June 26, 2013 • 27 mins
Long before Czech playwright Karel Capek coined the term "robot" in his 1920 play "R.U.R.," mechanized creations -- automata -- were being created without electronics or computers. Many were simple, but they paved the way for the robots of today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson Fan. I'm willing
to bet Tracy that when you hear the term or robots,
you think of things like Honda's Asimo or the I
(00:24):
Robot roomba that might tutor around the house tidying up floors.
I think of the bad Robot TV placard, Yeah, from
J J. Abrams production company. Um, but they were actually
way long before check playright. Carol Kapok coined the term
robot in his Are You Are, which did for Rassam's
(00:46):
Universal Robots. Uh, there were mechanized creations automata that we're
being created without electronics or computers, and many were, you know,
fairly simple, but they really paved the way for robots
of today. So if you do a search for first
robot or earliest robot online, you're probably going to find
all kinds of different conflicting answers. Some of them are philosophical,
(01:10):
some of them are mythological, and some of them are religious. Uh.
We know that clockwork devices go back many, many, many years,
but most historians on the subject are not really eager
to pinpoint which exact one was first. Yeah, there's there
are too many possible answers, because there are some mythological
ones that aren't necessarily supported with hard evidence. Those ones,
(01:36):
they're a little bit tricky. Some people even refer to
like the biblical story of creation as kind of a
first um, almost robotics experiment sort of thing. Uh so there,
it's really hard. I mean, you get into a big
philosophical debate with people if you say this was the
first robot we know about for sure, because you're like,
there's some other options. Yeah, so you don't want to
(01:57):
do that. Some of them are so far back in
his that this substantiation for them is just not add clear, right,
And we're gonna look back at the early history of
mechanized beings and clockworks and steampowered mini marvels, So you're
not gonna hear us talk about the DARPA big dog
or the Mars curiosity rover. We're going incredibly old school
(02:18):
with this list, so nothing past the late seventeen hundreds,
and we have just selected five for the sake of
podcast length. But of course that means leaves out many
many others, because there really are many more examples of
this than I think many people realize. So think of
this as just a sampling of some of mankind's ventures
into automated beings. And really I'm telling a fib when
(02:39):
I say it's five, it's sort of five instances, but
some of them feature more than one. Yes, automota. So
it's going to be fun. We're fudging our numbers, We're
doing it with a good heart. Yes uh. And we're
going to start with one that is not easily substantiated.
We're going off of one text, but it's important, and
(03:00):
that's Yan Cheese Automated Man. So the first one is
in China. The reference to it can be found in
a third century b c E. Taoist text, and the
course of this text, a story is told of Kingmu
of Chow, who reigned from nine to b c. E.
In it, this so called artifice their presents an automated
(03:22):
man to the king and his book Science and Civilization
in China, Volume two, writer Joseph Needham quotes a translated
text about this autuma time, and in his quote he
says the king stared at the figure in astonishment. It
walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down,
so that anyone would have taken it for a live
human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began
(03:45):
singing perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it
began posturing, keeping perfect time. As the performance was drawing
to an end, the robot winked its eye and made
advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became
incensed and would have had young she executed on the spot,
had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the
robot to pieces to let him see what it really was,
(04:08):
and indeed, it turned out to be only a construction
of leather, wood, glue, and lacquer, variously colored white, black, red,
and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the
internal organs complete, liver, gall heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach
and intestines. And over these again muscles, bones and limbs
(04:29):
with their joints, skin, teeth, and hair, all of them artificial.
The king tried the effect of taking away the heart,
and found that the mouth could no longer speak. He
took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see.
He took away the kidneys and the legs lost their
power of locomotion. The king was delighted. So, and that's
an often referred to text when people talk about the
(04:51):
history of robots. And we don't have evident heart evidence
of this automaton, but it's significant that it would have
been mentioned in a historical Taoist text that refers back
seven hundred years. Uh. It evidences this fascination with mechanical
beings going way way way back into ancient history so early. Yeah,
I would be delighted too if I were the king,
(05:12):
who would not. Uh. So that's our first one, and
the second one is a little more recent than that.
This one was a pigeon created by Archiitis of Tarentum
and Archaetis was born around BC in a Greek controlled
territory that's now part of southern Italy. He was a
(05:33):
very accomplished man. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, an astronomer,
a statesman, and a commander in chief. And sometimes he
gets called the father of mechanics. He said to be
the most advanced of the Pythagorean mathematicians, and he classified
mathematics into four divisions, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. He
(05:53):
was really influential in his time, and Archidis also influenced
the work of Plato and Toddle. In fact, he said
to have rescued Plato from Dionysius the Second. But historians
are generally pretty quick to point out that the relationship
between Plato and Architis was a complex one. It was
pretty complicated. They had similar stances on many philosophical issues,
(06:15):
but they also had some pretty obvious disagreements. But for
today's interest, the accomplishment of Architis that's the most relevant
is a mechanical bird. This bird, which he called simply
the pigeon, was suspended at the end of a pivoting bar.
It moved in revolutions around the bar, either using a
jet of steam or compressed air. And while the bird,
(06:37):
which was created somewhere between four hundred and three fifty
b C. Is often listed as a footnote to Architis's
body of work, it's really important to remember that he
built this mechanism more than two thousand years ago, So
it was this very simple little robotic pigeon. Yes, some
people point to it as the first robot and recorded
history but as we mentioned earlier, and it's a claim
(06:59):
that a lot of people are just not willing to
make for sure about any of these. And now there's
kind of a big jump to our next one, because
we are getting to Da Vinci, who many people know
was really interested in mechanics. Uh. And so Leonardo was
born in April of fourtift two. He's one of history's
most famous men. So we all know his famous paintings
(07:21):
like the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, and his
drawings of these Truvian man So he's not really a
mystery to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of history.
