CHAPTER I.

AUTOMATA.

The present division of the work deals with interesting automata, curious toys, and miscellaneous tricks of an amusing nature. A very large number of devices and tricks of this kind have been published in the “Scientific American” and the “Scientific American Supplement,” and the ones which we select are among those which have been considered as the best. The subject of curious toys and science in toys is very fully treated in the excellent work of Mr. George M. Hopkins, entitled “Experimental Science,” which is published by the publishers of the present work.

AUTOMATON CHESS PLAYERS.

For a very long time the automaton chess player, or “Psycho,” has been celebrated as _the_ automaton, and quite a literature is centered about it. We present two forms of the “Psycho,” one of which depends upon compressed air, and the other upon a small individual who is secreted in the cabinet. We will first describe the one which operates by compressed air.

Let us explain to those who have not seen “Psycho” that it consists of a small figure, dressed as a Turk, sitting cross-legged (as shown by dotted lines) on a chest; this chest is in turn supported on a glass tube, about twelve inches diameter and three feet long, which rests on a four-legged stool. The bottom of chest and top of stool are covered with green cloth so as to make a tolerably air-tight joint. The right arm is extended as in the drawing, and a semicircular rack, in which are placed the thirteen cards dealt to “Psycho,” is fixed by means of a bracket (not shown) in such a position that the edges come between the finger and thumb. The arm turning horizontally on the pivot, A, the hand can be brought over any part, and by closing the finger and thumb and raising the arm, the card will be withdrawn from the pack and held in the air.

In Figs. 1_a_ and 1_b_ (elevation and plan), the wheels E and M have each a train of clockwork (left out for the sake of clearness) which would cause them to spin round if unchecked. M, however, has two pins, _p p′_, which catch on a projection on the lever, N. E′ is a crown-wheel escapement--like that in a bottle roasting-jack--which turns A alternately to the left and right, thus causing the hand to traverse the thirteen cards. A little higher on A will be seen a quadrant, B (see plan), near the edge of which are set thirteen little pins. The end of the lever, N, drops between any two of them, thus causing the hand to stop at any desired card. The lever being pivoted at _c_, it is obvious that, by depressing the end, N, B will be set at liberty, and the hand will move along the cards; by slightly raising it this motion will be arrested; by raising it still more the pin, _p_, is released, and M begins to revolve; and by again depressing N this wheel will, in its turn, be stopped. Near the bottom of the apparatus is a bellows, O, which contains a spring tending to keep the lever, N, with which it is connected by a rod, N, in the position shown. This is connected with the tubular support, which may be connected by a tube through the leg of the stool, and another tube beneath the stage, with an assistant behind the scenes. By compressing or exhausting air through this tube it is obvious that the lever, N, will be raised or depressed, and the clockwork set going accordingly; _a_ is a crankpin set in M, and connected with the head by catgut, T, and with the thumb by S.

At R and R′ are two pulleys connected by gut. Thus, if the hand moves round, the head appears to follow its motions, and when raised by pulling S, the head also rises, by means of T. Further explanation seems almost unnecessary; _l_ is a stop to prevent the elbow moving too far, and _b b_, spiral springs to keep thumb open and head forward respectively. When N is raised, M pulls T and S, the latter closing thumb, and then raising arm by pulley, H. If the lever is allowed to drop, _p′_ will catch and keep arm up. On again raising N, the arm will descend.

Figs. 2_a_ and 2_b_ show another and simpler arrangement, in which only one train of clockwork is used. On the same axle as H is fixed a lever and weight, W, to balance the arm. A vertical rod, X, having a projection, Z, slides up and down in guides, Y Y, and carries the catgut, S and T. The quadrant, B′, has cogs cut, between which Z slides, and stops the motion of A, which is moved, as before, by clockwork. The lower part of X is connected direct with O. When X is slightly raised, as shown, A is free to move; but on exhausting air and drawing X down, Z enters the cogs and stops the hand over a card; continuing to exhaust, the thumb closes and the card is lifted up. The details of the clockwork we leave to the ingenuity of the reader. There should be a fan on each train to regulate the speed. The figure should be so placed that the assistant can see the cards in the semicircular rack.

THE AUTOMATON CHESS PLAYER.

The newspapers announced some time ago that the police of Bordeaux had forbidden the exhibition of the automaton Az Rah, one of the attractions of the Exhibition Theater, because it had been discovered that the manikin was set in motion, not by mechanical arrangements, but by a youth of eighteen years, inclosed within a cavity behind the wheelwork, and whose health was gravely compromised by this daily torture.

