Wonderful Automata.
Archytas, of Tarentum, is reported, so long ago as 400 B. C., to have made a pigeon that could fly. The most perfect automaton about which there is absolute certainty, was one constructed by M. Vaucanson, exhibited in Paris in 1738. It represented a flute-player, which placed its lips against the instrument, and produced the notes with its fingers in precisely the same manner as a human being does. In 1741 M. Vaucanson made a flageolet-player, which with one hand beat a tambourine, and in the same year he produced a duck. The latter was an ingenious contrivance; it swam, dived, ate, drank, dressed its wings, etc., as naturally as its live companions; and, most wonderful of all, by means of a solution in the stomach, it was actually made to digest its food. An automaton made by M. Droz drew likenesses of public characters. Some years ago a Mr. Faber contrived a figure which was able to articulate words and sentences very intelligibly, but the effect was not pleasant. The chess-player of Kempelen was long regarded as the most wonderful of automata. It represented a Turk of natural size, dressed in the national costume, and seated behind a box resembling a chest of drawers in shape. Before the game commenced, the artist opened several doors in the chest, which revealed a large number of pulleys, wheels, cylinders, springs, etc. The chessmen were produced from a long drawer, as was also a cushion for the figure to rest its arm upon. The automaton, not being able to speak, signified, when the queen of his antagonist was in danger, by two nods, and when the king was in check by three. It succeeded in beating most of the players with whom it engaged, but it turned out afterwards that a crippled Russian officer—a very celebrated chess-player—was concealed in the interior of the figure. The figure is said to have been constructed for the purpose of effecting the officer's escape out of Russia, where his life was forfeited. So far as the mental process was concerned, the chess-player was not, therefore, an automaton, but great ingenuity was evinced in its movement of the pieces.