Speaker 1: Hey, everybody Happy Saturday. Okay, Drew confession Uh. In part
Speaker 1: because there is a new Star Wars movie, I have
Speaker 1: droids on the brain really bad, So it seemed like
Speaker 1: a good time to revisit an episode about mankind's early
Speaker 1: attempts at automota. This episode from looks at five different
Speaker 1: historical inventions that very loosely fall into the discussion of
Speaker 1: early robotics. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class
Speaker 1: from house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson Fan.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to bet Tracy that when you hear the
Speaker 1: term or robot, uh, you think of things like Honda's
Speaker 1: Asimo or the I Robot roomba that might tutor around
Speaker 1: the house tidying up floors. I think of the bad
Speaker 1: Robot TV placard Yeah from J. J. Abrams production Company. Um,
Speaker 1: but there were actually way long before check playright. Carol
Speaker 1: Kapok coined the term robot in his Are You Are,
Speaker 1: which did for Rassam's Universal robots. Uh. There were mechanized
Speaker 1: creations automata that were being created without electronics or computers,
Speaker 1: and many were you know, fairly simple, but they really
Speaker 1: paved the way for robots of today. So if you
Speaker 1: do a search for first robot or earliest robot online,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to find all kinds of different conflicting answers.
Speaker 1: Some of them are philosophical, some of them are mythological,
Speaker 1: and some of them are religious. Uh. We know that
Speaker 1: clockwork devices go back many, many, many years, but most
Speaker 1: historians on the subject are not really eager to pinpoint
Speaker 1: which exact one was first. Yeah, there's there are too
Speaker 1: many possible answers because there are some of the logical
Speaker 1: ones that aren't necessarily supported with hard evidence. Those ones
Speaker 1: are a little bit tricky. Some people even refer to
Speaker 1: like the Biblical story of creation as kind of a
Speaker 1: first um, almost robotics experiment sort of thing. Uh So there,
Speaker 1: it's really hard. I mean, you get into a big
Speaker 1: philosophical debate with people if you say this was the
Speaker 1: first robot we know about for sure, because they're like,
Speaker 1: there's some other options. Yeah, so you want to do that.
Speaker 1: Some of them are so far back in history that
Speaker 1: the substantiation for them is just not add percent clear, right,
Speaker 1: And we're going to look back at the early history
Speaker 1: of mechanized beings and clockworks and steampowered mini marvels. So
Speaker 1: you're not gonna hear us talk about the DARPA Big
Speaker 1: Dog or the Mars Curiosity rover. We're going incredibly old
Speaker 1: school with this list, so nothing past the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and we have just selected five for the sake of
Speaker 1: podcast length, But of course that means leaves out many
Speaker 1: many others, because there really are many more examples of
Speaker 1: this than I think many people realize. So think of
Speaker 1: this as just a sampling of some of mankind's ventures
Speaker 1: into automated beings. And really I'm telling a fib when
Speaker 1: I say it's five, it's sort of five instances, but
Speaker 1: some of them feature more than one automata. So it's
Speaker 1: going to be fun. We're fludging our numbers, but we're
Speaker 1: doing it with a good heart. Yes uh. And we're
Speaker 1: going to start with one that is not easily substantiated.
Speaker 1: We're going off of one text, but it's important, and
Speaker 1: that's Yan Cheese Automated Man. So the first one is
Speaker 1: in China. The reference to it can be found in
Speaker 1: a third century b C. Taoist text, and the course
Speaker 1: of this text a story is told of King Mu
Speaker 1: of Chew, who reigned from b C. E. In it,
Speaker 1: this so called artifice are presents an automated man. To
Speaker 1: the king and his book Science and Civilization in China,
Speaker 1: Volume two, writer Joseph Needham quotes a translate text about
Speaker 1: this automa time, and in his quote he says, the
Speaker 1: king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with
Speaker 1: rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that
Speaker 1: anyone would have taken it for a live human being.
Speaker 1: The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing perfectly
Speaker 1: in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing,
Speaker 1: keeping perfect time. As the performance was drawing to an end,
Speaker 1: the robot winked its eye and made advances to the
Speaker 1: ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would
Speaker 1: have had Yan she executed on the spot, had not.
Speaker 1: The latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to
Speaker 1: pieces to let him see what it really was, and
Speaker 1: indeed it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue,
Speaker 1: and lacquer variously colored white, black, red, and blue. Examining
Speaker 1: it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete, liver,
Speaker 1: gall heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach, and intestines. And over
Speaker 1: these again muscles, bones, and limbs with their points, skin, teeth,
Speaker 1: and hair, all of them artificial. The king tried the
Speaker 1: effect of taking away the heart and found that the
Speaker 1: mouth could no longer speak. He took away the liver,
Speaker 1: and the eyes could no longer see. He took away
Speaker 1: the kidneys, and the legs lost their power of locomotion.
