The writing and drawing figure claimed by Robert-Houdin as his original invention can be traced back directly to the shop door of Switzerland’s most noted inventor, Pierre Jacquet-Droz, who with his son, Henri-Louis, laid the foundation of the famous Swiss watch-and music-box industry.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, probably about 1770, the Jacquet-Drozes turned out a drawing figure which also inscribed a few set phrases or titles of the drawings. In mechanism, appearance, and results it tallies almost exactly with the automaton claimed by Robert-Houdin as originating in his brain. The Jacquet-Droz figure showed a child clad in quaint, flowing garments, seated at a desk. The Robert-Houdin figure was modernized, and showed a court youth in knee breeches and powdered peruque, seated at a desk. The Jacquet-Droz figure drew a dog, a cupid, and the heads of reigning monarchs. The Robert-Houdin figure, made seventy-five years later, by some inexplicable coincidence drew a dog as the symbol of fidelity, a cupid as the emblem of love, and the heads of reigning monarchs.
The history of the Jacquet-Drozes is written in the annals of Switzerland as well as the equally reputable annals of scientific inventions, and cannot be refuted.
Pierre Jacquet-Droz was born July 28th, 1721, in a small village, La-Chaux-de-Fonds, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland. According to some authorities, his father was a clock-maker, but the brochure issued by “Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie” of the city of Neuchâtel, which has recently acquired many of the Jacquet-Droz automata, states that he was the son of a farmer and was sent to a theological seminary at Basle. Here the youth’s natural talent for mechanics overbalanced his interest in “isms” and “ologies,” and he spent every spare moment at work with his tools. On his return to his native town he turned his attention seriously to clock- and watch-making, constructing a marvellous clock with two peculiar hands which, in passing each other, touched the dial and rewound the clock.
At this time his work attracted the attention of Lord Keith, Governor of Neuchâtel, then a province of Prussia, who induced the young inventor to visit the court of Ferdinand VI. of Spain, providing the necessary introductions. Pierre Jacquet-Droz remained for some time in Madrid and made a clock of most complicated pattern. This was a perpetual calendar. For hands, he utilized artificial sunbeams, shooting out from the sun’s face which formed the dial, to denote the hours, days, etc. With the money received from the Spanish monarch he returned to Switzerland to find that his son, Henri-Louis, had inherited his remarkable inventive gifts. He sent his boy to Nancy to study music, drawing, mechanics, and physics. During his son’s absence in all probability he produced the first of the marvellous automata which made the Jacquet-Drozes famous the modern world over, namely, the writing figure.
With the return of Henri-Louis Jacquet-Droz from college commenced what may be termed the golden age of mechanics in Switzerland. Associated with father and son were the former’s pupils or apprentices, Jean-Frédéric Leschot, Jean-David Maillardet, and Jean Pierre Droz, a blood relation who afterward became director of the mint at Paris and a mechanician of rare talent. Jean Pierre Droz is credited with having invented a machine for cutting, stamping, and embossing medals on the face and on the edges at one insertion.