Late in his life, in fifteen fifteen, he created this
automatal lion, allegedly to present to King France. At first,
the faux feline was said to have walked forward toward
(07:41):
the king, opened up its chest and revealed a cluster
of lilies. And while there's some lack of specificity about
the original lion uh and Leonardo did not leave any
sketches of it, he did make detailed sketches of the
mechanisms that he likely used in its construction, and he
left some notes as well. And in two thousand nine,
Renato Boretto, a master builder of automata, use those sketches
(08:05):
and da Vinci's notes and he actually recreated the lion.
It's really really interesting to watch. You can find video
of it online and will link to some of it.
You know, it's kind of sobering to watch this sample
of robotics that's based on early fifteen hundreds ingenuity, because
it's still a pretty impressive piece today. To see this,
(08:27):
it almost looks like a giant toy. It's life size,
but it's you know, carved, so it doesn't look like
a real lion, but it just it moves along and
it kind of has wheels and its feet and it
rolls as its legs move along the floor, and it
tilts its head side to side, and it's kind of
mind blowing to me to think that that was designed
(08:47):
hundreds of years ago. Leonardo also designed a fully automated
man that was styled to look like an armored knight,
with a rope and gear mechanism to raise and move
the limbs, but there's no record of this actually being built.
Italian robotics historians have also constructed a machine based on
these designs. Yeah, it's um it can't do quite the
(09:08):
amount of moving on its own that the lion can,
which is why we focused on the lion for this one.
But I thought that the the armored man she cold
at least to mention. And then we get to a
couple of entries that are really really mind blowing. The
first is Kanson's flute player, and like I said, this
one is U kind of a two for it's not
(09:29):
really just the one. We're going to talk about his
famous duck automaton as well, which when I have mentioned
to our colleagues that we were working on this podcast,
everyone asked about the duck and I just kind of shrug.
We'll get there. So Jacques de Vokinson was born in
Grenoble on February seventeen o nine, and he was the
(09:49):
youngest child of ten born to a glovemaker and a
devout Catholic wife. And the story goes that Jacques was
obsessed with mechanical things at a very young age. Uh
he studied with the Jesuits as a youngster. He even
entered a monastery but the age of sixteen as a
means of supporting his scientific studies because at that point
his father was gone and his mother couldn't really just
(10:11):
pay for him to play in his mechanized world. And
then later in sight, he left the monastery to study
medicine and anatomy in Paris, and throughout his life of
Wilkinson was inspired by medical science, and his passion for
an insight into the workings of anatomy garnered him several
patrons that supported his work through the years. His most
(10:33):
famous automaton was a gold plated copper duck. And what
a duck it was. It could do many of the
things real ducks could do. It could it could quack
and drink water, and flap its wings and mimic the
digestive process, reminding me of many novelty items owned by
my grandfather. So yes, it's the famous pooping robot duck.
(10:56):
If everybody knows about uh, you know, it's one of
the like when you go, oh, ancient robots like pooping
robot duck. Right. Yes. In a letter written to the
Abbe de Fontaine, he wrote, my second machine or automaton
is a duck in which I represent the mechanism of
the intestines which are employed in the operations of eating, drinking,
(11:19):
and digestion, where in the working of all the parts
necessary for these actions is exactly imitated. The duck stretches
out its neck to take corn out of your hand,
It swallows it, digested and discharges it digested by the
usual passage. And I feel compelled to know it didn't
actually digested it. There was no chemical breakdown of whatever
(11:39):
you handed it. You could hand it buttons and it
would those would pass through its automated little system. And
I think when modern ears here they think of it
as this cookie novelty thing. But really he was trying
to represent a full um anatomical being. Like to him,
it was more about the science of and study of,
(12:00):
you know, biology than it was like, look, my duck poops.
Not so much to be something you would buy in
the back of a spencer gift, but that duck was
actually created to boost attendance at an exhibit of another
of Vokinson's works, which was his Automatic Flute Player. The
flute player was allegedly conceived in a fevered state while
he was ill. A famous marble statue by sculptor Antoine
(12:24):
Koiservo was the inspiration for the shape of the figure,
although Wolkenson's version was made of wood and then painted
to look like marble. And this figure was five point
five feet tall, which is about one point seven meters. Uh.
And in the modern book Living Dolls the Magical History
of the Question Mechanical Life Gabby Wood rights of the
(12:44):
Mechanical Flute Player, nine bellows were attached to three separate
pipes that led into the chest of the figure. Each
set of three bellows was attached to a different weight
to give out varying degrees of air, and then all
pipes joined into a single one equivalent to a trachea,
continuing up through the throat and widening to form the
cavity of the mouth. The lips, which bore upon the
(13:05):
whole of the flute, could open and close and move
backwards or forwards. Inside the mouth was a movable metal
tongue which governed the airflow and created pauses. This automaton breathed,
which is cool. It's really cool. Um. It's an incredibly
complex design. And of course, uh, you know, the flute
(13:28):
is a hard instrument to play when you're an actual human.