Speaker 1: The king was delighted. So, and that's an often referred
Speaker 1: to text when people talk about the history of robots.
Speaker 1: And we don't have evident, hard evidence of this automaton,
Speaker 1: but it's significant that it would have been mentioned in
Speaker 1: a historical Daoist text that refers back seven hundred years. Uh.
Speaker 1: It evidences this fascination with mechanical beings going away, way
Speaker 1: way back in the ancient history, so early. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would be delighted too if I were the king, who
Speaker 1: would not. Uh So that's our first one, and the
Speaker 1: second one is a little more recent than that. This
Speaker 1: one was a pigeon created by archiitis of tarentum and
Speaker 1: archeitis was born around b C. In a Greek control
Speaker 1: territory that's now part of southern Italy. He was a
Speaker 1: very accomplished man. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, an astronomer,
Speaker 1: a statesman, and a commander in chief. And sometimes he
Speaker 1: gets called the father of mechanics. He's said to be
Speaker 1: the most advanced of the Pythagorean mathematicians, and he classified
Speaker 1: mathematics into four divisions geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. He
Speaker 1: was really influential in his time, and Architis also influenced
Speaker 1: the work of Plato and Aristotle. In fact, he said
Speaker 1: to have rescued Plato from Dionysius the second. But historians
Speaker 1: are generally pretty quick to point out that the relationship
Speaker 1: between Plato and Architis was a complex one. It was
Speaker 1: pretty complicated. They had similar stances on many philosophical issues,
Speaker 1: but they also had some pretty obvious disagreements. But for
Speaker 1: today's interest, the accomplishment of Architis that's the most relevant
Speaker 1: is a mechanical bird. This bird, which he called simply
Speaker 1: the pigeon, was suspended at the end of a pivoting
Speaker 1: ball are it moved in revolutions around the bar, either
Speaker 1: using a jet of steam or compressed air. And while
Speaker 1: the bird, which was created somewhere between four hundred and
Speaker 1: three fifty b C. Is often listed as a footnote
Speaker 1: to Archiitis's body of work, it's really important to remember
Speaker 1: that he built this mechanism more than two thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So it was this very simple little robotic pigeon. Yes,
Speaker 1: some people point to it is the first robot and
Speaker 1: recorded history, but as we mentioned earlier, and it's a
Speaker 1: claim that a lot of people are just not willing
Speaker 1: to make for sure about any of these. And now
Speaker 1: there's kind of a big jump to our next one
Speaker 1: because we are getting to Da Vinci, who many people
Speaker 1: know was really interested in mechanics. Uh. And so Leonardo
Speaker 1: was born in April of two. He's one of history's
Speaker 1: most famous men. So we all know his famous paintings
Speaker 1: like the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, and his
Speaker 1: drawings of the Truvian Man. So he's not really a
Speaker 1: mystery to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of history.
Speaker 1: Late in his life, in fifteen fifteen, he created this
Speaker 1: Automata Lion, allegedly to present to King France wid the
Speaker 1: first the faux feline was said to have walked forward
Speaker 1: toward the king, opened up its chest and revealed a
Speaker 1: cluster of lilies. And while there's some lack of specificity
Speaker 1: about the original lion, UH and Leonardo did not leave
Speaker 1: any sketches of it, he did make detailed sketches of
Speaker 1: the mechanisms that he likely used in its construction, and
Speaker 1: he left some notes as well. And in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: Renato Boretto, a master builder of automata UH, used those
Speaker 1: sketches and da Vinci's notes and he actually recreated the lion.
