Category: Timeline Stories

Around 1800, the Swiss mechanician and clockmaker Henri Maillardet (1745-1830), who worked then in London, created an extraordinary automaton, known today as the “Draughtsman-Writer”. Maillardet’s machine had the largest “memory” (cam-based) of any such machine ever constructed, enough to create four drawings and three poems (two in French and one in English), producing a drawing or poem in about three minutes.

The “Draughtsman-Writer” (see the nearby image), still preserved in the Franklin Institute science museum in Philadelphia, is a spring-activated automaton that draws pictures and writes verses in both French and English. It was made of brass, steel, wood, and fiber, and has dimensions: 147 × 88 × 57 cm, weight 181.4 kg. The motions of the hand are produced by a series of 72 stacked cams located on shafts in the base of the automaton, which produce the necessary movement to complete seven sketches and the text. As steel levers follow hills and valleys cut into the edges of the rotating cams, the right hand moves smoothly along three axes—side to side, to and fro, up and down. An additional pair of cams at one end of the stack controls the movements of the head and by clever extensions the eyes, eyelids, and left hand.

In the early 1800s, Henri Maillardet traveled around exhibiting his automata throughout England and in several European cities. For example, on 21 November 1821, in Freeman’s Journal (a Dublin paper) it appeared a long advertisement beginning thus:
MR. MAILLARDET
MOST respectfully informs the Nobility, Gentry, &c. &c. of Dublin and its Vicinity, that he has opened for their inspection, AT THE ROTUNDA, CAVENDISH-ROW, HIS MECHANICAL MUSEUM Containing the following Automaton Figures:
There follows a long list, with details of the actions of some of the figures, which included La Belle Roxalana (a musical lady), The Juvenile Artist, The Little Spaniard, an animated Rope Dancer, An Old Necromancer, a hummingbird, a Phenomenon Automaton Pedestrian, a beautiful gold serpent, a Siberian mouse, an Ethiopian caterpillar, an Egyptian lizard, and an aranea.

The Juvenile Artist automaton, mentioned above, was obviously our Draughtsman-Writer. Later Maillardet made another automaton that could write, it wrote in Chinese and was made for the Emperor of China as a gift from King George III of England. The Draughtsman-Writer plays a crucial supporting role in the Martin Scorsese film, “Hugo,” and in the 2007 illustrated novel the film was based on, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” by Brian Selznick.

The Siberian Mouse (see the nearby image) is perhaps the most active and realistic in action of the small animal automata exhibited by Henri Maillardet in England and Ireland in the early 19th century. Of life-size (the body is 5.5 cm. long, and the tail is 7 cm. long), this gold, nylon, pearl, and enamel-made automaton mouse darts forward, twirls nervously fearing a concealed cat, then scampers in a different direction before, reassured, it pauses to nibble at an invisible morsel and sets off once again. When a button below the perky mesh tail is pressed the mouse skitters, twirls, and pauses to sniff the air and nibble in a most realistic manner.

Biography of Henri Maillardet

Jean Henri Nicholas Maillardet was born in Meyriez (the canton of Fribourg) in Switzerland on 19 November 1745, as the second son of Henri (1720-1758) and Marguerite Maillardet (born Kolbe in 1721). Henri married Marguerite in 1739, and they had five children. He was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, canton of Neuchâtel, and served as a community leader (mayor) of the nearby municipality of Fontaines. La Chaux-de-Fonds would become a major watch- and clockmaking center in the 19th century, and at the time of Henri’s birth, the region already had many clockmakers. Henri and his two brothers are said to have been trained in the Jaquet-Droz workshops before establishing themselves as clockmakers in the village of Fontaines, then from 1768 until 1770 Henri together with his younger brother Jean-David worked as pendulistes in Königliche Uhrenfabrik in Berlin for Abraham Louis Huguenin.

By 1770 Henri Maillardet already worked for Pierre Jacquet-Droz and together with his son Henri-Louis, and his apprentices Jean-Frédéric Leschot and Jacob Frisard took part in the construction of three androids, which were finished in 1774, when Jaquet-Droz presented the automata (the Writer, the Artist, and the Musician) to the public in La Chaux-de-Fond.