So he had to do something tricky. Yes, So, borrowing
from his family's roots, he gave the flute player's hands
a skin covering to mimic the soft touch that you
need to play a flute. That's a tricky instrumental master
even for people, and his macanoid minstrel could play twelve
(13:49):
different tunes. And this flute player went on display on
February eleventh of set eight, and the cost of entry
to see this marvel was roughly equivalent to a week's
worth of wages for the average manual laborer. So this
was a serious money maker because people were paying that
to go see it. I mean it was too fantastical
to skip, uh, which is why when the attendants fell off,
(14:12):
Vokinson added the duck to the exhibit, as well as
another piece called the Tambourine Player. In an effort to
bring audiences back and keep the money flowing. He sold
off his mechanical creations in one and at that point
became Francis Inspector of silk manufacturer. His adventures in that
job could really be their own podcasts, they really could.
(14:32):
He really sort of revolutionized looms um. But the flute
player in the other automeda changed hands several times, and
the flute player was last seen in the possession of
Gottfried Christoph Barres, doctor to the Duke of Brunswick, and
then he disappeared from history. After the doctor's death, the
duck turned up a couple more times, and uh, there
(14:53):
are allegedly there are pictures of it or something that's
very much like it that you can find online. But
the flute player, we don't. We don't know where it landed,
which is a pity because I would really love to
see how that works. And then for our final entry
in our list of five instances, there are actually three
pieces in this but uh, they're quite marvelous. Yes, they're
(15:14):
the work of Pierre Jacquedras, who was born on July
seventeen twenty one in Switzerland. His family was primarily involved
in two modes of employment, farming and watchmaking, and in
seventeen thirty eight Jacquedras opened up his own watch shop
in Le chad Defont, and initially he specialized in pendulum clocks,
(15:35):
but eventually he turned his attention to automated mechanisms and
eventually began to sell small automeda to a special clients.
I also feel like we should mentioned that he is
It's kind of a side note, but he's often credited
with creating a wristwatch. So he was very much into
shrinking mechanisms down, which plays into his work in Automeda.
(15:55):
In seventeen seventy four, he and his son Henri Louis,
and a clock maker, Jean Frederick less Show presented their
three creations, which are still considered to be marvels of
mechanical engineering. The Musician is the first one, and it's
a female and um she plays an organ, and it's
not an actual organ, it's a custom instrument that looks
like an organ, and she will bow at the end
(16:17):
of her performances, and she plays five different tunes, and
the mechanical works are actually all concealed beneath her gown,
but her fingers move super briskly and they tap along
at the instrument's keys, and it's really quite something to watch.
The draftsman can draw floor pictures, and he'll also blow
dust and graphite off of this page. And the draftsman
(16:38):
looks more like a little boy, and he looks almost
identical to the third one, which is an automaton that
people sort of hold in this extremely high regard because
it's really quite a marvel. It's called the Writer, and
it's um to my mind, and I think the mind
of many other others that study this subject. It's the
(17:00):
most impressive of the three because he can write as
many as forty letters in sequence, and because he has
built with a series of coded gears in his back
that can be moved, he can actually be programmed to
write new sequences. His messages aren't static, uh, and he'll
dip his pen in an ink well so that it
needs to be refreshed whenever he writes, and he carefully
(17:21):
scrawls out the program message onto paper, and his eyes
actually follow his pen as he's working, which is sort
of amazing and wonderful. The fact that this one can
be programmed to do different things would probably put him
higher on the list in like the Nitpickers list of robots,
because one of in terms of today's terminology, one of
(17:43):
the hallmarks of robotics is that these are programmable things,
not just things that work on like a remote control
or some kind of teather Yeah. Uh. And Jacque Drows
would take these automota around with him on tour while
he was visiting wealthy families, and he would, you know,
have them do their little activities and show off and
then he would use those charms to sell his high
(18:04):
end watches and smaller automoda to his elite clientele, and
he would also book them into hotel rooms and then
charge admission for people to just come and see them.
And the Jaque Drew's name is still famous for its watches. Um.
Just as Paul Pare, who we discussed in a previous podcast,
brought branding into fashion houses, Jacquie Drews did a similar thing,
(18:25):
and he understood the idea of building a brand in
his industry, and his touring automoda were part of that brand. Today,
this trio lives in the Museum of Art and History
in Switzerland and they all still work, which is a
testament to the extraordinary engineering and skill that went into
their creation. Yeah, those are other ones that you can
see lots of video footage of online. Uh, you know,
(18:47):
people carefully programming them. And I've noticed in some of
them the writer he's a little um squeaky. At some
point they have to scoot the paper along form a
little bit because the paper actually gets kind of moved
on this little um carrier that goes back and forth
underneath his hands. But generally he's still I mean they're
(19:09):
all still in great working order and pretty amazing, and
I feel like, um, we should mention as we wrap up,
we're not going to talk about this one, but uh,
I know people will ask why we didn't include it,
which is the katakuti ningio, which are Japanese automata uh
that are generally referenced from like sixteenth through early nineteenth century,
(19:29):
And I really think they deserve their own podcasts, so
stay tuned. It would be weird to talk about robots
and not mentioned Japan at all, so I wanted to
make sure we at least pointed those out. Uh. They
also kind of go past the point in history where
we wanted to do the cut off, not so much
the early. It's a little later than early. Some of
it's in this realm that I was talking about, but
it goes on a little bit further and there are
(19:51):
many different types, and I feel like they just they
deserve their own whole little discussion because they're really quite amazing.