Speaker 1: It's really really interesting to watch. You can find video
Speaker 1: of it online and will link to some of it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of sobering to watch this sample
Speaker 1: of robotics that's based on early fifteen hundreds ingenuity, because
Speaker 1: it's still a pretty impressive piece today. To see this,
Speaker 1: it almost looks like a giant toy. It's life size,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, carved, so it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a real lion. But it just it moves along and
Speaker 1: it kind of has wheels and its feet and it
Speaker 1: rolls as its legs move along the floor, and it
Speaker 1: tilts its head side to side, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: mind blowing to me to think that that was designed
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago. Leonardo also designed a fully automated
Speaker 1: man that was styled to look like an armored knight,
Speaker 1: with a rope and gear mechanism to raise and move
Speaker 1: the limbs, but there's no record of this one actually
Speaker 1: being built. Italian robotics historians have also constructed a machine
Speaker 1: based on these designs. Yeah it um. It can't do
Speaker 1: quite the amount of moving on its own that the
Speaker 1: lion can, which is why we focused on the lion
Speaker 1: for this one. But I thought that the the armored
Speaker 1: man should get at least to mention. And then we
Speaker 1: get to a couple of entries that are really really
Speaker 1: mind blowing. The first is Vokinson's flute player, and like
Speaker 1: I said, this one is uh, kind of a two
Speaker 1: for it's not really just the one. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about his famous duck automaton as well, which when
Speaker 1: I have mentioned to our colleagues that we were working
Speaker 1: on this podcast, everyone asked about the duck and I
Speaker 1: just kind of shrug. We'll get there. So. Jacques de
Speaker 1: Vokinson was born in Grenoble on February seventeen, o nine,
Speaker 1: and he was the youngest child of ten born to
Speaker 1: a glovemaker and a devout Catholic wife, and the story
Speaker 1: goes that Jacques was obsessed with mechanical things at a
Speaker 1: very young age. He studied with the Jesuits as a youngster.
Speaker 1: He even entered a monastery but the age of sixteen
Speaker 1: as a means of supporting his scientific studies because at
Speaker 1: that point his father was gone and his mother couldn't
Speaker 1: really just pay for him to play in his mechanized world.
Speaker 1: And then later in seventy eight, he left the monastery
Speaker 1: to study medicine and anatomy in Paris, and throughout his
Speaker 1: life Wolkinson was inspired by medical science, and his passion
Speaker 1: for an insight into the workings of anatomy garnered him
Speaker 1: several patrons that supported his work through the years. His
Speaker 1: most famous automaton was a gold plated copper duck. And
Speaker 1: what a duck it was. It could do many of
Speaker 1: the things real ducks could do. It could it could
Speaker 1: quack and drink water and flap its wings and mimic
Speaker 1: the digestive process, reminding me of many novelty items owned
Speaker 1: by my grandfather. So yes, it's the famous pooping robot. Duck.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows about. Uh, you know, it's one of those
Speaker 1: like when you go, oh, ancient robots, they go pooping
Speaker 1: robot duck right. Yes. In a letter written to the
Speaker 1: Abbey Defontaine, he wrote, my second machine or automaton is
Speaker 1: a duck in which I represent the mechanism of the
Speaker 1: intestines which are employed in the operations of eating, drinking,
Speaker 1: and digestion, where in the working of all the parts
Speaker 1: necessary for these actions is exactly imitated. The duck stretches
Speaker 1: out its neck to take corn out of your hand.
Speaker 1: It swallows, it, digests it, and discharges it digested by
Speaker 1: the usual passage. And I feel compelled to know it
Speaker 1: didn't actually digested it. There was no chemical breakdown of
Speaker 1: whatever you handed it. You could hand it buttons and
Speaker 1: it would those would pass through its automated little system.
Speaker 1: And I think when modern ears here they think of
Speaker 1: it as this cookie novelty thing. But really he was
Speaker 1: trying to represent a full um anatomical being. Like to him,
Speaker 1: it was more about the science of and study of,
Speaker 1: you know, biology, than it was like, Look, my duck poops, right,
Speaker 1: not so much to be something you would buy in
Speaker 1: the back of a spencer gift, but that duck was
Speaker 1: actually created to boost attendance at an exhibit of another
Speaker 1: of Vokinson's works, which was his Automatic Flute Player. The
Speaker 1: flute Player was allegedly conceived in a fevered state while
Speaker 1: he was ill. A famous marble statue by sculpt or
Speaker 1: Antoine Koiservo was the inspiration for the shape of the figure,
Speaker 1: although Kanson's version was made of wood and then painted
Speaker 1: to look like marble, and this figure was five point
Speaker 1: five feet tall, which is about one point seven meters
Speaker 1: uh and in the modern book Living Dolls The Magical
Speaker 1: History of the Question Mechanical Life Gabby Wood rights of
Speaker 1: the Mechanical Flute Player, nine bellows were attached to three
Speaker 1: separate pipes that led into the chest of the figure.
