Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: boglebam Here. In this our twenty first century, we've become
Speaker 1: pretty much accustomed to the idea of robots being able
Speaker 1: to move around, almost like people or other animals. It
Speaker 1: doesn't always go smoothly. Robot fail videos are one of
Speaker 1: my favorite categories, but we've seen robots do everything from
Speaker 1: put together a car to run a foot race. However,
Speaker 1: the idea of automata, meaning moving mechanical devices sometimes designed
Speaker 1: to imitate life, actually dates back thousands of years. The
Speaker 1: word automaton is derived from the ancient Greek word automatose,
Speaker 1: which means self acting, and the Greeks built some of
Speaker 1: the earliest machines that emulated living creatures, from mechanical dolphins
Speaker 1: and eagles that entertained crowds at the Olympic Games to
Speaker 1: a mechanical puppet theater. In Renaissance Europe, churchgoers marveled at
Speaker 1: mechanized angels. In fourteen ninety five, Leonardo da Vinci designed
Speaker 1: a robotic night that could move its limbs, though it's
Speaker 1: not clear whether he ever actually built it. In the
Speaker 1: early eighteen hundreds, a particularly marvelous human like machine reached
Speaker 1: new heights of complexity and even mimicked human's artistic self expression.
Speaker 1: Or we are talking about Maillard Day's automaton, a device
Speaker 1: created around the year eighteen hundred by Swiss mechanical designer
Speaker 1: on remailar Day, who worked in London building clocks and
Speaker 1: other machines. The automaton, which resembles a human boy sitting
Speaker 1: at a table with a pen in hand, is capable
Speaker 1: of making four different detailed drawings and writing out three
Speaker 1: different poems, two in French and one in English. This
Speaker 1: automaton is currently housed by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: one of the nation's foremost science and technology education centers,
Speaker 1: which acquired the automaton from the estate of a wealthy
Speaker 1: philadelph back in nineteen twenty eight and has spent decades
Speaker 1: restoring and maintaining it Before the article This episode is
Speaker 1: based on How Stuffworks. Spoke by email with Susannah Carrol, now,
Speaker 1: the director of Collections and curator at the Franklin Institute.
Speaker 1: She said the significance of the Malar Day automaton is
Speaker 1: that it has one of the largest working memories of
Speaker 1: any existing automaton from the same time period by memory.
Speaker 1: She's not talking about computer chips. Instead. The memory of
Speaker 1: Maillard Day's automaton is in the form of brass discs
Speaker 1: called cams, which are turned by a clockwork motor powered
Speaker 1: by springs. You wind up with a large key. Three
Speaker 1: steel rods with sort of teeth on the end follow
Speaker 1: the cam's irregular edges. These followers are connected to a
Speaker 1: complex system of levers and rods that translate those movements
Speaker 1: up the figure's body and down into its writing hand,
Speaker 1: thus producing incredibly smooth side to side, front and back
Speaker 1: and up and down movements. The figure also appears to
Speaker 1: follow its works with its eyes and head. If you've
Speaker 1: never seen it in action, go check out a video.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe not right now, but you know when
Speaker 1: you get a chance. And Carol said. Though automated machines
Speaker 1: and even human like machines were written about and probably
Speaker 1: even created thousands of years ago, automata of this size
Speaker 1: were not common at all. The Mallar Day automaton was
Speaker 1: an engineering accomplishment and continues to be an impressive wonder
Speaker 1: of machinery and skill. I would define it as an
Speaker 1: example of the apex of a type of automaton with
Speaker 1: limitations defined by the time period in which it was made.
Speaker 1: Unlike the larger humanoid machines created in the Renaissance, which
Speaker 1: were powered by water displacement or pulley systems, most of
Speaker 1: the automata of the period in which malar Day worked
Speaker 1: were just a few inches in size, with miniature clockwork
Speaker 1: mechanisms designed to replicate animals such as birds and frogs.
Speaker 1: Creating these small, intricate devices was a complex task, Carol explained.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a single automaton would be created by workshops in
Speaker 1: different countries. For example, the mechanism may be made in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: the enameling or gilding may be done in France, and
Speaker 1: then the automaton would be sold in England. Records are
Speaker 1: rare for the automata that remain in existence, so it
Speaker 1: can be a challenge to figure out who built them.