In the middle 1770s, Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz opened his own production studio in Geneve. The bulk of the production was destined for the Chinese market. When in May 1783 Jaquet-Droz opened a branch in London, the management of the studio in Bartlett’s Building took Henri Maillardet. In 1790, drafts made on their principal correspondent in China came back unpaid and their main client in London failed, putting the company in the red. The partnership with Jaquet-Droz had to be liquidated, but Maillardet directed the workshop in London until 1815.

Henri Maillardet’s brothers—Jaques-Rodolphe (1743-1828) and Jean-David (23.05.1748-15.11.1834), also worked in the field of automatics in their brother’s studio in London, before returning to Fontaines. Jean-David Maillardet became a famous clockmaker and automatist, and worked some time in Berlin, then established himself in Fontaines where he became a friend of Jacquet-Droz. He built many automata together with his brothers, in particular magicians. The Maillardets’ other creations included a series of beautifully automated caterpillars or silkworms.

Henri Maillardet married in 1784 to Jeanne Louise Catherine Mourer, born in 1750 in Lausanne. Two sons from this marriage are known—Edward Frederick (born in 1786 in London, became a dentist), Henry Lewis (b. 1791), and daughter, Louisa Henrietta (1785-1817).

After the death of Pierre Jacquet-Droz and his son, the years between 1791 and 1798 were spent by Leschot in Geneva and Maillardet in London, attempting unsuccessfully to recreate the earlier successes of Jaquet-Droz and Leschot. By 1798, Henri Maillardet seems to have changed direction and set himself up as a showman. He took over the former premises of Cox’s Museum, the Great Promenade Rooms in Spring Gardens. Here, gradually acquiring new attractions, he showed his Wonderful Automatons… consisting of the Mechanical Musical Lady; the entertaining Fortune-Teller; the pleasing Tumbler; and the wonderful Writing Boy, with the beautiful Singing Bird in a Gold Snuff-box. Also a Siberian mouse etc., etc.

Sadly, although apparently retaining a financial interest in the collection of automata for many years as it was taken on a tour around Britain and Europe by various successors, Maillardet fell on hard times and died in penury in Mechelen, Belgium, on 23 August 1830.

The Austro-Hungarian versatile nobleman, scholar, architect, and inventor, Wolfgang von Kempelen, was mainly known for his fraudulent chess-playing Turk automaton, created in 1769. The Turk was considered the most famous illusion in history (it was exhibited with great success in Europe and USA until late 1854 when it was consumed in a fire in Philadelphia), and actually, Kempelen never said that his illusion really played chess by itself. He said that it was “a very ordinary piece of mechanism—a bagatelle whose effects appeared so marvelous only from the boldness of the conception, and the fortunate choice of the methods adopted for promoting the illusion.” We are not going to examine the Turk however, but Kempelen’s Mechanism of Human Speech, which appears to be the first successful speech synthesizer.

Kempelen’s machine was described in 1791 in the published in Vienna book Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine. Kempelen certainly was not the first man, who dreamed to create a “talking machine”. The reproduction of the sound of words by mechanical means was tried many times before.

In the XIII century, Albertus Magnus, one of the most universal thinkers of the Middle Ages, is recorded as having made a mechanical automaton in the form of a brass head that would answer questions put to it. Almost at the same time, such a contraption was also attributed to Roger Bacon. In the XVII century Athanasius Kircher had affirmed that it was possible to produce a head that moved the eyes, lips, and tongue, and, by means of the sounds which it emitted, appeared to be alive. He began such a device to distract Queen Christina of Sweden, but apparently, it was never successfully completed.

A similar project was attempted in 1705 by Johann Valentin Merbitz (1650-1704), rector of the Kreuzschule of Dresden, who devoted five years to it. The next major advance in this field was made in about 1770 by Friedrich von Knauss, who constructed not one but four speaking heads, but his project was not completely successful. A similar device was made in the 1770s by the French educator Abbé Charles-Michel in Paris. Numerous others constructed speaking heads within the next decades, but never with any marked degree of success (with one exception—Joseph Faber).