But uh, those are, like I said, a little sampling
of historical robotics and automata that I just I think
it's sort of beautiful and wonderful that's going back these
thousands of years. We've always been obsessed with creating sort
(20:12):
of mechanized versions of ourselves and other natural elements of
the world. And a lot of these remind me of
stuff that happened much later, or things that that later
would not have been quite so impressive, like the Um
you look at the movie Hugo and the book that
it was based off of, like that was a much
more recent era of of clockworks and steam based things
(20:35):
and automata that could write things. Um, and this predates
those sort of things by some hundreds of years. Yeah,
it's very very cool. So that's historical. Robots will hopefully
do more perhaps in the future, in addition of the
Japanese ones, because robots are awesome. They're really cool. I also,
as as we're reading this, I just like every description
(20:59):
sort of have ended with the sentence and then they
all came to life and the doctor had to come
and save us, because that, along with the intriguing idea
of making mechanical life, is the idea of that going
horribly wrong in the human consciousness that they seem to Nope,
they all none of them came to like running, They
didn't take over the world. So let's take a moment
(21:22):
to have a word from our sponsor. You also have
some listener mail, do you. Indeed? This mail is from
Elizabeth and it is yet another email about our podcast
on the domestication of cats. She's gotten a bunch of
and also lots of people sending cat pictures. Keep them
coming because I love that the cat pictures are really
brightening our listener in bar. They're so fun. Uh. And
(21:45):
Elizabeth says, I really enjoyed your recent podcast about the
domestication of cats. I'm an evolutionary biologist, so I'm always
super excited when you guys makes a little science in
with your history. The straight up history podcasts are awesome
as well as someone who works who were ras a
lot about wildlife conservation, though there was one point I
wished you'd emphasized more. Cats may be fascinating animals and
(22:06):
wonderful pets, but the fact that humans have introduced these
deadly little predators all over the world has had a
devastating impact on wildlife. Domestic cats are implicated in the
extinction of several bird species and are also a huge
threat to reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals. As much as
I empathize with cat owners desire to let their pets
room outside. Even well fed domestic cats kill quite a
(22:27):
few wild animals. There's actually a project at the University
of Georgia right in your backyard that seeks to quantify
this by attaching cameras to outdoor cats callers. Here's a
link to web comic about the project and what about
the project page itself, which we can also share with
our listeners. If you guys ever touch on this or
a similar topic again, it would be great if you
could encourage fellow cat lovers to minimize their pets impact
(22:49):
on local wildlife by following some of the recommendations from
the Kittie Caams project. Thanks for letting me bother you
about this, and thanks for all the amazing podcasts. IU.
This is one of those things that I'm actually surprised
I didn't mention it either. Well, and I think the
reason that I didn't mention it is that I sort
of take for granted that that people know should they
should keep their pets indoors, which I don't know why
(23:11):
I would take that for granted, because I see cats
running around outside all the time. Yeah, not everybody feels
that way, and it can be a very divisive subject
if you bring it up among people that have cats. Yeah,
I mean I'm definitely like an indoor only cat owner,
me too, But I know lots of people feel like
it's not fair to the cats, and there there's a
debate to be had about it, um, but it really
(23:33):
they really do have quite an impact on the natural
world outside when they go out, because they are predators,
and even if, as Elizabeth mentions, even if they're well fed,
that doesn't necessarily cut their prey drive down right. And
my keeping my cats indoors is really motivated by my
desire for their own safety. Yeah, more so than not
(23:55):
killing the birds and the reptiles and all those things. Yeah,
I'm definitely a nervous nellie when it comes to that.
I don't know how people can let their cats just
go outside, because it's the very thought of it strikes
fear in my heart. Well, the cat that I grew
up with lived outdoors almost exclusively. She would come inside
and it was really cold some of those two. This
was also in you know, in a world. Yeah. Yeah,
(24:19):
she was terrified of the road. So that was the
thing that we didn't really have to worry. We didn't
have to worry about her being hit by a car
because she was absolutely terrified not go near it. No,
she would not. H Yeah, I mean, I know people
do worry that their cats won't get enough stimulation and play.
And as she mentioned, there are some great resources that
are linked on the Kitty Camps website and those are
just fascinating pictures. I actually know a friend of a
(24:42):
friend was one of the people whose cats was used
in that study, and I think she was pretty shocked
when she saw some of the images that told the
story of where her cat would go during the day.
Uh and you know, many people found out that their
cats actually had franchised other families and we're double lives
and uh so it's kind of interesting from that point
(25:02):
of view. But uh yeah, safety and not killing all
the all the lizards and and mice and other things. Yeah,
they've definitely been case studies of I knew there's one
story of like the light keep the lighthouse keeper who
brought his cat to his post at the lighthouse and
the cats single handedly exterminated all of the birds on
the island where the lighthouse at Lighthouse was. Yeah, they're
(25:24):
they're very efficient little predators. They really are even Uh.
I mean, I've known this is just experiential evidence, but
I've known even people who are like, well, my cats
de cloud. I've seen d cloud cats take down birds
no problems. So uh, you just gotta keep them stimulated
inside and make sure they're getting that prey drive met
by indoor activities and clawing has its own That's a
(25:46):
whole other controversial party train. Uh. But yeah, so be
kind of the environment and be mindful of what your
your bets might do to it. Is so thank you, Elizabeth,
because it took me a while to get to that mail,
not because I didn't love it, but just because other
mail jumped up in the wing. Uh. If you would
like to write to us, you may do so at
(26:06):
History Podcast at discovery dot com. You can also touch
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You can also find us on Pinterests. If you want
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go to our website. Type in the word robots in
the search bar, and you'll get an article called how
(26:28):
Robots Work, which is more about modern robots, still very
fascinating and clearly the result of activities like we're going
on with these early automeda If you want to learn
about almost anything else you could possibly think of, you
can go to our website to do that, and that
is how Stuff Work dot com for more on this
(26:49):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson Fan. I'm willing
to bet Tracy that when you hear the term or robots,
you think of things like Honda's Asimo or the I
(00:24):
Robot roomba that might tutor around the house tidying up floors.
