Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1884 — Automata. [ARTICLE]

Automata.

In mechanical curiosities there have been many wonderful exhibits in the prest day. The piping bullfinch in the great exhibition of 1862 drew crowds to it; but we remember during tlie sale of Week’s mechanical collection, half a century ago, a similar graceful little warbler, and we saw two other mechanical songsters which the French troops brought back as part of the spoils from the Emperor’s summer palace at Pekin. We regret that we missed the machine for making Latin verses, which was exhibited in our day at the Egyptian Hall—a real blessing to schoolboys; nor have we seen the squalling baby which a modern man of science constructed—surely a bringing of coals to Newcastle; but we remember well, about the year 1833, seeing a very wonderful collection of automata which had beeu originally designed as presents to the Emperor of China. There was a young lady, life-size, that played tunes upon a spinet; another that wrote lines with the beauty of copperplate; while surpassing all was the figure of a magician with a tiny! wand in his hand. It was mounted i upon a small movable frame, which j could be wheeled about at the pleasure ; of the spectator, so that there was no place for a confederate himself. On putting into an orifice in the frame any one of the numerous metallic cards which lay about with questions inscribed on them, the figure, after making you a bow, struck with his rod a little door, which opened, and there i was the answer, printed on another card. The reply given was always strictly appropriate to the question, and not of a mere general character, like the answers on conversation-cards. Then, when we asked, “Mr. Conjurer, are you not troubled with the inquiries ! of your numerous visitors ?” the answer j was: “I should be ungrateful to say : so.” Our next question was of an en- \ tirely different kind. It was, we being young: “What is the sweetest passion 1 in nature?” The conjurer bowed, knocked at the gate, and lo! appeared 1 Cupid with his bow and arrow! Sir David Brewster, who noticed this toy in his volume on “Natural Magic,” conjectures that the cards, though seemingly alike to the eye, differed in weight, and passed through the orifice j we have named until they fell into the proper groove, and touched a spring ; which moved forward the answer. The j machinery employed must have, at all events, been of the most delicate order. Still these things were but the trifles of mechanical skill. W’hat wonders have | we sinoe seen of pieces of machinery ; which, you might almost say, thought. With much interest we looked in the great exhibition of 1852 on the jacquard loom, and, ten years later, on the marvel of marvels, Babbage’s calefilating machine.—Leisure Hours.