Since Hero of Alexandria's time, a number of automata -- ingenious machines that appear to move themselves -- had been constructed.  Powered by hidden gravity-based verge-and-foliot clockwork mechanisms, or unseen sources of water, steam or wind, these complex mechanical devices opened doors, rotated figures, produced sounds, and performed a variety of repetitive, regulating functions.  After Descartes' Treatise on Man appeared in print in 1664, the notion that humans were not only machine builders, but the ultimate in self-moving machines, inspired a new way of thinking about man-made automata.  Jacques de Vaucanson pioneered the creation of what he called "moving anatomies":  machines that could simulate internal living processes like digestion, respiration and blood circulation.  To achieve this challenging goal would require a mechanical turn of mind, a knack for tinkering, an intimate familiarity with the physical processes themselves, and, perhaps most important of all, an ability to generate interest in and financial support for such an audacious project.

• born in Grenoble, France

• reputed to have demonstrated an early interest in tinkering with machines and mastery of clockwork mechanisms

• began studies with Jesuits in Grenoble

• entered the Minim monastery in Lyons

• left the monastery to devote himself to his mechanical interests

• studied medicine and anatomy at the Jardin du Roi in Paris

• encouraged and supported by Parisian financier, Samuel Bernard (1651-1739), one of the wealthiest men of his time

• left Paris for Rouen, where he met the notable surgeon and anatomist Claude-Nicolas Le Cat (1700-1768) whose own interest in replicating human anatomical forms and movements likely stimulated Vaucanson to begin work on his first automaton

• traveled around France exhibiting his automaton which he described as "a self-moving physical machine containing many automata which imitate the natural functions of several animals by the action of fire, air, and water."

• signed a contract to build and exhibit another automaton with Jean Colvée (1696-1750), a man of the cloth whose interests included chemistry, natural history, geography and various business ventures

• having squandered funds supplied by Colvée, Vaucanson signed an agreement with a Parisian gentleman, Jean Marguin, to build an automated flute player in exchange for financial support; Marguin would retain one-third ownership of the completed automaton and receive half the money taken in when it was exhibited

The inner workings of Vaucanson's flute player.  Adapted from illustration (p. 81) in Jacques Vaucanson: Mecanicien de Genie (1966), by Andre Doyon and Lucien Liaigre.

• in February, put flute player on exhibit with an admission charge of 3 livres (a week's salary for many workers)

• its success caused Vaucanson to take legal measures to alter the terms of his contract with Marguin

• in April, demonstrated flute player before the Académie des Sciences in order to win its approval

• to boost lagging exhibit attendance, introduced two new automata:  a duck and a fife-and-drum player

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, and Digestion:  Wherein the Working of all the Parts necessary for those Actions is exactly imitated.  The Duck stretches out its Neck to take Corn out of your Hand; it swallows it, digests it, and discharges it digested by the usual Passage.  You see all the Actions of a Duck that swallows greedily, and doubles the Swiftness in the Motion of its Neck and Throat or Gullet to drive the Food into its Stomach, copied from Nature:  The Food is digested as in real Animals, by Dissolution, not Trituration, as some natural Philosophers will have it....

• named inspector of Royal Silk Manufacturers

• reputed to have returned to his original project of creating an artificial man that would display respiration, digestion, and blood circulation in addition to muscular motions; rubber tubing (a technological development pioneered by Vaucanson for this purpose) would be used to simulate the blood vessels

Man is so complicated a machine that it is impossible to get a clear idea of the machine beforehand, and hence impossible to define it.  For this reason, all the investigations have been vain, which the greatest philosophers have made a priori....  Thus it is only a posteriori or by trying to disentangle the soul from the organs of the body, so to speak, that one can reach the highest probability concerning man's own nature, even though one cannot discover with certainty what his nature is....

-- Man a Machine (1747)

 

	Early model (1784) of von Kempelen's speaking machine.

He considered the chess-player a whimsical toy, but viewed the speaking machine as a great scientific and technological contribution.  Although he completed the Turk in six months, he worked on the speaking machine for over twenty years.

After concentrating his efforts on improving the device's ability to reproduce individual sound units found in human speech, von Kempelen recognized the important interpretive role played by the listener.  For a word or phrase to be successfully communicated, it was not enough to generate a sequence of sounds accurately:  adjust the machine's air flow, reconfigure its vibrating reeds, or increase the flexibility of its mouthpiece components.  Understanding those sounds required something more.  What was that something?  Could it be provided mechanically?