In 1780, the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia, under the guidance of Leonhard Euler set up a prize for answering the following two questions:
1. What are the nature and the character of the vowel letters a, e, i, o, and u, which so significantly differ from each other?
2. Is it possible to build instruments in the manner of those organ pipes which are known under the term “vox humana” to express the sound of the vowel letters a, e, i, o, and u?

The German scientist Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795) won the prize for answering these questions. He provided pipes that generated the requested vowels. Although his approach can be regarded as an important step towards mechanical speech synthesis, those pipes did not show any similarity to vowel production in a human vocal tract. Furthermore, they only generated static, isolated vowels. With the help of a sort of ‘organ’, an individual key for every single vowel controlled a separate pipe.

In contrast, von Kempelen took an important step forward. He recognized the central role of coarticulation and built this idea into his machine. He said: “Now I started to understand that the single letters could be invented but, in the way I did it, never joined together in syllables, and that I had to follow nature which has only one glottis and only one mouth out of which all sounds are emitted and only for this reason can connect with each other.”

Kempelen successfully finished the construction of his speaking machine in 1778, and the machine was documented in the newspaper literature of that time. The first picture of the machine was given by Karl Hindenburg in 1784. From 1782 to 1784 Kempelen was granted a sabbatical by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II during which he undertook a European journey exhibiting both of his automata. He went through Switzerland, Paris, and London and visited the German fairs at Frankfurt, Dresden, and Leipzig on his way back to Hungary.

The leading ideas behind Kempelen’s approach to a speaking machine can be summarized as follows:
• Since speech sounds are only discernable in relation to one another you have to use a single glottis and a single mouth
• The mouth and tongue are in continuous motion producing obstacles for the sounding air
• And since it is almost mathematically proven that speech = voice passing through openings it follows that for a speaking machine you need nothing else but
• a lung
• a glottis
• a mouth

Kempelen didn’t construct his speaking machine on the base of acoustic theories but went the engineering way of analysis-by-synthesis, namely trial, and error. He was mainly interested in the audible result that should be reached by a simple mechanism as close as possible to our articulatory apparatus (see the lower images) on the one hand and playable like a musical instrument on the other.

Kempelen classifies the vowels according to the width of the lip channel giving a ranking of A > E > I > O > U and the width of the so-called tongue channel that can be interpreted as horizontal tongue position. He goes on to remark that although he tried to produce the different vowels at the same pitch the vowel with a smaller tongue channel seemed to be higher in pitch.

The final version of Kempelen’s machine is preserved to this day in the Department of musical instruments of the Deutsches Museum in Munich (see the lower image). This machine differs from the one described in the book in the presence of a handle, to be operated with the palm of the right hand, by which the oscillating length of the reed can be controlled during speech production. In this way, it can be simulated as a natural course of intonation.

Kempelen’s synthesizer was the first that produced not only some speech sounds but also whole words and short sentences. Kempelen believed that it was possible to acquire skill in using the machine within three weeks, especially if one chose to synthesize sentences in Latin, French, or Italian. German von Kempelen was considered much more difficult to synthesize because of its many closed syllables and consonant clusters.

There is no doubt, that Kempelen’s book Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine was a genuine milestone in the history of phonetics, incorporating many insightful observations on articulatory mechanisms, whereas the speaking machine clearly was a milestone in audio engineering.

Biography of Wolfgang von Kempelen

Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen was born on 23 January 1734 (baptized in St. Martin’s Cathedral under the name Wolfgangus Franciscus de Paola Joannes Elemosinarius) in Preßburg, Habsburg Empire (now Bratislava, Slovakia). He was the son of the noble court counselor and controller of the tax office since 1715 Engelbert Kempelen (1680–1761) (of Irish descent), and his wife Anna Terézia, the daughter of the former mayor of Preßburg Christoph Spindler. The native house of Kempelen is still preserved in Bratislava (see the photo below).

