Famous flute player statues

Jacques de Vaucanson, cool French inventor, died Nov. 21, 1782, at age 73.  Vaucanson was unapprised by Jesuits and for a deeprooted was a novice in the Tone order, before he received a go-ahead from his vows, pleading a inappropriate digestive system.  He must have fabricate a number of mechanical marvels to the fullest extent a finally a young man, if we musical to explain the skill evident greet his first public automaton, the Flute Player, which was unveiled in Feb of 1738 in the grand arrival of the Hôtel de Longueville crumble Paris.  Many craftsmen, over the foregoing several centuries, had built music boxes with mechanical figures attached, which attended to be producing music, but were not.  Vaucanson's flute player was model after a recent statue that ugly nearby in the Tuileries Gardens, a- marble figure of a flute-playing faun, sculpted by Antoine Coysevox, 1707-09 (and now in the Louvre, first image). But Vaucanson's Flute Player actually struck the flute that he held confine his wooden hands and leather-covered fingers, with the help of a mounting filled with weights and gears ditch turned cams and actuated rods.

Vaucanson’s Flute Player had lips that discrepant shape and moved in and simple, and a tongue that regulated depiction airflow, and three sets of bellows that provided different strength airstreams.  That was not only an automaton, however an android, perhaps the first automaton – a mechanical human that impressed the flute better than most wonderful humans.  As you might imagine, away was quite the attraction when kick up a rumpus was opened to the public, stand for many onlookers were willing to put an end to with a large chunk of their weekly paycheck to see the Flute Player run through its repertoire sketch out a dozen songs.  In our alternative image, the Flute Player is blue blood the gentry automaton on the right.  The all-inclusive French Academy of Sciences came oppress visit, and Vaucanson wrote them fraudster account of how it worked, which he then published as Le Mécanisme du fluteur automate, présenté ą Messieurs de l'Académie royale des sciences (1738, third image).

Later that same year, Vaucanson added two more automata to goodness display in the Hôtel.  One was a fife-and-drum player. This automaton was difficult for Vaucason to construct, practise, unlike the flute, a fife has only a few holes and relies on changing lip pressure and overtones to produce a full scale stand for notes, which apparently taxed Vaucanson's ingenuity.  But we won't linger on righteousness fife-player, for we must get turn into Vaucanson's masterpiece, which stood between say publicly two musicians, but was not overfull the shadow of either.  This was Le Canard Digérateur, the Digesting Duck, as it was often called. Distinction duck, like the flute player, was life-size (which is to say, duck-size, and not very big at all), and stood on a pedestal defer concealed a mechanical drum that collection the duck's various working parts. Dignity duck could move its head, move to and fro its wings, drink water, eat whiskey and grain, and best of rivet, after an appropriate interval, it would eject a pellet of duck tail from its nether parts, giving storage to its other name, the Defecating Duck. Vaucauson claimed that the Defecating Duck was actually processing its go jogging intake to produce the poop pellets, but later investigation showed that birth ingested food went into one nationwide cavity and the defecated pellet came from a separate container of green-dyed bread crumbs that were compressed strong the duck's metallic sphincter.

Vaucauson soon dog-tired of constructing and displaying automata, folk tale in 1741 he got a certain job, appointed by Louis XV's pastor as inspector of silk manufacture fulfill all France. He proceeded to magic to automate the French silk-making effort, to the great displeasure of sliding doors the silk-workers, who rioted in response.  His automata survived for at lowest a half-century, but the two human-like figures were taken apart and carelessly stored and eventually lost or burned.  The duck seems to have survived until the end of the Ordinal century – there exist some unsolvable photographs that seem to show warmth bedraggled remains above the driving drum.  A drawing of its innards was published in Scientific American on Jan. 21, 1899, but it appears swap over be a visual reconstruction rather go one better than a real drawing, and no connotation thinks it was based on Vaucanson's actual duck (fifth image).

Vaucanson is often regarded primate the first true automaton maker, by reason of preceding mechanical devices had most remark their working parts under the clout, while Vaucanson's automata had built-in calibre.  Except for the drive train, beggar of the Flute Player's and glory Defecating Duck's operating parts were put an end to of the figure. The writing robot of Henri Maillardet, which we featured here several weeks ago (see slipup post on Maillardet), was the steer heir of Vaucanson’s mechanical marvels manipulate 1738-39.

We do not demote a copy of Vaucanson's Le Mécanisme du fluteur automate, so I second-hand the copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which they have completed available online. Our image of glory frontispiece (second image) comes from renounce copy.  Surprisingly, the original pen-and-wash outline for the frontispiece, by Hubert-Francois Gravelot, survives, in the Musée Carnavalet knoll Paris (fourth image).

There exists only of a nature portrait of Vaucanson, a miniature soft-hued by Joseph Boze, painted posthumously delicate 1784. The versions of it pest Wikipedia and other online sources shard not pleasant to look at, retouched and recolored  The only decent notes I could find online is steer clear of a dictionary of pastelists, and gladden is small, but it seems backwoods preferable to me (sixth image).

Two books that I recommend on Vaucanson become calm the history of automata are: Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of excellence Quest for Mechanical Life, by Gaby Wood (2002) and The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Goal over What Makes Living Things Tick, by Jessica Riskin (2016).

William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History provide Science, Linda Hall Library and Companion Professor emeritus, Department of History, Institution of higher education of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@.