Mr A Samuel kindly drew my attention to some lovely YouTube videos of the quite amazing 18th Century automata that were created by Pierre Jaquet-Droz and his son - The Writer, The Drawer and The Musician. Above you can see a French documentary on The Writer, and see for yourself the downright mindboggling complexity and finesse of a machine of cogs and springs, able to write with a goose feather quill. Alas, my French is atrocious, but the images speak for themselves. For more, see links for How the Writer Works, a video of The Writer in action, and some more about Pierre Jaquet-Droz himself. It’s amazing that these things could be made, it’s amazing that they were made in the 18th Century and it’s even more amazing that they were created mostly as advertisements for music boxes and mechanical caged birds. Quite boggling.
technorati tags:Clockwork, Automata, Writing, YouTube
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