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250 Making Things Move

Automatons and Mechanical Toys
Automatons and mechanical toys provide some of the earliest examples of kinetic
design. Early automatons were sometimes incredibly complex combinations of cams,
linkages, springs, and components, often in the form of dolls or mannequins. These
dolls could write poems or play the flute, based only on the interactions of mechanical
parts, without any electronics, sensors, or feedback. They were powered by hand,
steam, or water.
The earliest recorded automatons appeared in Egypt around the second or third
century BC and were used as teaching tools to explore physical laws through
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movement. The Greeks and Arabs were next to pick up the craft, followed by a dead
period during the Middle Ages when most mechanical devices were condemned as
pagan magic. Fortunately, this period ended, and by the fourteenth century,
automatons began to appear in the huge cathedral clocks all across Europe.

One early example of a humanoid automaton is a robot that Leonardo DaVinci designed
around 1495 (see Figure 8-14). We don’t know if he actually built it while he was alive,
but a few people have used his plans to create models that confirm that it works as
intended. The French would-be priest Jacques de Vaucanson dropped out of his training
when the Jesuit priests destroyed the angel automatons he designed for their apparent
heresy. He went on to create the Digesting Duck in 1739, which looked, quacked, and
crapped like a real duck through an elaborate system of cams and followers. Pierre
Jacquet-Droz, a Swiss clockmaker, was another master of elaborate automatons. He
created a little mechanical family with a writer, a draftsman, and an organ player around
1772. Henri Maillardet created a similar drawing automaton in 1810, which is on
permanent exhibit at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and has been restored to
create some of its original drawings.

Once making a living from selling and exhibiting elaborate automatons became
impractical in the late 1800s, similar mechanisms gave way to mechanical toys, music
boxes, and clocks that could be mass-produced. In many of the toys, you could crank
a handle, which wound a spring, which then stored energy that would go about
powering the toy. Simple string-pull jumping jack toys and other mechanical figures
were manufactured by the thousands and sold all across Europe.
When some of these makers immigrated to the United States, the traditions of different
countries merged into American folk art and toy design. Alexander Calder, a mechanical