I think of the bad Robot TV placard, Yeah, from
J J. Abrams production company. Um, but they were actually
way long before check playright. Carol Kapok coined the term
robot in his Are You Are, which did for Rassam's
(00:46):
Universal Robots. Uh, there were mechanized creations automata that we're
being created without electronics or computers, and many were, you know,
fairly simple, but they really paved the way for robots
of today. So if you do a search for first
robot or earliest robot online, you're probably going to find
all kinds of different conflicting answers. Some of them are philosophical,
(01:10):
some of them are mythological, and some of them are religious. Uh.
We know that clockwork devices go back many, many, many years,
but most historians on the subject are not really eager
to pinpoint which exact one was first. Yeah, there's there
are too many possible answers, because there are some mythological
ones that aren't necessarily supported with hard evidence. Those ones,
(01:36):
they're a little bit tricky. Some people even refer to
like the biblical story of creation as kind of a
first um, almost robotics experiment sort of thing. Uh so there,
it's really hard. I mean, you get into a big
philosophical debate with people if you say this was the
first robot we know about for sure, because you're like,
there's some other options. Yeah, so you don't want to
(01:57):
do that. Some of them are so far back in
his that this substantiation for them is just not add clear, right,
And we're gonna look back at the early history of
mechanized beings and clockworks and steampowered mini marvels, So you're
not gonna hear us talk about the DARPA big dog
or the Mars curiosity rover. We're going incredibly old school
(02:18):
with this list, so nothing past the late seventeen hundreds,
and we have just selected five for the sake of
podcast length. But of course that means leaves out many
many others, because there really are many more examples of
this than I think many people realize. So think of
this as just a sampling of some of mankind's ventures
into automated beings. And really I'm telling a fib when
(02:39):
I say it's five, it's sort of five instances, but
some of them feature more than one. Yes, automota. So
it's going to be fun. We're fudging our numbers, We're
doing it with a good heart. Yes uh. And we're
going to start with one that is not easily substantiated.
We're going off of one text, but it's important, and
(03:00):
that's Yan Cheese Automated Man. So the first one is
in China. The reference to it can be found in
a third century b c E. Taoist text, and the
course of this text, a story is told of Kingmu
of Chow, who reigned from nine to b c. E.
In it, this so called artifice their presents an automated
(03:22):
man to the king and his book Science and Civilization
in China, Volume two, writer Joseph Needham quotes a translated
text about this autuma time, and in his quote he
says the king stared at the figure in astonishment. It
walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down,
so that anyone would have taken it for a live
human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began
(03:45):
singing perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it
began posturing, keeping perfect time. As the performance was drawing
to an end, the robot winked its eye and made
advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became
incensed and would have had young she executed on the spot,
had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the
robot to pieces to let him see what it really was,
(04:08):
and indeed, it turned out to be only a construction
of leather, wood, glue, and lacquer, variously colored white, black, red,
and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the
internal organs complete, liver, gall heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach
and intestines. And over these again muscles, bones and limbs
(04:29):
with their joints, skin, teeth, and hair, all of them artificial.
The king tried the effect of taking away the heart,
and found that the mouth could no longer speak. He
took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see.
He took away the kidneys and the legs lost their
power of locomotion. The king was delighted. So, and that's
an often referred to text when people talk about the
(04:51):
history of robots. And we don't have evident heart evidence
of this automaton, but it's significant that it would have
been mentioned in a historical Taoist text that refers back
seven hundred years. Uh. It evidences this fascination with mechanical
beings going way way way back into ancient history so early. Yeah,
I would be delighted too if I were the king,
(05:12):
who would not. Uh. So that's our first one, and
the second one is a little more recent than that.
This one was a pigeon created by Archiitis of Tarentum
and Archaetis was born around BC in a Greek controlled
territory that's now part of southern Italy. He was a
(05:33):
very accomplished man. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, an astronomer,
a statesman, and a commander in chief. And sometimes he
gets called the father of mechanics. He said to be
the most advanced of the Pythagorean mathematicians, and he classified
mathematics into four divisions, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. He
(05:53):
was really influential in his time, and Archidis also influenced
the work of Plato and Toddle. In fact, he said
to have rescued Plato from Dionysius the Second. But historians
are generally pretty quick to point out that the relationship
between Plato and Architis was a complex one. It was
pretty complicated. They had similar stances on many philosophical issues,
(06:15):
but they also had some pretty obvious disagreements. But for
today's interest, the accomplishment of Architis that's the most relevant
is a mechanical bird. This bird, which he called simply
the pigeon, was suspended at the end of a pivoting bar.
It moved in revolutions around the bar, either using a
jet of steam or compressed air. And while the bird,
(06:37):
which was created somewhere between four hundred and three fifty
b C. Is often listed as a footnote to Architis's
body of work, it's really important to remember that he
built this mechanism more than two thousand years ago, So
it was this very simple little robotic pigeon. Yes, some
people point to it as the first robot and recorded
history but as we mentioned earlier, and it's a claim
(06:59):
that a lot of people are just not willing to
make for sure about any of these. And now there's
kind of a big jump to our next one, because
we are getting to Da Vinci, who many people know
was really interested in mechanics. Uh. And so Leonardo was
born in April of fourtift two. He's one of history's
most famous men. So we all know his famous paintings
(07:21):
like the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, and his
drawings of these Truvian man So he's not really a
mystery to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of history.
