Automata - The First Autonomous Machines and Threat of Automation

Mechanical moving parts can imitate life, and give the impression that the mechanical device is alive as well. Autonomous mechanical movements express the relationship between mechanics and life by imitating human or other animal movements.

Automatons are what these imitations of life are called. Androids are the automata that mimic humans. In the 18th century, the question of how much of life is mechanical in nature was in many minds, including inventors like clockmakers. Can machines represent life more than simple movements? Can machines replicate internal processes as well? Is there a soul?

One of the first automatons was called The Digesting Duck, a simulation of a duck that was purported to digest food. Jacques de Vaucanson made this device that captivated many minds at the time. He was a glove maker, and was involved with the church who didn't like his mechanical contraptions that imitated life. After leaving the religious order, he went to Paris and got into the idea that life was mechanical.

Learning more about anatomy from the surgeon Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, he continued to develop greater machines. Along with the Digesting Duck, two other famous contraptions he made were The Flute Player and The Tambourine Player.

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The Digesting Duck was the more complex of the three since it was believed to be able to digest food somehow. Food pellets were offered, and the mechanical duck would dip its head, consume the pellets, and then produce exrements a short while later.

The automatons lost Vaucanson's interest, and he moved onto designing an automated loom. Automation of this kind was not welcome. The only thing the loom needed was something to power the movement, which could be a man, or a donkey for instance. Workers in the silk industry revolted against this new machine that was going to take their jobs, causing Vaucanson to flee disguised as a monk. Even hundreds of years ago, machines were being invented that threated the economic survivability of the people at the time.

All three of the automata have disappeared in history. Johann Goethe, in 1805, saw the duck in private hands along with the two other disabled music playing automata. The duck was in shambles as well, with no feathers, standing like a skeleton, eating oat pellets but not being able to digest any longer, it seemed.

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The illusionist and automata maker Robert-Houdin was commissioned to repair a wing, and found that the poop was merely a green-dyed bread pellet hidden in a secret compartment. The "magic" of the duck automaton was just a mechanical slight-of-hand.

The duck and other automata had since been destroyed in a fire that engulfed the Krakow museum in 1879.

In our modern times, automata are so rare at auctions, that they can fetch into the millions.

Despite the original Digesting Duck being lost, in 1999 an atuomaton maker named Frédéric Vidoni recreated the famous mechanical duck, which is now on display at the Musée des Automates, in Grenoble, France.

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Check out the new Digesting Duck below:

Also, a mechanical digestive system was developed in 2001 by Wim Delvoye, called the Cloaca. At the end of the processing of food, it produces poop:

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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References:

• Watches, Automatons, 'Soul,' And The Digesting Duck Of Jacques de Vaucanson
• Canard Digérateur de Vaucanson (Vaucanson's Digesting Duck)
• on Jacques de Vaucanson and his Duck

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2017-03-25, 1:08pm