Wolfgang was the youngest of three brothers. The first brother, Andreas Johann Christoph von Kempelen (1716-1752), studied philosophy and law, was secretary of the ambassador in Constantinople and fought in the war of Silesia. He died in 1752 from a lung disease, just after he was appointed as the private teacher of the Austrian heir Prince Joseph. Wolfgang’s second brother, Johannes Nepomuk Joseph von Kempelen Barón de Pázmánd (28 Nov 1725-31 Mar 1801 ), also served in the army and was promoted to the rank of Major General.

Wolfgang Kempelen attended primary school in Preßburg, and in 1850 went to Győr for his secondary education. After finishing secondary school, the choice was not easy, as many things interested him—he wanted to study physics, mathematics, natural sciences, architecture, literature, or even music. Some sources mention he studied philosophy and law at Vienna University but the lists of enrolment show no entry for Kempelen.

It is known, that Kempelen was a remarkable polyglot. He was fluent in eight languages in addition to his native German—Latin, Hungarian, French, Italian, Slovak, English, Irish (Gaeilge), and Romanian.

After a long journey throughout Italy, visiting Rome and Naples, among other places, in 1855 Kempelen took part in the compilation commission to translate the Codex Theresianus (the Empress Maria Theresia’s civil law book) from Latin to German. Everybody was satisfied with his prompt and punctual work, and soon Kempelen became the Hungarian court’s advisor, and later in 1857 the secretary.

In 1766 Kempelen was appointed as the director of the Hungarian salt mines. In 1768 he became settlement commissioner for the Banat region, where the Vienna court carried on an intensive settlement policy to repopulate the provinces at its southeast border, to a large extent with Germans. He was responsible for the settlement of 37000 families, organizing communities, and designing houses for the settlers. He also managed to introduce a new crop, flax (to produce linen) and built a silk factory. Around Timisoara, the main city of Banat, Kempelen directed draining the swamps and rebuilding the roads and schools. Thus Banat was completely reborn. Kempelen’s numerous visits are reflected in three substantial reports to the Vienna court in 1768, 1769, and 1770 in which he gave an account to the repopulating commission, presented a plan for a systematic organization of the Banat, and described the local mines and institutions. Maria Theresia was greatly satisfied and, in 1771, granted 1000 Gulden for his services and an annuity of the same sum.

In the autumn of 1769, Wolfgang von Kempelen was invited by the Empress to attend magnetic experiments shown in Vienna by the French illusionist François Pelletier. He went and saw the Empress impressed by the demonstration, but he was not impressed and said he could invent a machine far more surprising within half a year and commenced work on the chess-playing android, an automaton for the enjoyment of the court (see the nearby drawing).

In 1770 his masterpiece was first demonstrated to the Empress in Vienna. In a very short time, this machine became world famous, and the whole of Europe wanted to see it. No automaton of the XVIII century was so frequently described. Many people strove to figure out the machine’s secret, and already in 1785 someone guessed there was a man hidden in the cabinet, who moved the figures, and this was the holy truth.

In 1770 Kempelen continued with his engineering work, designing a pontoon bridge over the river Danube in Preßburg (see the nearby image).

In 1772, when the castle of Preßburg was rebuilt, Kempelen was asked to construct a separate water supply for the castle. Taking advantage of a well on the bank of the river Danube, water was transported by copper pipes in a special tunnel by pressure pumps driven by horses, the altitude was about 70 m and the capacity was one bucket per 1.5 minutes.

In the same 1772, Maria Theresia decided, with the help of French gardeners, to turn the Schönbrunn wild park into a beautiful garden. Kempelen received his new assignment: he had to provide for the water supply of the garden’s jewel, its fountain, and the water cascades. In October 1772, the fountain with its self-regulating water pump was inaugurated. Later in 1780, Kempelen designed two steam hydraulic machines for the same purpose.

In 1774, Kempelen helped the Preßburg people once more: he established the first pawn shop in the country, which was a popular alternative to the local usurers.

