“Paris, May 3, 1738.”
After this report comes a letter of Vaucanson’s, addressed to the Abbé D. F., in which he informs him of his intention of presenting to the public on Easter Monday—
1. A player of the German flute.
2. A player of the tambourine.
3. An artificial duck.
“In this duck,” the celebrated automatist writes, “will be noticed the mechanism of the viscera, intended to perform the functions of eating, drinking and digesting. The action of all the parts is exactly imitated. The bird puts out its head to take up the seed, swallows it, digests it, and evacuates it by the ordinary channels.
“All thoughtful persons will understand the difficulty of making my automaton perform so many different movements, as when it stands on its legs and moves its head to the right and left. They will also see that this animal drinks, dabbles with its bill, quacks like the living duck, and, in short, is precisely similar in every respect.”
I was the more surprised at the contents of the memoir, as it was the first trustworthy information I had gained about automata. The description of the flute player gave me a high opinion of the inventor’s talent; but I much regretted finding so short an account of the mechanical combinations of the duck.
For a time, I contented myself with admiring and believing in the great master’s work, but, in 1844, Vaucanson’s duck was exhibited in a room at the Palais Royal.[B] Of course I was one of the first to visit it, and was much struck by its skillful and learned formation. Some time after, one of the wings having been injured, the duck was sent to me to repair, and I was initiated into the famous mystery of digestion. To my great surprise, I found that the illustrious master had not disdained to have recourse to a trick which a conjurer would have been proud of. The digestion, so pompously announced in the memoir, was only a mystification—a real canard, in fact. Decidedly, Vaucanson was not only my master in mechanism, but I must bow before his genius for juggling.
The trick was as simple as it was interesting. A vase, containing seed steeped in water, was placed before the bird. The motion of the bill in dabbling crushed the food, and facilitated its introduction into a pipe placed beneath the lower bill. The water and seed thus swallowed fell into a box placed under the bird’s stomach, which was emptied every three or four days. The other part of the operation was thus effected: Bread-crumb, colored green, was expelled by a forcing pump, and carefully caught on a silver salver as the result of artificial digestion. This was handed round to be admired, while the ingenious trickster laughed in his sleeve at the credulity of the public. But, before leaving this subject, I must give a short biographical notice of this illustrious man.