Speaker 1: Each set of three bellows was attached to a different
Speaker 1: weight to give out varying degrees of air, and then
Speaker 1: all pipes joined into a single one equivalent to a trachea,
Speaker 1: continuing up through the throat and widening to form the
Speaker 1: cavity of the mouth. The lips, which bore upon the
Speaker 1: whole of the flute, could open and close and move
Speaker 1: backwards or forwards. Inside the mouth was a movable metal
Speaker 1: tongue which governed the airflow and created pauses. This automaton breathed,
Speaker 1: which is cool. It's really cool. Um. It's an incredibly
Speaker 1: complex design. And of course, uh, you know, the flute
Speaker 1: is a hard instrument to play when you're an actual human,
Speaker 1: so he had to do something tricky, yes, So, borrowing
Speaker 1: from his family's roots, he gave the flute player's hands
Speaker 1: a skin covering to mimic the soft touch that you
Speaker 1: need to play a flute. That's a tricky instrumental master
Speaker 1: even for people, and his macanoid minstrel could play twelve
Speaker 1: different tunes. And this flute player went on display on
Speaker 1: February eleventh of seventy eight, and the cost of entry
Speaker 1: to see this marvel was roughly equivalent to a week's
Speaker 1: worth of wages for the average manual laborer. So this
Speaker 1: was a serious money maker because people were paying that
Speaker 1: to go see it. I mean it was too fantastical
Speaker 1: to skip, uh, which is why when the attendants fell off,
Speaker 1: Volkinson added the duck to the exhibit, as well as
Speaker 1: another piece called the Tambourine Player, in an effort to
Speaker 1: bring audiences back and keep the money flowing. He sold
Speaker 1: off his mechanical aations in seventeen forty one and at
Speaker 1: that point became France's inspector of silk manufacturer. His adventures
Speaker 1: in that job could really be their own podcast, they
Speaker 1: really could. He really sort of revolutionized looms. Um. But
Speaker 1: the flute player and the other automata changed hands several times,
Speaker 1: and the flute player was last seen in the possession
Speaker 1: of Gottfried Christoph Barres, doctor to the Duke of Brunswick,
Speaker 1: and then he disappeared from history after the doctor's death.
Speaker 1: The duck turned up a couple more times, and uh,
Speaker 1: there are allegedly there are pictures of it or something
Speaker 1: that's very much like it that you can find online.
Speaker 1: But the flute player, we don't. We don't know where
Speaker 1: it landed. Just a pity because I would really love
Speaker 1: to see how that works. And then for our final
Speaker 1: entry in our list of five instances, there are actually
Speaker 1: three pieces in this but uh, they're quite marvelous. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're the work of Pierre Jacquedras, who was born on
Speaker 1: July seventy one in Switzerland. His family was primarily involved
Speaker 1: in two modes of employment, farming and watchmaking, and In
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty eight, Jacque Edras opened up his own watch
Speaker 1: shop in le Cha Defont, and initially he specialized in
Speaker 1: pendulum clocks, but eventually he turned his attention to automated
Speaker 1: mechanisms and eventually began to sell small automeda to a
Speaker 1: special clients. I also feel like we should mentioned that
Speaker 1: he is It's kind of a side note, but he's
Speaker 1: often credited with creating the wristwatch, so he was very
Speaker 1: much into shrinking mechanisms down, which plays into his work
Speaker 1: in Automeda. In seventeen seventy four, he and his son
Speaker 1: Henri Louis, and a clockmaker Jean Frederic les Show presented
Speaker 1: their three creations, which are still considered to be marvels
Speaker 1: of mechanical engineering. The musician is the first one, and
Speaker 1: it's a female and um, she plays an organ, and
Speaker 1: it's not an actual organ, it's a custom instrument that
Speaker 1: looks like an organ, and she will bow at the
Speaker 1: end of her performances. Uh. And she plays five different
Speaker 1: tunes and the mechanical works are actually all concealed neath
Speaker 1: her gown. But her fingers move super briskly and they
Speaker 1: tap along at the instrument's keys, and it's really quite
Speaker 1: something to watch. The draftsman can draw floor pictures, and
Speaker 1: he'll also blow dust and graphite off of his page.
