ATTAR OF ROSES. See [Oils, Volatile], and [Perfumery].
AURUM MUSIVUM. Mosaic gold, a preparation of [tin]; which see.
AUTOMATIC, a term which I have employed to designate such economic arts as are carried on by self-acting machinery. The word “manufacture,” in its etymological sense, means any system, or objects of industry, executed by the hands; but in the vicissitude of language, it has now come to signify every extensive product of art which is made by machinery, with little or no aid of the human hand, so that the most perfect manufacture is that which dispenses entirely with manual labour.[4] It is in our modern cotton and flax mills that automatic operations are displayed to most advantage; for there the elemental powers have been made to animate millions of complex organs, infusing into forms of wood, iron, and brass, an intelligent agency. And as the philosophy of the fine arts, poetry, painting, and music, may be best studied in their individual master-pieces, so may the philosophy of manufactures in these its noblest creations.[5]
[4] Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 1.
[5] Ibid., p. 2.
The constant aim and effect of these automatic improvements in the arts are philanthropic, as they tend to relieve the workmen either from niceties of adjustment, which exhaust his mind and fatigue his eyes, or from painful repetition of effort, which distort and wear out his frame. A well arranged power-mill combines the operation of many work-people, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill, a system of productive machines continuously impelled by a central force. How vastly conducive to the commercial greatness of a nation, and the comforts of mankind, human industry can become, when no longer proportioned in its results to muscular effort, which is by its nature fitful and capricious, but when made to consist in the task of guiding the work of mechanical fingers and arms regularly impelled, with equal precision and velocity, by some indefatigable physical agent, is apparent to every visitor of our cotton, flax, silk, wool, and machine factories. This great era in the useful arts is mainly due to the genius of Arkwright. Prior to the introduction of his system, manufactures were every where feeble and fluctuating in their development; shooting forth luxuriantly for a season, and again withering almost to the roots like annual plants. Their perennial growth then began, and attracted capital, in copious streams, to irrigate the rich domains of industry. When this new career commenced, about the year 1770, the annual consumption of cotton in British manufactures was under four millions of pounds’ weight, and that of the whole of Christendom was probably not more than ten millions. Last year the consumption in Great Britain and Ireland was about two hundred and seventy millions of pounds, and that of Europe and the United States together, four hundred and eighty millions. In our spacious factory apartments the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials, and assigns to each the regulated task, substituting, for painful muscular effort upon their part, the energies of his own gigantic arm, and demanding, in return, only attention and dexterity to correct such little aberrations as casually occur in his workmanship. Under his auspices, and in obedience to Arkwright’s polity, magnificent edifices, surpassing far in number, value, usefulness, and ingenuity of construction, the boasted monuments of Asiatic, Egyptian, and Roman despotism, have, within the short period of fifty years, risen up in this kingdom, to show to what extent capital, industry, and science, may augment the resources of a state, while they meliorate the condition of its citizens. Such is the automatic system, replete with prodigies in mechanics and political economy, which promises, in its future growth, to become the great minister of civilisation to the terraqueous globe, enabling this country, as its heart, to diffuse, along with its commerce, the life-blood of knowledge and religion to myriads of people still lying “in the region and shadow of death.”[6] Of these truths, the present work affords decisive evidence in almost every page.
[6] Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 18.
AUTOMATON. In the etymological sense, this word (self-working) signifies every mechanical construction which, by virtue of a latent intrinsic force, not obvious to common eyes, can carry on, for some time, certain movements more or less resembling the results of animal exertion, without the aid of external impulse. In this respect, all kinds of clocks and watches, planetariums, common and smoke jacks, with a vast number of the machines now employed in our cotton, silk, flax, and wool factories, as well as in our dyeing and calico printing works, may be denominated automatic. But the term, automaton, is, in common language, appropriated to that class of mechanical artifices in which the purposely concealed power is made to imitate the arbitrary or voluntary motions of living beings. Human figures, of this kind, are sometimes styled Androides, from the Greek term, like a man.
Although, from what we have said, clock-work is not properly placed under the head automaton, it cannot be doubted that the art of making clocks in its progressive improvement and extension, has given rise to the production of automata. The most of these, in their interior structure, as well as in the mode of applying the moving power, have a distinct analogy with clocks; and these automata are frequently mounted in connection with watch work. Towards the end of the 13th century, several tower clocks, such as those at Strasburg, Lubeck, Prague, Olmutz, had curious mechanisms attached to them. The most careful historical inquiry proves that automata, properly speaking, are certainly not older than wheel-clocks; and that the more perfect structures of this kind are subsequent to the general introduction of spring clocks. Many accounts of ancient automata, such as the flying doves of Archytas of Tarentum, Regiomontanus’s iron flies, the eagle which flew towards the emperor Maximilian, in Nurenberg, in the year 1470, were deceptions, or exaggerated statements; for, three such masterpieces of art would form now, with every aid of our improved mechanisms, the most difficult of problems. The imitation of flying creatures is extremely difficult, for several reasons. There is very little space for the moving power, and the only material possessed of requisite strength being metal, must have considerable weight. Two automata, of the celebrated French mechanician, Vaucauson, first exhibited in the year 1738, have been greatly admired; namely a flute-player, five and a half feet high, with its cubical pedestal, which played several airs upon the German flute; and that, not by any interior tube-work, but through the actual blowing of air into the flute, the motion of the tongue, and the skilful stopping of the holes with the fingers; as also a duck, which imitated many motions of a natural kind in the most extraordinary manner. This artist has had many imitators, of whom the brothers, Droz of Chaux de Fonds, were the most distinguished. Several very beautiful clock mechanisms of theirs are known. One of them with a figure which draws; another playing on the piano; a third which writes, besides numerous other combined automata. Frederick Von Knauss completed a writing machine at Vienna, in the year 1760. It is now in the model cabinet of the Polytechnic Institute, and consists of a globe 2 feet in diameter, containing the mechanism upon which a figure 7 inches high sits, and writes upon a sheet of paper fixed to a frame, whatever has been placed beforehand upon a regulating cylinder. At the end of every line, it rises and moves its hand sideways, in order to begin a new line.
Very complete automata have not been made of late years, because they are very expensive; and by soon satisfying curiosity, they cease to interest. Ingenious mechanicians find themselves better rewarded by directing their talents to the self-acting machinery of modern manufactures. We may notice here, however, the mechanical trumpeter of Mälzl, at Vienna, and a similar work of Kauffmann, at Dresden. In French Switzerland some artists continue to make minute automata which excite no little wonder; such as singing canary birds, with various movements of a natural kind; also little birds, sometimes hardly three quarters of an inch long, in snuff-boxes and watches of enamelled gold. Certain artificial figures which have been denominated automata, hardly deserve the name; since trick and confederacy are more or less concerned in their operation. To this head belong a number of figures apparently speaking by mechanism; a clock which begins to strike, or to play, when a person makes a sign of holding up his finger; this effect being probably produced by a concealed green-finch, or other little bird, instructed to set off the détente of the wheel-work at a signal. It is likely, also, that the chess player of Von Kempelen, which excited so much wonder in the last century, had a concealed confederate. Likewise, the very ingenious little figures of Tendler, father and son, which imitated English horsemen and rope-dancers, constructed at Eisenerz, in Styria, are probably no more true automata than the fantoccini, or figures of puppets which are exhibited in great perfection in many towns of Italy, especially at Rome.