Clowns, artists, conjurers, musicians, and dancers represented the public's fascination and desire for the extraordinary and the unusual. This included a passion for travel and an interest in exotic, foreign places. The manufacture and production of automata reflect the interests and preoccupations of French society at the turn of the nineteenth century. They were not considered toys for children, but rather items of social privilege and status. Many skilled artisans were required to manufacture these clockwork machines. From the mid-1800s to the 1900s, automata served as parlor entertainment. French manufacturers later incorporated mass-production technology to produce musical automata, musical dolls, clockwork singing birds, and tableaux méchaniques (mechanically animated scenes) to meet the increasing demand for these new forms of entertainment. Eventually they became promotional devices to attract sales. The jacquemarts rang the cathedral bells to mark the time of day.īefore the Industrial Revolution, automata were created mainly as one-of-a-kind scientific experiments, political or religious theater, and given as diplomatic gifts. In Western Europe, clockmaking and automata were combined to form grand animated statues, jacquemarts. During the Middle Ages, the Arabs were the first to apply the principles of automata construction based on the work of Heron and Phylon. Centuries later, the Greeks and Byzantines accomplishments in physics and mechanics provided Phylon of Byzantium and Heron of Alexandria with the knowledge to render drawings for the first actual automata. Statues of certain gods, such as the jackal-headed god, Anubis, were rigged with hinges to mimic human speech and movement–one example is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. The word is derived from the Greek automatos, meaning "self-moving." Attempts to mechanically reproduce the movements of the human body began in ancient Egypt. The history of automata (singular automaton) parallels humanity's undiminished and continuous quest to create an object that has the appearance of moving like a human or an animal. Man in a Series of Letters Automata: Mechanical Wonders of the Nineteenth Century man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a man, and he is only fully a man when he plays." “The ingenuity with which these actions were portrayed was impressive and tested in the marketplace.". “Clockwork automata have been developed to perform all the functions of life and nature – every animal from tortoises to elephants with a preponderance of rabbits and every human function – and I do mean every – and the wonders of nature from radiating sun rays to stormy seas,” Smart said. Original aspects such as costuming, face and hand-painted surfaces, structurally sound, complete and functioning clockwork mechanism as well as musical movement, are all key factors.”Ĭhoice examples of automata evoke a strong sense of character or possess a striking personality. “One or two hundred years can take its toll. “A lot can happen to a 18th or 19th century automaton, a delicate decorative artifact, through its lifetime: wars, scorching attics, moldy basements, fires, direct sunlight,” Ryder said. Smoking Monkey by Roullet & Decamps, Paris, circa 1900 fur covered papier-mache and clockwork automaton with bellows.
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