Speaker 1: The Draftsman looks more like a little boy, and he
Speaker 1: looks almost identical to the third one, which is an
Speaker 1: automaton that people sort of hold in this extremely high
Speaker 1: regard because it's really quite a marvel. It's called the Writer,
Speaker 1: and it's um to my mind and I think the
Speaker 1: mind of many other others that study this subject. It's
Speaker 1: the most impressive of the three because he can write
Speaker 1: as many as forty letters in sequence, and because he
Speaker 1: has built with a series of coded gears in his
Speaker 1: back that can be moved, he can actually be programmed
Speaker 1: to write new sequences. His messages aren't static, uh, and
Speaker 1: he'll dip his pen in an ink well so that
Speaker 1: ink needs to be refreshed whenever he writes, and he
Speaker 1: carefully scrawls out the program message onto paper, and his
Speaker 1: eyes actually follow his pen as he's working, which is
Speaker 1: sort of amazing and wonderful. The fact that this one
Speaker 1: can be programmed to do different things would probably put
Speaker 1: him higher on the list in like the Nitpickers list
Speaker 1: of robots, because one of in terms of today's terminology,
Speaker 1: one of the hallmarks of robotics is that these are
Speaker 1: programmable things, not just things that work on like a
Speaker 1: remote control or some kind of tether. Yeah. Uh and
Speaker 1: Jacket Drows would take these automoda around with him on
Speaker 1: tour while he was visiting wealthy families and he would,
Speaker 1: you know, have them do their little activities and show off,
Speaker 1: and then he would use those charms to sell his
Speaker 1: high end watches and smaller automoda to his elite clientele.
Speaker 1: And he would also book them into hotel rooms and
Speaker 1: then charge admission for people just come and see them.
Speaker 1: And the Jaquet Draws name is still famous for its watches. Um.
Speaker 1: Just as Paul Party, who we discussed in a previous podcast,
Speaker 1: brought branding into fashion houses, Jacque Drows did a similar thing,
Speaker 1: and he understood the idea of building a brand in
Speaker 1: his industry, and his touring automata were part of that brand. Today,
Speaker 1: this trio lives in the Museum of Art and History
Speaker 1: in Switzerland and they all still work, which is a
Speaker 1: testament to the extraordinary engineering and skill that went into
Speaker 1: their creation. Yeah, those are other ones that you can
Speaker 1: see lots of video footage of online you know, people
Speaker 1: carefully programming them, and I've noticed in some of them
Speaker 1: the writer he's a little um squeaky. In some points
Speaker 1: they had to scoot the paper along form a little
Speaker 1: bit because the paper actually gets kind of moved on
Speaker 1: this little um carrier that goes back and forth underneath
Speaker 1: his hands. But generally he's still I mean, they're all
Speaker 1: still in great working order and pretty amazing, and I
Speaker 1: feel like, um, we should mention as we wrap up,
Speaker 1: we're not going to talk about this one, but uh,
Speaker 1: I know people will ask why we didn't include it,
Speaker 1: which is the katakui Ningio, which are Japanese automeda uh
Speaker 1: that are generally referenced from like sixteenth through early nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and I really think they deserve their own podcasts, so
Speaker 1: stay tuned. It would be weird to talk about robots
Speaker 1: and not mentioned Japan at Also I wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure we at least pointed those out. Uh. They also
Speaker 1: kind of go past the point in history where we
Speaker 1: wanted to do the cut off so much the early
Speaker 1: it's a little later than early. Some of it's in
Speaker 1: this realm that I was talking about, but it goes
Speaker 1: on a little bit further, and there are many different types,
Speaker 1: and I feel like they just they deserve their own
Speaker 1: whole little discussion because they're really quite amazing. But uh,
Speaker 1: those are, like I said, a little sampling of historical
Speaker 1: robotics and automoeda that I just I think it's sort
Speaker 1: of beautiful and wonderful that going back these thousands of years,
Speaker 1: we've always been obsessed with creating sort of mechanized versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves and other natural elements of world, right, and
Speaker 1: a lot of these to remind me of stuff that
Speaker 1: happened much later, or things that that later would not
Speaker 1: have been quite so impressive, like the Um you look
Speaker 1: at the movie Hugo and the book that it was
Speaker 1: based off of, like that was a much more recent
Speaker 1: era of of clockworks and steam based things and automata
Speaker 1: that could write things. Um, and this predates those sort
Speaker 1: of things by some hundreds of years. Yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: very cool. So that's historical robots will hopefully do more
Speaker 1: perhaps in the future, in addition of the Japanese ones,
Speaker 1: because robots are awesome, They're really cool. I also, as
Speaker 1: as we're reading this, I just like every description sort
Speaker 1: of could have ended with the sentence, and then they
Speaker 1: all came to life and the doctor had to come
Speaker 1: and save us. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: for this Saturday classic. Since this is out of the archive,
Speaker 1: if you heard an email address at Facebook, U r
Speaker 1: L or something similar during the course of the show,
Speaker 1: that may be obsolete now, so here is our current
Speaker 1: contact information. We are at history Podcasts at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, and then we're at Missed in the History.
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