Mechanical people and beasts - automatons - entertained kings, shahs and kings, frightened sinners and advertised watchmaker workshops. About the most outstanding examples of old robots, including those in Russia - and a little more about fake ones - in our text.
Do you know the legend of the Prague Golem? It was created by the scientist and thinker Loew ben Bezalel (1512-1609), who lived in Prague. A huge clay man, in whose mouth a tablet with the name of God was put, carried out the orders of his creator and helped him in the household. But one day the Golem (in Hebrew - "fool") escaped, began to destroy everything around and kill people. Only Rabbi Loew was able to stop him by ripping the tablet out of his mouth. The golem fell apart and its parts, according to legend, are still kept in the Old New Synagogue in Prague.
Of course, it is unlikely that Leo, a major halachic authority, friend and teacher of astronomer Tycho Brahe, created humanoid mechanisms. But he sometimes had to heal the insane, and, apparently, the legend of the Golem is based on a real precedent, when one of the idiotic "patients" of the rabbi, a man of enormous height and physical strength, who may have helped him with the household, burst out of the rooms where he was held. The legend, however, reflects the constant dream of a person to create something similar to himself in order to: 1) transfer some of his functions to him; 2) surprise others; 3) finally, to feel like the Creator.
Antiquity androids
Automatons are mechanical devices that mimic the activity of living organisms. Information about the first automatons has been found since antiquity. Homer's Odyssey mentions golden and silver dogs, which the god Hephaestus forged to guard the palace of King Alkinoy. Judaic texts tell of the throne of King Solomon, that on its six steps there were pairs of golden lions and eagles. The king, ascending to the throne, pressed his feet on the steps of the throne seat, and the animals began to move.
The throne of King Solomon.
This legend inspired many throne places that sought to be like the throne of Solomon, for example, the throne seat of Emperor Constantine (10th century, Constantinople), equipped with roaring lions and singing birds. There was such a throne in Russia!
Promotional video:
Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's automaton
In 1672-1673, a foreigner, watchmaker Peter Vysotsky created mechanical lions in the palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in Kolomenskoye for the throne of the king. Made of metal and covered with sheepskin, they roared with bellows, which were controlled by palace servants from a room adjacent to the throne room.
Modern reconstruction of the throne place of Alexei Mikhailovich in the Kolomna Palace. Lions roar and roll their heads - but these effects have already been achieved by quite modern means.
Automatons were widely used for ritual purposes in Ancient Greece, from where the word android came from - from the Greek "man, man" with the suffix oid - "likeness" - "humanoid". During the annual Eleusinian Mysteries, mechanical sculptures of the gods were used. Herodotus mentions speaking figures at the entrance to the temples. It is known that Archytas of Tarentum (428 - 347 BC) created a flying wooden dove on a spring mechanism that flew about 200 meters, and in the 3rd century BC. Philo of Byzantine invented a mechanical servant who mixed wine and water in one vessel thanks to the simplest laws of physics.
Scheme of work * Servant * Philo of Byzantium.
From entertainment to serious mechanics
Philo of Byzantine was known as the inventor of simple trinkets. For example, he invented an octagonal inkwell with a hole on each side that never spilled. In this toy, the gimbal first invented by Philo was used, so it is to him that we, in some part, should be grateful for the gimbal.
But the real glory of Philo was brought by the mechanisms in which water (or wine - as in a servant) was used. The Arab world had its own “master of water” - al-Jazari (1136-1206), whose most famous invention was the “elephant clock”. This is how they worked:
Like Philo of Byzantium, Al-Jazari, in addition to making toys, made a breakthrough in mechanics. In his "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices," he first described the crankshaft. Thanks to this invention, a boat was created with four mechanical musicians capable of playing different melodies, and they could be programmed in some way.
Robots of the East
The countries of the East, which developed their science separately, also made their automatons. It is known that in the XI century in India was written "Samarangana sutradhara" - a treatise on architecture and mechanics, which included descriptions of automatons, including even mechanical bees.
In Japan, automatons have their own name - Karakuri dolls. They were of three types: theatrical, miniature (household toys) and religious purposes - these participated in festivals and ceremonies, just like automatons in ancient Greece. The fashion for karakuri in Japan lasted from the 17th to the 19th century. Here is one of them.
And here is an example of a Chinese automaton:
Fake Automatons: The Turk-Chess Player and the Iron Man of Ivan the Terrible
Of course, under the guise of automatons, toys were sometimes displayed, controlled by people sitting inside. The most famous of these fakes is the Turok chess machine, which was presented in 1769 in Vienna by its creator, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804).
Chess machine "Turok".
A wooden figure of a Turk in a turban and with a pipe was sitting behind a large box with a board. Before the session, the inventor opened the drawer doors and showed the inner structure of the "Turk". To start the game, Kempelen wound up the mechanism by turning the knob, and the Turk, taking a piece, made the first move in the game. The automatic machine required a constant winding - the baron did this after every 12 moves.
The machine always beat its rivals. Emperor Joseph II decided to show it in Europe - in Paris, the machine gun beat Benjamin Franklin, the American ambassador to France, and then was presented to Catherine II in St. Petersburg. The Empress inquiringly examined the mechanism, unable to believe in its reality, then tried to buy it from Kempelen, but the inventor refused - they say, the machine requires maintenance, which only he can provide, and the baron cannot move to Russia.
