Part 2

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 (Fig. 14) 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.

It is more than probable that Hero was not himself the inventor of all the devices he describes, it is possible that many are due to Ctesibius whose pupil he was, and it is clear, from his own writings, that he was acquainted with the writings of Philo and of Archimedes. He was, however, the first to _describe_ these inventions, and therefore it is only fair, in the absence of other evidence, to give him the credit.

There can be no doubt that puppets or dolls are of great antiquity; they were common with the ancient Egyptians, and here (Fig. 15) 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 next figure is an illustration of what I suppose must be the very earliest moving doll in existence to-day; it is now in the Museum van Oudheden at Leyden, and is a toy which belonged to a child of ancient Egypt; I have constructed a model of it by which you will see that it is worked by pulling a thread; and here I must make a passing reference to the notorious phallic figures which were carried in procession during the festivals of Osiris and in the Dionysia of Bacchus. We are told by Lucian[7] that “Among the several sorts of Phalloi which the Greeks set up in honour of Bacchus there were figures of dwarfs with moving parts actuated by strings, which were called ‘Νευροσπαστα’.” In so eminently proper a community as We are in Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, I am unable to describe these figures in detail, or to exhibit them in action, but those who are _curious_ as well as _odd_ will find abundant evidence of them in the writings of Herodotus, of Lucian, of Pausanias, of Athenæus, of Plutarch, of Gyraldus, and of several other writers.

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.

From the time of Hero I have found nothing worth recording for nearly a thousand years, until the time of Charlemagne, to which monarch was presented by the Kalif Haroun al Raschid a most elaborate water clock. In front of the dial, and corresponding to the hours, were twelve little doors, and the time was shown by these doors opening one after another, each releasing a little brass ball which fell upon a small bell; after all the hours had struck, that is, at noon, another door opened, twelve little knights rode out, and, after careering round the dial, they closed the doors and retired. The eminent mechanician Gerbert who occupied the papal chair in A.D. 1000, reigning under the name of Silvester II., is said to have constructed a speaking head of brass, and was in consequence arrested for practising magic, and Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century, spent, according to his own account, thirty years in the construction of an automaton of clay which not only spoke but walked and answered questions and solved problems submitted to it. It is recorded that his pupil, the celebrated St. Thomas Aquinas was so horrified when he saw and heard this figure that (believing it to be the work of his Satanic Majesty), he broke it into pieces, when Albertus cried aloud: “Sic periit opus triginta annorum.” I deeply regret this mischievous act of St. Thomas Aquinas, because it renders it impossible for me to show it to the Brethren and our guests this evening. Roger Bacon also is said to have made a similar automaton.

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.

Mention might here be made of the colossal figure of Amunoph III. on the plain of Thebes, and which is commonly known as the “vocal Memnon,” of which a photograph is now before you; it is the more eastern of the two Colossi, and, when the first rays of the morning sun fell on it, it emitted a sound which has been described as similar to that of the snapping of a harp string, but it has been silent since the time of Severus. It is a seated figure nearly sixty feet in height, and is in no sense an automaton, but I mention it here because it was believed to utter sentences which the ancient priests of Egypt alone, for the very best of reasons, knew how to interpret.

In more modern times we hear of the eminent Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester (who married the sister of Oliver Cromwell, and who may be regarded as the founder of the Royal Society), 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,” (a copy of which I have here) 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 Müller, of Königsberg, 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. Müller 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.

It is a remarkable fact that not one of Müller’s contemporaries, who often refer to this learned man and to his great accomplishments, makes any reference to these pieces of mechanism, and Peter Ramus was not born until forty-five years after, but they are referred to by Baptista Porta, Gassendi, Lana, and Bishop Wilkins, who, however, differ considerably in their dates. Strada, in his “De Bello Belgico,” tells us that the Emperor Charles V., after his abdication in 1556, took a most keen interest in automata of various kinds, and he employed a very skilful artist, Janellus Turrianus, of Cremona, to construct them for him. This mechanic made figures of horsemen which marched along the table, played upon flutes and drums, and entered into combat with one another, and he exhibited wooden birds which flew up to their nests (they must, I think, have been _wood pigeons_). This Janellus Turrianus was evidently a very wonderful man, for he made a corn-mill so small that it could be concealed in a glove, and yet could grind in a day as much corn as would supply eight men with food. I never saw this machine myself, and I cannot help thinking that either the glove must have been rather large or the appetites of the men must have been rather small. Apart, however, from the exaggeration of the genius of this man, he was undoubtedly a most skilful mechanician, for he repaired and considerably improved a most complex clock constructed by Wilhelm Zelandin for the city of Padua, in which moving figures and astronomical phenomena were represented.

