Automaton

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This article is about a self-operating machine. For other uses of Automaton, see Automaton (disambiguation).

A drummer automaton

An automaton (plural: automata) is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. Used colloquially, it refers to a mindless follower.

Etymology

Automaton, from the Greek automatos, “acting of one’s own will, self-moving,” is more often used to describe non-electronic moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions, such as the jacks on old public striking clocks, or the cuckoo and any other animated figures on a cuckoo clock.

Ancient automata

The automata of ancient Egypt were intended as toys or tools for demonstrating basic scientific principles, including those built by Hero of Alexandria. When his writings on hydraulics, pneumatics, and mechanics were translated into Latin in the sixteenth century, Hero’s readers initiated reconstruction of his machines, which included siphons, a fire engine, a water organ, and various steam-powered devices.

Complex mechanical devices are known to have existed in ancient Greece, though the only surviving example is the Antikythera mechanism. It is thought to have come from Rhodes, where there was apparently a tradition of mechanical engineering. The island was renowned for its automata; to quote Pindar's seventh Olympic Ode:

The animated figures stand

Adorning every public street

And seem to breathe in stone, or

move their marble feet.

Automata from the 16th to the 18th century

The first recorded design of a humanoid automaton is credited to Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1495. The design of Leonardo's robot was not rediscovered until the 1950s. The robot, which appears in Leonardo's sketches, could, if built successfully, move its arms, twist its head, and sit up. The device was built (with a few modern mechanical advances in mind) and it actually functioned.

The Renaissance witnessed a considerable revival of interest in automata. Hero's treatises were edited and translated into Latin and Italian. Numerous clockwork automata were manufactured in the sixteenth century, principally by the goldsmiths of the Free Imperial Cities of central Europe. These wondrous devices found a home in the cabinets of curiosities or Wunderkammern of the princely courts of Europe. Hydraulic and pneumatic automata, similar to those described by Hero, were created for garden grottoes.

A new attitude towards automata is to be found in Descartes when he suggested that the bodies of animals are nothing more than complex machines - the bones, muscles and organs could be replaced with cogs, pistons and cams. Thus mechanism became the standard to which Nature and the organism was compared. Seventeenth-century France was the birthplace of those ingenious mechanical toys that were to become prototypes for the engines of the industrial revolution. Thus, in 1649, when Louis XIV was still a child, an artisan named Camus designed for him a miniature coach, and horses complete with footmen, page and a lady within the coach; all these figures exhibited a perfect movement. According to P. Labat, General de Gennes constructed, in 1688, in addition to machines for gunnery and navigation, a peacock that walked and ate. The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher produced many automatons to create jesuit shows, including a statue which spoke and listened via a speaking tube, a perpetual motion machine, or a cat piano which would drive spikes into the tails of cats which yowled to specified pitches, although he is not known to have actually constructed the instrument. He also wrote an early description of the magic lantern, in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1671).

The world's first successfully-built biomechanical automaton is considered to be The Flute Player, invented by the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737. He also constructed a mechanical duck that could eat and defecate, seeming to endorse Cartesian ideas that animals are no more than machines of flesh.

In 1769, a chess-playing automaton called the Turk, created by Wolfgang von Kempelen, made the rounds of the courts of Europe, but in fact was a famous hoax, operated from inside by a hidden human operator.

Other Eighteenth Century automaton makers include the prolific Frenchman Pierre Jaquet-Droz (see Jaquet-Droz automata) and his contemporary Henri Maillardet. Maillardet, a Swiss mechanician, created an automaton capable of drawing four pictures and writing three poems. Maillardet's Automaton is now part of the collections at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia.

Tea-serving Japanese automaton, "karakuri", with mechanism (right), 19th century.