This automaton recalls the famous Turkish chess player that was constructed in Hungary by Baron Kempelen in 1769, and exhibited in Germany, Russia, France, England, and America, without the public succeeding in ascertaining its mechanism. In 1819 and 1820 a man named Melzer showed it anew in England. Robert-Houdin saw it in 1844 at the house of a mechanician of Belleville, named Cronior. Since then its fate has been unknown, and it is very probable the Az Rah of Bordeaux is nothing else than the Turk of Vienna. Our readers who have seen it at the Exhibition will be enabled to decide the question after reading the description that we shall give. Baron Kempelen, a Hungarian nobleman and an Aulic Councilor of the Royal Chamber of the Domains of Hungary, being at Vienna, was called to the court to be present at a séance of magnetism that a Frenchman named Pelletier was to hold before the empress. Kempelen was known as an ingenious amateur of mechanics, and the persons present having asked his opinion in regard to the experiments which he had witnessed, he said that he believed he could make a machine that would be much more astonishing than anything that he had just seen. The empress took him at his word and expressed a desire that he should begin the work. M. De Kempelen returned to Presbourg, in his own country, and in six months produced an automaton which played a game of chess against any one who offered himself, and nearly always won it.

This automaton was a human figure of natural size, which was dressed in the Turkish style, seated on a chair, and placed behind a wooden chest on which was laid the chessboard. He took the pieces up with his hand in order to play them, turned his head to the right and left in order to see them better, and nodded his head three times when he checkmated the king, and twice on attacking the queen. If his adversary made a mistake, he shook his head, removed the wrongly-played piece, deposited it outside of the chessboard, and played his own. The showman, who stood near the automaton, wound up the mechanism after every ten or twelve moves, and occasionally replaced certain wheels; and at every motion of the Turk were heard noises of moving wheelwork. To show that there was nothing within but mechanism, doors were opened in the chest and body. There was also a magnet lying on the table to make believe that magnetism, then in great vogue, and as yet full of mystery, played a preponderating _rôle_ in the affair. M. De Kempelen was accustomed to say: “The machine is very simple, and the mechanism appears wonderful only because all has been combined with great patience in order to produce the illusion.”

Many hypotheses were put forth on the subject, and two books, one published in 1785, and the other in 1789, were devoted to a discussion of them. Those that appeared to be most likely were, on the one hand, that the Turk’s body contained an extraordinarily small dwarf; and, on the other, that the showman acted upon the automaton from a distance by the aid of magnetic influences. These two explanations gave a very imperfect account of the facts, and it was not until some years ago that the trick was unveiled in an anonymous book.

The following is an exact description of the apparatus and the successive operations performed by the exhibitor:

The chest was three and one-half feet long, two feet wide, and two and one-half feet high, and was provided with doors and drawers whose use will presently be seen. The front part of the chair seat was affixed to the chest, and the back part rested on the floor by two legs which, as well as the four legs of the chest, were provided with casters. The right hand of the manikin was movable on the upper part of the chest that formed a table, and, at the beginning of operations, held a pipe, which was afterward removed, and it rested upon a cushion lying in a certain definite position. The chessboard in front of the player was eighteen inches square. The exhibitor, provided with a light, begins by allowing the interior of the apparatus to be examined by the spectators. He opens the door A (Fig. 1), and allows to be seen a series of gearings that occupy the whole width of the chest. Then he passes behind and opens the door B (Figs. 2 and 8), opposite the door A, and introduces a light into the interior to show that it is empty. The spectators standing on the other side can, in fact, see the light shine through the different pieces of mechanism through the door, A, that remains open. He afterward locks the door B, and comes in front of the chest and opens the drawer G, from which he removes the chessmen, and a cushion which he slides under the left arm of the automaton. This drawer seems to serve no other purpose than the preservation of these objects. He then opens the two doors, C C, in front of the chest, and shows a large closet lined at the sides with dark drapery, and containing two boxes, L and M, of unequal size, and a few belts and pulleys that seem to be designed for putting in motion the mechanism contained in the boxes. Passing behind again, he opens the door D, and introduces a light into the interior of the chest to show that it has not a false bottom. Then he closes this door again, and also the doors A and C, by means of the same key. Next he turns the apparatus around so as to show the public the other side (shown in Fig. 2), and raises the clothing of the Turk, and opens the apertures, E and F, in the back and thigh, to show that no one is hidden within. These doors remain constantly open afterward. Finally the showman turns the Turk back to his former position, facing the spectator, removes the cushion and pipe, and then the game may begin.