After Kempelen's death in 1804, the assault rifle was acquired by Johann Melzel, a musician, Beethoven's friend and adventurer. In 1809, an automaton in Vienna played chess against Napoleon - and beat him! There is a record of this game, which gave the world the so-called "Napoleon's debut" - an awkward attempt by the emperor to put a child's mat on the machine.
Late reconstruction of the von Kempelen automaton.
Of course, there was a man in the machine. The secret was revealed in 1834 by Jean Mouret, one of the chess players who played for the "Turk"; he just took it and laid it out in a newspaper article. Melzel had already toured America by that time, but there, too, exposure overtook him - in 1836 a devastating article about the machine gun was published by the writer Edgar Allan Poe. Melzel soon died, and the machine gun ended up in a museum in Philadelphia, where it was studied in detail and where it was burned down in 1854.
The gears and mechanisms that were shown to the public before the performance were in the box only for a diversion. There was enough room for an adult in a reclining position. When the doors were opened, it was hidden by a system of mirrors. There were two real mechanisms: levers, with the help of which the player from the box controlled the movements of the turk-dummy, and a system that showed the player the moves. The figures had magnets, and a ball hung on a vertical thread under each field of the board inside the box. When the figure was raised - and the magnet was removed - the ball lowered, and when moving to an empty cage, the ball that had been hanging freely rose up.
The strongest chess player in Austria, Johann Baptist Allgaier, played against Napoleon in 1809. Also for the machine were the Englishman William Lewis, the Frenchman Aaron Alexander and others. During its history, out of 300 games played, the machine has lost six.
The greatest of automatons - Jacquet-Droz dolls
True European automatons were much more modest. Of course, they could not play chess. In the 1560s, King Philip II of Spain ordered a mechanical monk from the master Juanelo Turriano, the court mechanic of Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor). The automaton survived, is stored at the Smithsonian Institution in the United States and provides an idea of the technical level of automatons of that time.
Such or similar mechanisms were used in Italy, where the ancient Greek experience was revived: in the churches one could see mechanical devils making terrible grimaces. By the 18th century, more sophisticated automatons began to appear, for example, toys by the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson. His robotic flutist really played the flute - the bellows pumped air, and his fingers took the correct chords and led the melody. The "Drummer" automaton played up to 20 different rhythms on cymbals and a drum. But most of all the duck became famous, which "ate" food and then defecated. Of course, the food fell into one tank inside the duck, and after a while the bird droppings that had been placed in advance fell out of the other.
Vaucanson's duck.
But the pinnacle of the art of automatons are three dolls by Pierre Jaquet-Droz: "Musician", "Writer" and "Drawer". Created in the 1770s, they are kept in a museum in Neuchâtel, the birthplace of the inventor, and still work today!
The authentic automatons of Pierre Jaquet-Droz.
Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born in the canton of Neuchâtel in 1721 and from the age of 16 he was engaged in the creation of the most complicated watches in which he used an automatic mechanism, as well as built jukeboxes in them and equipped them with moving figures.
Pierre Jaquet-Droz.
In 1758, Jacquet-Droz went to Spain, where he managed to sell several of his devices to the royal house for a fantastic sum of 2,000 golden pistols - about 17 kilograms of gold! Of course, after such an order, Jacquet-Droz became a European star, devoted himself entirely to watchmaking and created his automatons as the pinnacle of his art. This is how they work.
The Clerk is the most complex of Jacquet-Droz's masterpieces. It consists of more than 4,000 parts and is capable of writing text no more than 40 characters long, and he writes with a goose pen, which he dipped in an inkwell. The automaton adjusts the tilt and pressure of the pen depending on the letter, monitors its writing with its eyes and even shakes off drops from the pen. All this happens thanks to the finest tuned cam mechanism. Moreover, the mechanism can be programmed by swapping the cams corresponding to the letters!
The device of the "Writer".
“Musician” and “Drawer” are simpler automatons. "Musician" in the form of a girl playing a real organ. She sways to the beat, "breathes" and can perform several melodies to choose from. The "draftsman" can draw Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the dog and Cupid in the Garden of Eden. It is amazing with what grace and gentleness all the creations of Jacquet-Droz still work!
Jacquet-Droz's automatons were first demonstrated in 1774, and since then such a flood of visitors has poured into his workshop that the robots were taken on a whole European tour. Then the automatons were bought by some Spanish rich man. Only in 1906 the Society for the History and Archeology of Neuchâtel bought the automatons and placed them in the museum.
"Revived tree" - the last Russian automaton
Automatons of varying degrees of difficulty were very popular in the 19th century - for example, all the glory and fall of the Turk-chess player fell on this time. But with the onset of the 20th century, by the beginning of the First World War, the production of automatons practically disappeared. In the twentieth century, automatons were replaced by a massive clockwork toy. One of the last known toy automatons was the most complex Russian automaton, "The Revived Tree" by the Simbirsk master Alexei Morozov.
This is a one and a half by one and a half meters table, on which there are 62 dolls performing various chores. The dolls are set in motion by rotating the handle. All parts, gears, levers of the mechanism are made of wood. This automaton was made between 1905 and 1912. With "Living Tree" Morozov traveled to cities and villages, demonstrating an amazing toy for money - and earned. In 1923 his fame reached the very top - Alexei Antonovich was invited to the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition, the "progenitor" of VDNKh, where he was awarded a diploma and a medal. However, then Morozov again sank into obscurity. His automaton miraculously survived - for many years the dolls were gathering dust in the attic, until the local master puppeteer restored the toy to work. Now she is presented in the museum of the Ulyanovsk Puppet Theater.