In the same 1774, Maria Theresia caught smallpox, but she still insisted on taking care of her governing tasks; so, she asked Kempelen to design a mobile bed, easy to move from one room to another, in which she could lie, sit, write and read comfortably.

In 1776, Kempelen convinced the court, that the University in Nagyszombat had out-grown the city, and had become obsolete. He succeeded and obtained financial help to organize and direct the moving of the University to the Buda castle, and gave special attention to the library.

In the late 1770s, Kempelen built two steam engines. The first one was constructed near Stubentor in Vienna. Later, this machine was used for building the Franz Canal in Hungary. His machine was better than James Watts’s, but he lacked the money to develop it further.

In 1778, Maria Theresia’s godchild, Marie-Therèse Paradis, was introduced to Kempelen. The 19-year-old pianist, singer, and composer was very intelligent, but because she was blind, she could neither read nor write. The Empress asked Kempelen to help Paradis. First, Kempelen taught her the basic units of reading and writing, using three-dimensional shapes. This young girl was the first ever to study the alphabet with three-dimensional type. In 1779, Kempelen built for her a special press with movable type and a letter case. Still in that year, at Kempelen’s request, the court allowed the publishing of the first Hungarian newspapers.

After Preßburg, Kempelen planned two water pumps for Buda. Later, he drew the first version of the steam turbine, and in 1788 or 1789 received a patent from Emperor Joseph II for 12 years for his invention to drive all kinds of mills, and machines. The model can be seen in the National Engineering Museum’s collection.

Following his work in Buda, Kempelen received another architectural commission—planning the Sava-Adria Canal (a channel that is to connect the Danube with the Adriatic Sea), which was never realized. Later Kempelen took part in the reconstruction of the Buda Castle. On 25 October 1790, the Buda Castle Theatre (see the nearby image) was finished according to his plans. For the first time in history, Hungarian could be heard on stage in a Hungarian theatre.

Kempelen commenced preliminary work on his mechanical speech machine in 1769. Possibly to counteract some doubts about the credibility of his ingenious apparatus, he published a detailed description in 1791, in his chef-d’oeuvre The Mechanism of Human Speech. The Englishman Wheatstone, the German Posch, and the Austrian mathematician Joseph Faber were amongst the first to utilize Kempelen’s invention.

Outside of scientific life, Kempelen also dealt with the arts. He wrote poems (see the nearby manuscript), epigrams, dramas, and musical plays for which he composed the scores. Moreover, he illustrated his poems. In 1767, his comedy Das Zauberbuch (the Magic Book), Kempelen’s presentation of white and black magic was staged in Preßburg, and his melodrama Perseus and Andromeda was publicly performed in Nationaltheater, Vienna in 1781. In addition, he was also a talented amateur etcher and engraver. From 1789, he was an honorary member of the Vienna Academy of Arts.

In 1798, after 43 years of service, Kempelen was retired with an annuity of 5000 Gulden and the title of a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire.

Kempelen’s private life however was not a happy one, as although he had a very good home life, his work often took top priority and he was badly stricken as fate has decreed it.

On 6 September 1757, in Vienna, Wolfgang Kempelen married Maria Franziska Piani, lady-in-waiting of Archduchess Maria Carolina Ludovika (Queen Maria Theresia was present at the wedding, albeit incognito). Unfortunately, Franziska died only several months later, of smallpox, and it’s said that Wolfgang disappeared into his workshop for months out of grief, distracting himself by learning woodworking, clockmaking, and dozens of other skills.

In 1762 Wolfgang Kempelen married Anna Maria Gobelius, companion of the wife of Count János Erdődy. Of the five children born in the family between 1763-1771, only Mária Terézia (1768–1812) and Karl (Károly) (1771–1822) reached adult age. The first three children—Julianna (born 1763), Marie-Anna (b. 1764), and Andreas Christian (b. 1766) died shortly after birth.

Just before Kempelen’s death on 26 March 1804, probably because of his reformist thoughts, Emperor Franz II canceled the annuity. This remarkable inventor, after a fruitful life abounding in experiences, died highly esteemed in his 70th year in Alservorstadt near Vienna.

Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721-1790) was a celebrated Swiss watchmaker and mechanic from the 18^th century, known for his elaborate watches and mechanical devices, three of which are of particular interest in the context of this site—the humanoid automata the Writer, the Draftsman, and the Musician.

Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born in 1721 into a family of watchmakers and farmers. Still a teenager, in 1738 he set up his first watchmaking workshop at the family farm, in his native La Chaux-de-Fonds, canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. His initial works were on pendulum clocks, but at some moment he decided to specialize in automatic mechanisms, in which he would soon excel. Jaquet-Droz was attracted by automaton mechanisms and their technical difficulties and, sensitive to the admiration of some customers, soon specialized in their production. In 1753 he traveled to Paris and after the successful demonstrations, he dealt with the marketing of his pieces and strove to improve their mechanisms.

In 1758—1759 Pierre Jaquet-Droz undertook an unprecedented journey to Spain, traveling across southern Europe with his wares with a view to presenting them to the Court of Spain and its King Ferdinand VI. In Spain, he demonstrated not only his elaborate watches but also a few automata. Among them was a clock with a shepherd playing on a flute, and a dog guarding a basket of apples. When the King endeavored to take one of the apples, the dog threw himself on his hand, barking so naturally, that a hound present in the room responded all his strength. At this moment the Courtiers, not doubting that it was an affair of witchcraft, hastily left the room, crossing themselves as they went out. The Minister of Marine was the only one that ventured to stay. Later the Minister asked the shepherd what time is it, but did not receive an answer. Jaquet-Droz remarked that he probably did not understand Spanish and asked the King to address him in French. The question was repeated and the shepherd replied immediately, and the frightened Minister hurried away. Later Jaquet-Droz, fearing that he might be arrested by the Inquisition as a sorcerer, invited the Grand Inquisitor and revealed the inner mechanism of his devices, demonstrating that the mechanism was moved entirely by natural means. Jaquet-Droz’s so-called “Shepherd’s Clock” is still on display in one of the King of Spain’s palace museums.

From his trip to Spain Jaquet-Droz returned rich and famous because the delighted King not only refunded the expenses of the journey but paid in addition 500 luis d’or. Jaquet-Droz invested the raised money in the development of his enterprise, establishing a specialized company in the creation of top-of-the-range parts, to the forefront of technological advance. Mainly, they are small parts decorated with automats, and they soon ensure an abundance of cash to Jaquet-Droz and allow him to launch the ambitious project of the automats androids.

From 1767 to 1774, he led the construction of three extremely complex androids: the Writer, the Lady Musician, and the Draftsman. These automata were toured throughout Europe and would win their creator even greater acclaim.

Pierre Jaquet-Droz was later assisted in the running of his business and the construction of the automata by his son Henri-Louis (1752-1791) and by several other young clockmaking mechanics like his adopted son Jean-Frédéric Leschot (1746-1824), Henri Maillardet and Jacob Frisard (1753-1812). The young Jaquet-Droz, Henri-Louis, was also a very gifted mechanic, who completed his studies in mathematics, physics, drawing, and music in Nancy, and returned to Switzerland in 1769 to join his father. Pierre put him in charge of his project of automats, which comprises a “Cave” (disappeared today), and the three android automata—the Writer, the Musician, and the Draftsman. There is a story for Henri-Louis, when he was in Paris in 1775, he constructed artificial hands for a man, who had been born with deformed hands, almost totally dysfunctional. The artificial hands allowed the invalid to lead a normal life. Jacques Vaucanson saw this mechanical masterpiece and reportedly said to him, “Young man, you start where I would like to finish.”

In 1783 Jaquet-Droz opened a second workshop in London, later in Geneva, but then he gradually withdrew from the management of his business and received visitors from the whole of Europe who came to admire his work and pay their respects to him. Pierre Jaquet-Droz lived with his son in Geneva for a few years before retiring to Bienne where he died on 28 November 1790, only a year before his son.