We shall explain as clearly as possible how the game was directed by a man who succeeded in hiding himself by a series of movements when the different doors of the apparatus were successively opened:

The drawer G G, when closed, does not reach the back side of the chest, but leaves between it and its back an empty space, O, measuring fourteen inches in breadth, eight in height, and two feet eleven inches in length (Figs. 9, 10, and 11). This space is never shown to the spectator. The little closet extending from A to B is separated into two parts by a dark hanging, S (Fig. 8), which is raised when the door, B, is opened, and lowered when it is shut. The front part of the closet is entirely filled with the wheels that are thought to move the automaton. The back part is empty and is separated from the large closet that the doors C form, by a thick curtain, R, which hangs freely, being only fixed at its upper part. A part, Q, of the bottom partition of the large closet C C--the part in front of the Turk--is movable around a horizontal axis, and is provided with a weight toward the interior of the closet sufficient to cause it to fall always in a vertical position. The box L is movable, and serves to hide an aperture in the floor of the closet; and the box M is stationary, but has no bottom, and covers likewise a corresponding hole in the lower floor over the space O. The interior of the Turk is arranged as indicated in Figs. 8, 10, and 11. The end of the chest to the right of the Turk slides in horizontal grooves (properly hidden) in such a way as to give access to the space K. It will now be seen that if a man of small stature introduces himself into the chest on this side, he will be able to thrust his legs into the empty space hidden behind the drawer, and to place the rest of his body in the space K, as may be seen in Fig. 5, and by pushing the curtain before him and removing the movable box, L, he will be able to assume the position shown in Figs. 3 and 4. It is in such position that he awaits the beginning of the exhibition. The box M serves for receiving his feet.

It will be remembered that the first operation of the exhibitor consists in opening the door A, at which time the public sees only the mechanism, and, behind it, the dark curtain, S, whose distance cannot be estimated. The exhibitor next passes behind the chest, and, opening the door B, introduces a light behind the mechanism, which is believed to occupy the whole width of it. The curtain, S, being raised, it is seen by the light that shines through the different pieces that they cannot serve to hide any one. He then closes and locks the door B, and, returning to the front, opens the drawer and performs the operations already described, in order to give his confederate time to take the position shown in Fig. 5. The box L having been put back in place, as well as the curtain R, the public sees only an empty space when the doors C are opened. The curtain S, which has fallen, hides the back of the confederate, although the door A remains open; and it is then that on introducing the light through the door D, the exhibitor shows that the large closet has not a double bottom. The doors C being again closed with the same key, so as to make believe that these different closings are due to the necessity of removing this key at every operation, the chest is turned around, the two doors, E and F, are opened before the public to show that the body of the Turk is empty, and finally the machine is wound up slowly, the wheelwork making considerable noise the while. During this time the confederate raises the movable partition Q, takes his legs from behind the drawer, introduces the upper part of his body into a portion of the manikin, which is so arranged as to give his loins a convenient support, and seats himself on the box L, as shown in Figs. 6 and 7. The game may then begin, the hidden player following his moves through the sufficiently transparent fabric that forms the Turk’s clothing. In order that the confederate may easily introduce his arm into that of the manikin, it is necessary to give the latter a certain position, this being the reason for the addition of a pipe in the hand and a cushion under the elbow, both of which are removed when the game begins. A simple cord permits of moving one of the manikin’s fingers so as to pick up or drop the chessmen. The left arm of the confederate, which remains in the machine, is employed in moving the head and in producing the noise of wheelwork at every motion.

In reality, in M. De Kempelen’s automaton, it was the left arm that moved the pieces. It is said that this peculiarity was due to the fact that the chess player who operated the automaton was left-handed. There has even been a touching romance related on this subject, to the effect that the hidden chess player was a Polish officer who, having been compromised in the revolt against Catharine the Great, and having lost his legs in fighting, was received by Kempelen, who thus hid him so well from the searches of the Russian police that he could go to conquer his sovereign in the game in the midst of her court.

A CURIOUS AUTOMATON.

The automaton which we illustrate has a peculiarity of being actuated by a simple flow of sand. It is curious that it was made in the first half of the eighteenth century. The image, clad in Oriental costume of bright colors, is seated behind a little table which is located in front of what appears to be a brick and stone structure; it is made of pasteboard. All of the details are executed with great care. When the automaton is in motion it acts as a juggler. The arms rise alternately or in unison, and lift the cups, and at every motion expose upon the table first to the right a white ball, then to the left a red ball, which passes to the right and disappears. Then two white balls make their appearance on a new motion of the cups, and these are changed into red ones at the next motion. The house forms a receptacle for fine sand which falls upon the wheel, G, through the hopper, F. The sand flows in a continuous stream, and causes the wheel, G, to revolve with great rapidity. To this wheel are fixed six tappets which engage with the toothed wheel, J, and thus diminish the rapidity. The wheel itself communicates through the medium of teeth with the cylinder, H, which is thus given a slow motion, which causes the automaton to act as follows: Opposite the cylinder there are two series of levers of four each, the extremities of which we suppose to be marked A, B, C, D, and A′, B′, C′, D′. The two levers, D and D′, lift the arms, L L, and the extremity of each of the six others is placed under a small strip of cardboard. Each of these strips is hinged by one of its extremities to the table; the other end, on rising, places itself just beneath the small aperture in the table, E. If now we examine the cylinder, B, we shall see that it is provided with a series of cams, A, B, C, and A′, B′, C′, and opposite these, other and smaller ones, D and D′. Each cam, when the cylinder revolves, strikes in turn one of the levers. The larger cams lift the levers and consequently the hinged cards, with the balls of different colors, and keep them lifted for some time, and during this period the smaller cams act upon the levers of the arms that hold the cups. In this way the balls are in place when the arms rise, and do not disappear, in order to be replaced by others, until the arms have descended. The cams, A and A′, cause the red balls to act, and the white balls are raised by the cams, C and C′. As for the cams, B and B′, they act upon strips of cardboard that merely support obturators for the apertures in the table.