Speaker 1: Maillard Day's automaton clear set up all by itself, though
Speaker 1: the automaton puts its signature on the final drawing that's
Speaker 1: programmed for, and that signature reads by the automaton of
Speaker 1: malar Day. Mailar Day learned how to build human like
Speaker 1: machines as an apprentice of Pierre jacquet Rose, an eighteenth
Speaker 1: century Swiss clockmaker, watchmaker and master mechanic. Jacquey Rose's complex
Speaker 1: and extravagantly decorated automata and time pieces caught the attention
Speaker 1: of the royal courts of Yearurope and far away China,
Speaker 1: and for a brief but awkward period, the Spanish Inquisition,
Speaker 1: which suspected him of witchcraft until he demonstrated his piece's
Speaker 1: inner workings. Jacquey Dros's shops in London and Geneva produced,
Speaker 1: among whole flocks of tiny singing birds, a large scale automata,
Speaker 1: including a nearly life scale child sitting at a desk
Speaker 1: that writes real notes on paper with a feather quill.
Speaker 1: Created sometime around seventeen seventy, That piece, called The Writer,
Speaker 1: is currently down for repairs, but it and two other
Speaker 1: jacquey DROs automata, the Draftsmen and the Musician, are on
Speaker 1: display at the Art and History Museum in Nuschittel, Switzerland.
Speaker 1: The two working pieces perform public demonstrations there on the
Speaker 1: first Sunday of every month. Some historians consider these to
Speaker 1: be some of the earliest working mechanical computers, albeit with
Speaker 1: read only programs created decades before visionaries like Charles Babbage
Speaker 1: and Ada Lovelace were even born. All of this is
Speaker 1: to say that malar Day learned from the best. When
Speaker 1: he struck out on his own and opened his own
Speaker 1: workshop in London, he pushed the art and science of
Speaker 1: building automata even further. Carol said it probably would have
Speaker 1: taken three crafts people around two years to design and
Speaker 1: construct an automaton like the one in our collection. Skills
Speaker 1: in watch in clockmaking would be instrumental in constructing an automaton.
Speaker 1: A metal spitting material, science, precision, creativity, patience all would
Speaker 1: likely play a role. Mailar Day's automaton was designed primarily
Speaker 1: to amaze and entertain audiences at exhibitions. He and other
Speaker 1: watch and clockmakers would travel with their large automata to
Speaker 1: create an experience that would make a powerful impression upon spectators,
Speaker 1: most of whom had never seen sophisticated mechanical technology. Carol explained,
Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundreds, people were still looking at the
Speaker 1: town hall or church clock, which may have had automata
Speaker 1: to see the time. Pocket watches were not yet widely
Speaker 1: worn by the general public. A Maillard Day toured Europe
Speaker 1: with the automaton until his death in eighteen thirty, reaching
Speaker 1: as far east as Russia. After that, the machine's history
Speaker 1: becomes sketchy. It's possible that P. T. Barnum acquired the
Speaker 1: device and put it on display in his museums in
Speaker 1: New York City. In Philadelphia, the device may have been
Speaker 1: damaged in one of the fires that destroyed both museums
Speaker 1: before it somehow came into the possession of the Brock
Speaker 1: family in Philadelphia. Automata continued to be popular entertainment into
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds, such as the mechanical fortune tellers at
Speaker 1: amusement parks, but the fascination with them gradually faded. After all,
Speaker 1: even more spectacular and world changing technologies emerged during the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, from airplanes to television to home computers. Carol said,
Speaker 1: maybe there were so many advances in storing data like
Speaker 1: the Malar day Automaton's seven programs to what we have
Speaker 1: now that we just leapt from mechanical to our computerized robots. However,
Speaker 1: automatad do live on as entertainment today. Disney leaned into
Speaker 1: the concept in the nineteen sixties, revamping the technology to
Speaker 1: include electrical and eventually electronic and computerized elements. These audio
Speaker 1: Animatronics trademark are all over Disney theme parks, from the
Speaker 1: Birds in the Enchanted Tiki Room to the Pirates in
Speaker 1: Pirates of the Caribbean, two new figures in Star Wars Galaxies.
Speaker 1: Edge Carol said, replicating life has always been an interesting endeavor.
Speaker 1: It is an ultimate challenge to the machinist and forces
Speaker 1: the viewer to question what it means to be human,
Speaker 1: similar to humanoid robots today. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article Mailar Day's Automaton is a marble of nineteenth
Speaker 1: century robotics on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Kiger.
Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot
Speaker 1: Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. But four more
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