Late in his life, in fifteen fifteen, he created this
automatal lion, allegedly to present to King France. At first,
the faux feline was said to have walked forward toward
(07:41):
the king, opened up its chest and revealed a cluster
of lilies. And while there's some lack of specificity about
the original lion uh and Leonardo did not leave any
sketches of it, he did make detailed sketches of the
mechanisms that he likely used in its construction, and he
left some notes as well. And in two thousand nine,
Renato Boretto, a master builder of automata, use those sketches
(08:05):
and da Vinci's notes and he actually recreated the lion.
It's really really interesting to watch. You can find video
of it online and will link to some of it.
You know, it's kind of sobering to watch this sample
of robotics that's based on early fifteen hundreds ingenuity, because
it's still a pretty impressive piece today. To see this,
(08:27):
it almost looks like a giant toy. It's life size,
but it's you know, carved, so it doesn't look like
a real lion, but it just it moves along and
it kind of has wheels and its feet and it
rolls as its legs move along the floor, and it
tilts its head side to side, and it's kind of
mind blowing to me to think that that was designed
(08:47):
hundreds of years ago. Leonardo also designed a fully automated
man that was styled to look like an armored knight,
with a rope and gear mechanism to raise and move
the limbs, but there's no record of this actually being built.
Italian robotics historians have also constructed a machine based on
these designs. Yeah, it's um it can't do quite the
(09:08):
amount of moving on its own that the lion can,
which is why we focused on the lion for this one.
But I thought that the the armored man she cold
at least to mention. And then we get to a
couple of entries that are really really mind blowing. The
first is Kanson's flute player, and like I said, this
one is U kind of a two for it's not
(09:29):
really just the one. We're going to talk about his
famous duck automaton as well, which when I have mentioned
to our colleagues that we were working on this podcast,
everyone asked about the duck and I just kind of shrug.
We'll get there. So Jacques de Vokinson was born in
Grenoble on February seventeen o nine, and he was the
(09:49):
youngest child of ten born to a glovemaker and a
devout Catholic wife. And the story goes that Jacques was
obsessed with mechanical things at a very young age. Uh
he studied with the Jesuits as a youngster. He even
entered a monastery but the age of sixteen as a
means of supporting his scientific studies because at that point
his father was gone and his mother couldn't really just
(10:11):
pay for him to play in his mechanized world. And
then later in sight, he left the monastery to study
medicine and anatomy in Paris, and throughout his life of
Wilkinson was inspired by medical science, and his passion for
an insight into the workings of anatomy garnered him several
patrons that supported his work through the years. His most
(10:33):
famous automaton was a gold plated copper duck. And what
a duck it was. It could do many of the
things real ducks could do. It could it could quack
and drink water, and flap its wings and mimic the
digestive process, reminding me of many novelty items owned by
my grandfather. So yes, it's the famous pooping robot duck.
(10:56):
If everybody knows about uh, you know, it's one of
the like when you go, oh, ancient robots like pooping
robot duck. Right. Yes. In a letter written to the
Abbe de Fontaine, he wrote, my second machine or automaton
is a duck in which I represent the mechanism of
the intestines which are employed in the operations of eating, drinking,
(11:19):
and digestion, where in the working of all the parts
necessary for these actions is exactly imitated. The duck stretches
out its neck to take corn out of your hand,
It swallows it, digested and discharges it digested by the
usual passage. And I feel compelled to know it didn't
actually digested it. There was no chemical breakdown of whatever
(11:39):
you handed it. You could hand it buttons and it
would those would pass through its automated little system. And
I think when modern ears here they think of it
as this cookie novelty thing. But really he was trying
to represent a full um anatomical being. Like to him,
it was more about the science of and study of,
(12:00):
you know, biology than it was like, look, my duck poops.
Not so much to be something you would buy in
the back of a spencer gift, but that duck was
actually created to boost attendance at an exhibit of another
of Vokinson's works, which was his Automatic Flute Player. The
flute player was allegedly conceived in a fevered state while
he was ill. A famous marble statue by sculptor Antoine
(12:24):
Koiservo was the inspiration for the shape of the figure,
although Wolkenson's version was made of wood and then painted
to look like marble. And this figure was five point
five feet tall, which is about one point seven meters. Uh.
And in the modern book Living Dolls the Magical History
of the Question Mechanical Life Gabby Wood rights of the
(12:44):
Mechanical Flute Player, nine bellows were attached to three separate
pipes that led into the chest of the figure. Each
set of three bellows was attached to a different weight
to give out varying degrees of air, and then all
pipes joined into a single one equivalent to a trachea,
continuing up through the throat and widening to form the
cavity of the mouth. The lips, which bore upon the
(13:05):
whole of the flute, could open and close and move
backwards or forwards. Inside the mouth was a movable metal
tongue which governed the airflow and created pauses. This automaton breathed,
which is cool. It's really cool. Um. It's an incredibly
complex design. And of course, uh, you know, the flute
(13:28):
is a hard instrument to play when you're an actual human.
So he had to do something tricky. Yes, So, borrowing
from his family's roots, he gave the flute player's hands
a skin covering to mimic the soft touch that you
need to play a flute. That's a tricky instrumental master
even for people, and his macanoid minstrel could play twelve
(13:49):
different tunes. And this flute player went on display on
February eleventh of set eight, and the cost of entry
to see this marvel was roughly equivalent to a week's
worth of wages for the average manual laborer. So this
was a serious money maker because people were paying that
to go see it. I mean it was too fantastical
to skip, uh, which is why when the attendants fell off,
(14:12):
Vokinson added the duck to the exhibit, as well as
another piece called the Tambourine Player. In an effort to
bring audiences back and keep the money flowing. He sold
off his mechanical creations in one and at that point
became Francis Inspector of silk manufacturer. His adventures in that
job could really be their own podcasts, they really could.
