent mathematician and astronomer made of iron a fly which is said to have left his hand and, after flying to each of the guests in the room, returned to its master, alighting on his hand. M?ller made also a still more wonderful machine; this was an artificial eagle which, on the authority of Peter Ramus, flew to meet the Emperor Maximilian on his entry into Nuremberg on the 7th of June, 1470. After soaring aloft in the air, Ramus informs us, the eagle met the emperor at some distance from the city, then returned and perched upon the city gate where it awaited the emperor's approach. On his arrival the bird stretched out its wings and saluted him by bowing.

The addition to clocks of automata set in motion by the train was a very favourite occupation of the horologists of the sixteenth century. Of these clocks perhaps the most celebrated was that at Strasburg, which was constructed by Conrad Dasypodius. This clock was finished in the year 1573. Apart from its interesting representations of various celestial phenomena, it is remarkable for the number of moving figures which embellish it, and which perform various functions; above the dial the four ages of man are represented by symbolical figures; one passes every quarter of an hour, marking the quarter by striking on a bell; the first quarter is struck by a child with an apple, the second by a youth with an arrow, the third by a man with his staff, and the fourth by an old man with his crutch. After these follows the figure of Death, who, after sounding the hour on a large bell, is expelled by a figure representing Christ, while two small angels are set into motion, the one striking a bell with a sceptre, while the other turns over an hour-glass at the expiration of an hour. There are, besides, various animals, and among them a cock, which flaps its wings and crows just before the clock strikes the hour.

In the next illustration we have a beautiful plate from Ramelli, in which another of Hero's inventions, the group of singing birds is introduced as an ornament in an elaborately furnished room of the period. In this case the water is in the first instance lifted by air being blown in through a pipe by a person concealed behind the wall which in the drawing is broken away to show a mediaeval old buffer engaged in this manly performance.

About the middle of the seventeenth century magnetism began to be employed for producing the effects of magic, and that extraordinary versatile all-round Odd Volume, Athanasius Kircher, in his "Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica," which was published in 1641 , describes and illustrates several automata which depend for their action upon magnetism. Here, for example , he gives a representation of the Dove of Archytas, which by the action of a revolving loadstone, is made to fly around a dial and mark the hours by pointing to the figures on its edge.

Time will not permit me to say as much about this curious old book as its quaintness and terribly bad science deserve, I will only show you one more illustration from it in which a wheel is driven round by two AEolipiles in the form of human heads, which blow out jets of steam against the cellular periphery of the wheel, and in the lower figure the little boilers which the heads inclose, are shown separately, the nozzle of one pointing upwards, while that of the other has a downward direction.

Putting aside, however, the question of the period of life when the king amused himself with such things, it is well authenticated that P?re Truchet, towards the end of the seventeenth century, constructed for him moving pictures which exhibited extraordinary mechanical skill. One of these was the representation of a five-act opera, the scenery of which was automatically changed between the acts. The actors came on and went off, and performed their parts in pantomime. The proscenium was about sixteen inches in breadth and thirteen in height, and the whole of the machinery with the scenery occupied a space only an inch and a quarter in depth.

The account given by Camus of a toy he constructed for this baby king of fifty summers is very wonderful. This elaborate automaton consisted of a small coach drawn by two horses and which contained the figure of a lady with a footman and a page behind. When this little coach was placed on the edge of a suitable table the coachman smacked his whip and the horses immediately started, moving their legs in a most natural manner; when they reached the opposite edge of the table they turned sharply at right angles and proceeded along that edge. As soon as the carriage arrived opposite the king it stopped and both the footman and page got down and opened the door, the lady alighted, and, curtseying to the king, presented a petition. After waiting a few minutes she bowed again to the king and re-entered the carriage, the page got up again behind, the coachman whipped up his horses and drove on, and the footman running after the carriage jumped up into his former place. In the account given by M. de Camus he does not attempt to describe the mechanism of the machine and we have his word alone for the account of its performance.