According to philosopher Michel Foucault, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, was "obsessed" with automata See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, New York, Vintage Books, 1979, p.136: "The classical age discovered the body as object and target of power... The great book of Man-the-Machine was written simultaneously on two registers: the anatomico-metaphysical register, of which Descartes wrote the first pages and which the physicians and philosophers continued, and the technico-political register, which was constituted by a whole set of regulations and by empirical and calculated methods relating to the army, the school and the hospital, for controlling or correcting the operations of the body. These two registers are quite distinct, since it was a question, on one hand, of submission and use and, on the other, of functioning and explanation: there was a useful body and an intelligible body... The celebrated automata [of the 18th century] were not only a way of illustrating an organism, they were also political puppets, small-scale models of power: Frederick, the meticulous king of small machines, well-trained regiments and long exercises, was obsessed with them." . According to Manuel de Landa, "he put together his armies as a well-oiled clockwork mechanism whose components were robot-like warriors. No individual initiative was allowed to Frederick's soldiers; their only role was to cooperate in the creation of walls of projectiles through synchronized firepower. Under the pressure of the increased accuracy and range of firearms, military commanders in the following centuries were forced to grant responsibility to the individual soldier, to let him run for cover or stalk the enemy, for instance. The human will returned to the battlefield." Manuel de Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, p.127, Swerve Editions, New York, 1991

Japan adopted automata during the Edo period (1603-1867); they were known as Karakuri.

Contemporary automata

Contemporary automata continue this tradition with an emphasis on art, rather than technological sophistication. Contemporary automata are represented by the works of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre in the United Kingdom and Dug North in the United States.

A fascinating evolution of the mechanized toys developed during the 18th and 19th century is represented by automata made with paper. The possibility to export the complete design throughout the world with a simple click of the mouse gives paper automata (and in general paper modelling) a great impact. Despite the relative simplicity of the material, paper automata intrinsically are objects with a high degree of technology, where the principles of mechanics meet the artistic creativity. Popular sites where to find paper automata are, among others: [paperPino], [Flying Pig], [Paper Machines]. Automata is also the proper term used when describing Sim City 4 vehicles.

Other historic examples

Other notable examples of automata include Archytas's dove, mentioned by Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. L. 10; and Regiomontanus's wooden eagle and iron fly, the former which, as Hakewill relates, flew forth of the city, met the emperor, saluted him, and returned. It is said that the iron fly flew out of Regiomontanus's hands at a feast, and taking a round, returned to him.This article incorporates content from the 1728 Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain. [link]

Automata in fiction

An Automaton from Final Fantasy XI Online

• L. Frank Baum's Tik-Tok, the "Mechanical Man of Oz", is a sentient man made of clockwork.
• K. W. Jeter's 1987 Infernal Devices features an intelligent automaton called the Paganinicon.
• In August Eschenburg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Steven Millhauser, writes the story of a clockmaker's son who spent his life building fantastical automata in 1870s Germany.
• In the 1993 role-playing game [[Ultima VII#Part Two: Serpent Isle|Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle]], automata were used by the local inhabitants. It was possible to create an automata via the create automata spell, which could then join your party.
• In 2000 video role-playing game Grandia II, the automata were soulless battle machines invented during the war between Granas and Valmar (good and evil god, respectively) about 10,000 years prior to the events of the game. One of them, Tio, joins the player's party at a certain point.
• In 2002 adventure game Syberia and its sequel, Syberia II, the automata were a key plot device crucial to completing the main quest. Automatons' unique feature that set them apart from normal clockwork mechanisms was that they possessed a soul implanted into them by their creator, Hans Voralberg.
• In 2006, Square Enix introduced the Automaton into the world of Final Fantasy XI Online as a new gameplay feature in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan Expansion Pack.
• In the PC game Arcanum you can uppgrade your mechanical spider into a steam-powered automaton
• Automatons feature as a higher level enemy in the videogame Morrowind.
• Popular childrens and young adult author Philip Pullman has written a book entitled Clockwork, which deals with automata.
• The 2006 Doctor Who episode The Girl in the Fireplace featured dangerous space-age automata from the 51st Century running rampant in the 18th.

References