AUTOMATA OLD AND NEW.
May it please your Oddship, Brethren and Guests of Ye Sette of Odd Volumes. The origin of this little paper is very simple. Just eleven months ago we had the delight of listening to the very interesting and instructive communication upon the work of that wonderful mechanical genius, electrician, and prestidigitateur, Robert-Houdin, presented to us by my very good friend, our revered Seer, Brother Manning. With the object of contributing something to the discussion which followed that paper, I began to make a few notes upon Automata, with which subject the name of Robert-Houdin must for ever be associated; I soon found, however, that the subject was so comprehensive and went back into such remote periods of antiquity, that to do it even the most scanty justice would require a paper devoted to itself alone; and, as our esteemed Pilgrim and Past-President, Brother Holme, was at that time pressing me for a paper with that persistency and importunity which characterized his presidentship and gave it so much of its success, I, as a loyal Odd Volume, felt bound to obey the mandate of his Oddship; and, holding the honourable office of Mechanick to the Sette, I have chosen “Automata Old and New” for the subject of this communication.
The word Automaton would in its strictest and most comprehensive sense include all apparently self-moving machines or devices which contain within themselves their own motive power, and in this sense such machines as clocks and watches, and even locomotives and steamships might be included. I shall, however, throughout this paper limit myself to the more restricted and more ordinarily accepted meaning of the term, namely, such self-moving machines as are made either in the forms of men or of animals, or by which animal motions and functions are more or less imitated.