(14:32):
He really sort of revolutionized looms um. But the flute
player in the other automeda changed hands several times, and
the flute player was last seen in the possession of
Gottfried Christoph Barres, doctor to the Duke of Brunswick, and
then he disappeared from history. After the doctor's death, the
duck turned up a couple more times, and uh, there
(14:53):
are allegedly there are pictures of it or something that's
very much like it that you can find online. But
the flute player, we don't. We don't know where it landed,
which is a pity because I would really love to
see how that works. And then for our final entry
in our list of five instances, there are actually three
pieces in this but uh, they're quite marvelous. Yes, they're
(15:14):
the work of Pierre Jacquedras, who was born on July
seventeen twenty one in Switzerland. His family was primarily involved
in two modes of employment, farming and watchmaking, and in
seventeen thirty eight Jacquedras opened up his own watch shop
in Le chad Defont, and initially he specialized in pendulum clocks,
(15:35):
but eventually he turned his attention to automated mechanisms and
eventually began to sell small automeda to a special clients.
I also feel like we should mentioned that he is
It's kind of a side note, but he's often credited
with creating a wristwatch. So he was very much into
shrinking mechanisms down, which plays into his work in Automeda.
(15:55):
In seventeen seventy four, he and his son Henri Louis,
and a clock maker, Jean Frederick less Show presented their
three creations, which are still considered to be marvels of
mechanical engineering. The Musician is the first one, and it's
a female and um she plays an organ, and it's
not an actual organ, it's a custom instrument that looks
like an organ, and she will bow at the end
(16:17):
of her performances, and she plays five different tunes, and
the mechanical works are actually all concealed beneath her gown,
but her fingers move super briskly and they tap along
at the instrument's keys, and it's really quite something to watch.
The draftsman can draw floor pictures, and he'll also blow
dust and graphite off of this page. And the draftsman
(16:38):
looks more like a little boy, and he looks almost
identical to the third one, which is an automaton that
people sort of hold in this extremely high regard because
it's really quite a marvel. It's called the Writer, and
it's um to my mind, and I think the mind
of many other others that study this subject. It's the
(17:00):
most impressive of the three because he can write as
many as forty letters in sequence, and because he has
built with a series of coded gears in his back
that can be moved, he can actually be programmed to
write new sequences. His messages aren't static, uh, and he'll
dip his pen in an ink well so that it
needs to be refreshed whenever he writes, and he carefully
(17:21):
scrawls out the program message onto paper, and his eyes
actually follow his pen as he's working, which is sort
of amazing and wonderful. The fact that this one can
be programmed to do different things would probably put him
higher on the list in like the Nitpickers list of robots,
because one of in terms of today's terminology, one of
(17:43):
the hallmarks of robotics is that these are programmable things,
not just things that work on like a remote control
or some kind of teather Yeah. Uh. And Jacque Drows
would take these automota around with him on tour while
he was visiting wealthy families, and he would, you know,
have them do their little activities and show off and
then he would use those charms to sell his high
(18:04):
end watches and smaller automoda to his elite clientele, and
he would also book them into hotel rooms and then
charge admission for people to just come and see them.
And the Jaque Drew's name is still famous for its watches. Um.
Just as Paul Pare, who we discussed in a previous podcast,
brought branding into fashion houses, Jacquie Drews did a similar thing,
(18:25):
and he understood the idea of building a brand in
his industry, and his touring automoda were part of that brand. Today,
this trio lives in the Museum of Art and History
in Switzerland and they all still work, which is a
testament to the extraordinary engineering and skill that went into
their creation. Yeah, those are other ones that you can
see lots of video footage of online. Uh, you know,
(18:47):
people carefully programming them. And I've noticed in some of
them the writer he's a little um squeaky. At some
point they have to scoot the paper along form a
little bit because the paper actually gets kind of moved
on this little um carrier that goes back and forth
underneath his hands. But generally he's still I mean they're
(19:09):
all still in great working order and pretty amazing, and
I feel like, um, we should mention as we wrap up,
we're not going to talk about this one, but uh,
I know people will ask why we didn't include it,
which is the katakuti ningio, which are Japanese automata uh
that are generally referenced from like sixteenth through early nineteenth century,
(19:29):
And I really think they deserve their own podcasts, so
stay tuned. It would be weird to talk about robots
and not mentioned Japan at all, so I wanted to
make sure we at least pointed those out. Uh. They
also kind of go past the point in history where
we wanted to do the cut off, not so much
the early. It's a little later than early. Some of
it's in this realm that I was talking about, but
it goes on a little bit further and there are
(19:51):
many different types, and I feel like they just they
deserve their own whole little discussion because they're really quite amazing.