THE TOY ARTIST.

The mechanical toy shown in the accompanying illustration is one of the most original and ingenious things of its kind that have recently appeared. Within the base upon which the “artist” and his easel are placed, and immediately below the figure, is a small pinion which is operated by a worm at the end of the crankshaft which is seen projecting through the side of the base. The pinion, which rotates in a horizontal plane, is provided with a couple of pins upon which is placed one of the sets of removable cams which accompany the toy. The cams are double, being provided with two separate peripheral edges, and each edge is engaged by the short arm of a pair of levers, as shown in the engraving. The upper lever attaches at the end of its long arm to a vertical shaft which passes up through the body of the figure, and is pivotally attached to its right arm at the shoulder. By this means the rotation of the cam causes a vertical up and down movement of the arm and the drawing pencil which it carries. The lower cam operates a system of levers by which the arm is given a series of right and left movements. It is evident that by giving the proper relative contours to the two edges of the cam, the arm, with the pencil which it carries, may be made to trace any desired line upon the paper, either vertical or horizontal, by the action of the first or second cam; or diagonal or curved, by the joint operation of the two. Each of the double cams which are provided with the toy is cut so that its operation will cause the figure to draw some well-known object. The levers are kept in snug contact with the cams by a pair of spiral springs.

The easel is hinged to the base and is pressed against the pencil by means of a coil spring. It is provided with four projecting pins upon which the sheet of paper is held while the sketch artist is at work. The model from which our engraving was made produced an easily recognized likeness of the Emperor William of Germany (the device is “made in Germany”), and a drawing which bore a strong resemblance to the familiar barnyard fowl.

A STEAM MAN.

A good many years ago what was supposed to be a steam man was exhibited all over the country, but finally the “steam man” presumably died, as his remains were seen quite recently in one of the downtown New York junk stores. The steam man which we illustrate was invented by Prof. George Moore, who exhibited him very widely in the United States.

In our illustration we show the section and general view of the steam man. In the body is the boiler, containing a very large heating surface which is supplied with a gasoline fire. Below the boiler is situated the engine. While this steam engine is not at all large, it runs at a very high speed and is of high power, the combination of boiler and engine giving about one-half horse-power. From the engine the exhaust pipe leads to the nose of the figure, whence the steam escapes when the machine is in motion. Through the head the smoke flue is carried, and the products of combustion escape from the top of the helmet. The steam gauge is placed by the side of the neck. The skirts of the armor open like doors, so as to give free access to the engine. The main body of the figure is made of heavy tin. By reducing gear the engine is made to drive the walking mechanism of the figure at reasonable speed.

In our sectional view we show the combination of levers by which the figure is made to walk. The engine imparts a swinging to the whole length of the leg from the hip; a second swinging motion, from the knee downward, is accomplished by a similar system of levers and connections; and, finally, a true ankle motion is given to the foot by the rod running down through the lower leg. The heels of the figure are armed with calks, or spurs, which catch on the surface on which it is walking and give it its power. As exhibited, the steam man is connected to the end of a horizontal bar about waist high, which is fastened to a vertical standard in the center of the track. Thus supported, the man walks round in a circle at quite a rapid rate of progress.

For the last eight years the inventor has been at work on a larger steam man which he hopes to have in operation sometime. The new one is designed for use on the open streets, and is to draw a wagon containing a band. In the upper figure we indicate the method of attachment to the wagon which has been adopted. By the long spring at the side of the figure an elastic connection is secured, so that the figure shall always have its weight supported by the ground. The present man, which is about six feet high, when in full operation, cannot, it is said, be held back by two men pulling against it. The larger man, built for heavier work, is expected to pull as many as ten musicians in his wagon. Our cuts show the general appearance of the figure, which is attired in armor like a knight of old, and which appears to be thoroughly operative. The action is quite natural, and the hip, knee, and ankle motion of the human leg have been very faithfully imitated. The figure moves at a brisk walk and can cover about four or five miles an hour.