Automata Old and New

by Conrad William Cooke

Fig. 15.

There can be no doubt that puppets or dolls are of great antiquity; they were common with the ancient Egyptians, and here ([Fig. 15]) is an illustration of a doll from Thebes which is now in the British Museum, and you will notice that the head is covered with holes which served for the insertion of strings of beads to represent hair. Puppets were also in use with the Greeks, and afterwards found their way to Rome, and it is an interesting fact that, about three years ago, while the ground was being excavated for the foundations of the new Palais de Justice at Rome, at a spot not far from the Vatican, a stone coffin was discovered containing the skeleton of a young girl of about fifteen years of age, who had teeth of great beauty, and in her arms was a beautifully modelled wooden doll with jointed limbs which was dressed in a rich material. The interment had taken place in the time of Pliny, who refers to the child, and mentions that she was engaged to be married, a statement which is supported by the fact that on one of the fingers is a doubly-linked gold ring, besides other ornaments. The coffin, with its contents as they were found, is now in the museum in the Capitol and it is, I believe, the only instance of an ancient doll having been found in Rome, although moving puppets or marionettes were known in very ancient times, and are referred to by Xenophon, Aristotle, Horace, Antoninus, Galen, and Aulus Gellius.

The next figure is an illustration of what I suppose must be the very earliest moving doll in existence to-day; it is now in the Museum van Oudheden at Leyden, and is a toy which belonged to a child of ancient Egypt; I have constructed a model of it by which you will see that it is worked by pulling a thread; and here I must make a passing reference to the notorious phallic figures which were carried in procession during the festivals of Osiris and in the Dionysia of Bacchus. We are told by Lucian[7] that “Among the several sorts of Phalloi which the Greeks set up in honour of Bacchus there were figures of dwarfs with moving parts actuated by strings, which were called ‘Νευροσπαστα’.” In so eminently proper a community as We are in Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, I am unable to describe these figures in detail, or to exhibit them in action, but those who are curious as well as odd will find abundant evidence of them in the writings of Herodotus, of Lucian, of Pausanias, of Athenæus, of Plutarch, of Gyraldus, and of several other writers.

Fig. 16.

The earliest forms of moving puppets were set in motion by strings pulled by hand which were afterwards supplanted by cylinders turned by a winch, and the transition from that arrangement to the use of weights and springs was inevitable and was only a question of time.

From the time of Hero I have found nothing worth recording for nearly a thousand years, until the time of Charlemagne, to which monarch was presented by the Kalif Haroun al Raschid a most elaborate water clock. In front of the dial, and corresponding to the hours, were twelve little doors, and the time was shown by these doors opening one after another, each releasing a little brass ball which fell upon a small bell; after all the hours had struck, that is, at noon, another door opened, twelve little knights rode out, and, after careering round the dial, they closed the doors and retired. The eminent mechanician Gerbert who occupied the papal chair in a.d. 1000, reigning under the name of Silvester II., is said to have constructed a speaking head of brass, and was in consequence arrested for practising magic, and Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century, spent, according to his own account, thirty years in the construction of an automaton of clay which not only spoke but walked and answered questions and solved problems submitted to it. It is recorded that his pupil, the celebrated St. Thomas Aquinas was so horrified when he saw and heard this figure that (believing it to be the work of his Satanic Majesty), he broke it into pieces, when Albertus cried aloud: “Sic periit opus triginta annorum.” I deeply regret this mischievous act of St. Thomas Aquinas, because it renders it impossible for me to show it to the Brethren and our guests this evening. Roger Bacon also is said to have made a similar automaton.

Records of speaking androides or talking heads reach us from very early times. At Lesbos there was a head of Orpheus which delivered oracles and predicted to Cyrus his violent death, and we have it on the authority of Philostratus that the head was so celebrated for its oracular utterances, among both the Greeks and the Persians that even Apollo became jealous of its fame.

Then again the mighty Odin had among his mystical possessions a speaking head, believed to be that of Minos, which Odin preserved by encasing it in solid gold. He is said to have consulted it on all occasions, and its utterances were regarded as oracles.