The great philosopher Descartes formed the theory that all animals are merely automata of a high degree of perfection, and, to prove his notion, he is said to have constructed an automaton in the form of a young girl to which he gave the name of "Ma fille Francine." This figure came unhappily to a watery grave, for during a voyage by sea the captain of the vessel in which it was travelling had the curiosity to open the case in which Francine was packed and, in his astonishment at the movements of the automaton, which were so wonderfully natural, he threw the whole thing overboard, believing it to be the work of the devil.

The mechanical devices in this automaton are so beautiful and so scientifically thought out, that I am only sorry that time will not permit me to describe them in detail, but I will try and make its general principles clear.

Within the pedestal was a train of wheel-work driven by a weight, which set into motion a small shaft on which were six cranks disposed at equal angular distances around it; to these six cranks as many pairs of bellows were attached . The air supplied by these bellows was conveyed to three different wind chests, one loaded with a weight of four pounds, one with a weight of two pounds, and the last having only the weight of its upper board. These wind chests communicated with three little chambers in the body of the figure, and these chambers were all connected with the windpipe which passed up the throat to the cavity of the mouth and terminated in the two movable lips which, between them, formed an orifice that could be protruded or drawn back, and might be further modified by the action of the tongue.

The train of wheels also set into motion a cylinder twenty inches in diameter and two feet six inches long; on this were fixed a number of brass bars of different lengths and thicknesses which in their revolution acted upon a row of fifteen keys or levers; three of these corresponded to the three little wind chambers containing air at different pressures, and, by means of little chains, operated their respective valves. There were seven levers set apart for operating the fingers, their respective chains making bends at the shoulders and elbows of the automaton, and terminated at the wrist in the ends of what I may call metacarpal levers attached to the fingers which were armed at their tips with leather to imitate the flesh of the natural hand.

The motion of the mouth was controlled by four of the levers, one to open the lips so as to give to the wind a greater issue, one to bring them closer together, and so contract the passage, a third to draw the lips backward and away from the flute, and the fourth to push them forward over the edge of the embouchure.

The last of the fifteen levers is the cleverest of all, for it has the power of controlling the tongue, an accomplishment which I think everyone will agree with me is a very difficult one to acquire.

The barrel worked upon a screwed bearing , so that in its revolution all the levers described a spiral line sixty-four inches long, and, as the barrel during the performance made twelve revolutions it followed that the levers passed over a distance of no less than 768 inches in going through its performance of twelve tunes.

In a Memoir read before the Acad?mie des Sciences, M. Vaucanson described the very beautiful methods by which the barrel was set out, and by which the positions of the bars were determined on its surface so as to regulate the supply of air and to control the actions of the fingers, the motion of the lips and the movements of the tongue; and he gave a most interesting analysis of the acoustics of wind instruments; but time will not permit me to make more than this passing reference to them.

After having been wound up, the duck ate and drank, played in the water with his bill, making what is described as a "gugling" sound, rose up on its legs and sat down, flapped its wings, dressed its feathers with its bill, and performed all these different operations without requiring to be touched again.

The third automaton of Vaucanson was a figure that played on a shepherd's pipe with one hand while it beat a drum with the other. The instrument played upon was a little pipe with only three holes, and the different notes were produced by a greater or less pressure of air and a more or less closing of the holes, and every note, no matter how rapid was the succession, had to be modified by the tongue. In this machine there were provided as many different pressures of air as there were notes to be sounded, and the mechanism by which these operations and the fingering of the keys were effected reflects the greatest credit on the memory of this remarkable man.

The Automaton duck of Vaucanson was, to a certain extent, anticipated by the Comte de Gennes, Governor of the Island of Saint Christopher, who, we are told by P?re Labat, constructed a peacock which could walk about and pick up grains of corn, which it swallowed and digested. I have no means of determining whether or not Vaucanson took the idea of his duck from this automaton, but that Vaucanson had imitators there is abundant evidence to prove. In the year 1752, Du Moulin, a silversmith, travelled all over Europe with automata similar to those of Vaucanson, and they were afterwards purchased in Nuremberg, by Bereis, a counsellor of Helmstadt, at whose place they were seen by Beckmann in 1754.

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