But uh, those are, like I said, a little sampling
of historical robotics and automata that I just I think
it's sort of beautiful and wonderful that's going back these
thousands of years. We've always been obsessed with creating sort
(20:12):
of mechanized versions of ourselves and other natural elements of
the world. And a lot of these remind me of
stuff that happened much later, or things that that later
would not have been quite so impressive, like the Um
you look at the movie Hugo and the book that
it was based off of, like that was a much
more recent era of of clockworks and steam based things
(20:35):
and automata that could write things. Um, and this predates
those sort of things by some hundreds of years. Yeah,
it's very very cool. So that's historical. Robots will hopefully
do more perhaps in the future, in addition of the
Japanese ones, because robots are awesome. They're really cool. I also,
as as we're reading this, I just like every description
(20:59):
sort of have ended with the sentence and then they
all came to life and the doctor had to come
and save us, because that, along with the intriguing idea
of making mechanical life, is the idea of that going
horribly wrong in the human consciousness that they seem to Nope,
they all none of them came to like running, They
didn't take over the world. So let's take a moment
(21:22):
to have a word from our sponsor. You also have
some listener mail, do you. Indeed? This mail is from
Elizabeth and it is yet another email about our podcast
on the domestication of cats. She's gotten a bunch of
and also lots of people sending cat pictures. Keep them
coming because I love that the cat pictures are really
brightening our listener in bar. They're so fun. Uh. And
(21:45):
Elizabeth says, I really enjoyed your recent podcast about the
domestication of cats. I'm an evolutionary biologist, so I'm always
super excited when you guys makes a little science in
with your history. The straight up history podcasts are awesome
as well as someone who works who were ras a
lot about wildlife conservation, though there was one point I
wished you'd emphasized more. Cats may be fascinating animals and
(22:06):
wonderful pets, but the fact that humans have introduced these
deadly little predators all over the world has had a
devastating impact on wildlife. Domestic cats are implicated in the
extinction of several bird species and are also a huge
threat to reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals. As much as
I empathize with cat owners desire to let their pets
room outside. Even well fed domestic cats kill quite a
(22:27):
few wild animals. There's actually a project at the University
of Georgia right in your backyard that seeks to quantify
this by attaching cameras to outdoor cats callers. Here's a
link to web comic about the project and what about
the project page itself, which we can also share with
our listeners. If you guys ever touch on this or
a similar topic again, it would be great if you
could encourage fellow cat lovers to minimize their pets impact
(22:49):
on local wildlife by following some of the recommendations from
the Kittie Caams project. Thanks for letting me bother you
about this, and thanks for all the amazing podcasts. IU.
This is one of those things that I'm actually surprised
I didn't mention it either. Well, and I think the
reason that I didn't mention it is that I sort
of take for granted that that people know should they
should keep their pets indoors, which I don't know why
(23:11):
I would take that for granted, because I see cats
running around outside all the time. Yeah, not everybody feels
that way, and it can be a very divisive subject
if you bring it up among people that have cats. Yeah,
I mean I'm definitely like an indoor only cat owner,
me too, But I know lots of people feel like
it's not fair to the cats, and there there's a
debate to be had about it, um, but it really
(23:33):
they really do have quite an impact on the natural
world outside when they go out, because they are predators,
and even if, as Elizabeth mentions, even if they're well fed,
that doesn't necessarily cut their prey drive down right. And
my keeping my cats indoors is really motivated by my
desire for their own safety. Yeah, more so than not
(23:55):
killing the birds and the reptiles and all those things. Yeah,
I'm definitely a nervous nellie when it comes to that.
I don't know how people can let their cats just
go outside, because it's the very thought of it strikes
fear in my heart. Well, the cat that I grew
up with lived outdoors almost exclusively. She would come inside
and it was really cold some of those two. This
was also in you know, in a world. Yeah. Yeah,
(24:19):
she was terrified of the road. So that was the
thing that we didn't really have to worry. We didn't
have to worry about her being hit by a car
because she was absolutely terrified not go near it. No,
she would not. H Yeah, I mean, I know people
do worry that their cats won't get enough stimulation and play.
And as she mentioned, there are some great resources that
are linked on the Kitty Camps website and those are
just fascinating pictures. I actually know a friend of a
(24:42):
friend was one of the people whose cats was used
in that study, and I think she was pretty shocked
when she saw some of the images that told the
story of where her cat would go during the day.
Uh and you know, many people found out that their
cats actually had franchised other families and we're double lives
and uh so it's kind of interesting from that point
(25:02):
of view. But uh yeah, safety and not killing all
the all the lizards and and mice and other things. Yeah,
they've definitely been case studies of I knew there's one
story of like the light keep the lighthouse keeper who
brought his cat to his post at the lighthouse and
the cats single handedly exterminated all of the birds on
the island where the lighthouse at Lighthouse was. Yeah, they're
(25:24):
they're very efficient little predators. They really are even Uh.
I mean, I've known this is just experiential evidence, but
I've known even people who are like, well, my cats
de cloud. I've seen d cloud cats take down birds
no problems. So uh, you just gotta keep them stimulated
inside and make sure they're getting that prey drive met
by indoor activities and clawing has its own That's a
(25:46):
whole other controversial party train. Uh. But yeah, so be
kind of the environment and be mindful of what your
your bets might do to it. Is so thank you, Elizabeth,
because it took me a while to get to that mail,
not because I didn't love it, but just because other
mail jumped up in the wing. Uh. If you would
like to write to us, you may do so at
(26:06):
History Podcast at discovery dot com. You can also touch
based with us on Twitter at missed Industry. You can
also go to Facebook dot com, slash history class Stuff,
or visit us at mist in history dot tumbler dot com.
You can also find us on Pinterests. If you want
to learn a little bit more about robots, you can
go to our website. Type in the word robots in
the search bar, and you'll get an article called how
(26:28):
Robots Work, which is more about modern robots, still very
fascinating and clearly the result of activities like we're going
on with these early automeda If you want to learn
about almost anything else you could possibly think of, you
can go to our website to do that, and that
is how Stuff Work dot com for more on this
(26:49):
and thousands of other topics. Does It Has to Works
dot com. Audible dot com is the leading provider of
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