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.

The great clock at Lyons, the work of Lippius of Basle, is hardly less interesting. Besides exhibiting mechanical illustrations of astronomical phenomena, a complete cycle of operations representing scriptural events is performed. Before each hour strikes a cock comes forward and crows three times, after which angels appear, who by striking upon a gamut of bells ring out the air of a hymn, and this is followed by a moving group illustrating the Annunciation of the Virgin and the descent of a dove, and the cycle is completed by the striking of the hour.

In the Royal Palace of Versailles there was a very curious clock, the work of Martinot, a clockmaker of the seventeenth century. Before it struck the hour two cocks flapped their wings and crowed alternately, then two little doors opened and a figure came out of each carrying a gong which was struck by armed guards with their clubs. These figures having retired, a door in the centre opened and an equestrian figure of Louis XIV. came out. At the same time a group of clouds separated giving passage to the figure of Fame which hovered over the head of the king. An air was then chimed upon the bells, after which the figures retired; the two guards raised their clubs and the hour was struck.

In the year 1788, Agostino Ramelli published his important work “_Le diverse ed artificiose Machine_,” and I have reproduced some of the plates in that beautiful book, a copy of which is before me (one of which, Fig. 17, see _Frontispiece_, I have chosen to adorn the menu which is on the table, for no other reason than that it appeared especially appropriate as figurative of the desire of your humble Mechanick to be for ever associated with Ye Sette of Odd Volumes).

In the next illustration (Fig. 18) 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 mediæval 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 (a copy of which I have here), describes and illustrates several automata which depend for their action upon magnetism. Here, for example (Fig. 19), 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 Æolipiles 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 (C and D) which the heads inclose, are shown separately, the nozzle of one pointing upwards, while that of the other has a downward direction.

When Kircher’s book was published Louis XIV. was a child, and it is stated by several authorities that both Père Truchet and Camus made the most elaborate automata for his boyish amusement, but as Louis XIV. was forty years old when Truchet came of age and fifty-five When Camus was twenty-one it is difficult to reconcile these statements with facts.

Putting aside, however, the question of the period of life when the king amused himself with such things, it is well authenticated that Père 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.[8]

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.

I now come to what are, if not the most extraordinary _pieces of mechanism_, certainly the most wonderful _automata_ the world has ever seen. In the year 1738 that great mechanical genius M. Vaucanson, a member of the Académie des Sciences exhibited at Paris three very remarkable automata which were, a flute-player, a figure which played the shepherd’s pipe of Provence and the drum, and an artificial duck. The first of these, the flute-player, he described in a Memoir read before the Académie on the 30th of April, 1738. This automaton was a wooden figure six feet six inches in height, representing a well-known antique statue of a Faun, sitting on a rock and mounted on a square pedestal four feet six from the ground. It was capable of performing twelve pieces of music on a German flute, the instrument being really played as a man would play it by blowing across the embouchure and projecting the air with variable force by movable lips, which imitated in their action those of a living player, employing a tongue to regulate the opening, and producing the notes by the tips of the fingers closing or opening the holes.

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 (their inlet valves being mechanically opened and closed so as to make them silent in action). 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 (unless he be an Odd Volume) will agree with me is a very difficult one to acquire.

The barrel worked upon a screwed bearing (similar to that of the cylinder of a phonograph), 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 Académie 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.

The picture on the screen (Fig. 21) is a photographic reproduction of the plate attached to M. Vaucanson’s Memoir (a somewhat rare little tract published in 1738) in which his three automata are shown, and I hold in my hand a copy of the translation by Dr. Desaguliers, published in London in 1742, which, the imprint tells us, was “_sold at the long room at the Opera House in the Haymarket, where the mechanical figures are to be seen at 1, 2, 5, and 7 o’clock in the afternoon_.”