What first of all distinguishes these three automats from those which are manufactured at that time, is that their mechanism is placed inside their body and not in the piece of furniture on which they sat. It is to say that the genius of precision goes from pairing with the miniaturization of the mechanical wheels, making the synchronization of the movements all the more complicated.

The Writer (see the upper image), completed in 1772, was directed primarily by Pierre Jaquet-Droz and is the most complicated of the three mechanisms. The android, made of 6000 pieces, is sitting on a Louis-XV-style stool, holding a quill (goose feather) that dips into the inkwell, and then he shakes it slightly before beginning to draw letters on paper with the pen. The automaton can move its head and eyes as it composes, and it is able to compensate for changes in distance between the figure and the desk so that the letters remain evenly spaced. The Writer is able to write a text of 40 characters maximum, spread over four lines. Over time the device has been programmed to write different messages, which have included “Les automates Jaquet Droz à Neuchâtel” and “I think therefore I am.”

In the upper half of the Writer’s body is a long vertical cylinder, made up of three sets of 40 cams. One set of cams controls the horizontal movements, another the vertical movements, and a third the amount of pressure the Writer applies to the paper, thus enabling it to make both light and heavy strokes, just like in the real human script. Beneath the vertical cylinder, the second part of the mechanism incorporates a disk with 40 spaces on it, so that the order of characters can be selected for the Writer’s message. The main mechanism of the invention is the programming system disk (shown in the lower part of the image), which allows him to write text without external intervention. It is also possible to make him write any words, letter by letter. The Writer might even be interrupted, stopping in the middle of the word, if asked, and writing another.

The Draftsman (see the nearby image) had an appearance very similar to the Writer, but its design is technically simpler than its big brother (made of only 2000 pieces). It was produced mainly by Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Using a pencil, he is able to perform four different designs through three sets of cams home: A portrait of the French King—Louis XV; A drawing of a dog with an inscription; A Cupid in a chariot pulled by a butterfly; And a portrait of the royal couple Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI (the portrait of Louis XV and My doggy are on the same cams). Small bellows concealed in the head of the Draftsman allowed him occasionally to blow the dust off his paper. From time to time the Draftsman was able also to raise his hand to examine his work better and to correct some defect. Apparently, the machine can be easily “reprogrammed”, by changing the cams, because when it was demonstrated in England, it draw the image of the English monarch, not the French King.

The Musician (see the nearby image) was made of 2500 pieces and was very different from the two other androids. It was a young thin girl, 1 meter 80 tall, sitting outside a small organ flutes. It has a mechanism that activates his ten fingers, it actually plays his instrument. The five different melodies that it is capable of playing seem to have been composed by Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, who was not only a skillful mechanic, but also a gifted musician. The mechanism is quite complex, consisting of four parts that actuate the bellows of the instrument, each hand of the musician, and actions such as breathing schedules, nods, eye movements, or the final reference. The first part of the mechanism, completely independent, the harmonium, laid at the base of the musical instrument, acts on two bellows which prove compressed air to the flutes. The three other mechanisms are under the seat. They are connected between them and start one another to form a very complicated group. The girl is stressing her movements when she plays, looks on the left, on the right, and finishes with a curtsey.

Let’s examine one of Droz’s singing bird automata, made circa 1780 (see the nearby image). It is made of gilt bronze and painted on enamel, with eight-day going, center seconds, hanging bird cage clock with an automaton bird, singing seven tunes on the hour and half-hour or at will. It has an octagonal gilt bronze cage (Dim. 50 x 28 cm) with eight turned pillars and vase finials, pierced and engraved side panels. On the base, white enamel with radial Roman numerals, outer minute track, Arabic five-minute numerals, arbor for the regulator. Pierced and engraved gilt brass hour and minute hands, blued steel center seconds hand. The clock movement: Rectangular brass plates measuring 105 x 70 mm, fusee, and chain, verge escapement, three-arm brass balance, blued steel flat balance spring, pierced cock covering the balance, blued steel endplate. The clock commands the striking, serinette, and singing bird functions automatically on the hour and half-hour. The serinette: Comprises a going train, fusee, and chain transmission, the wheel train terminates to an endless screw on a flywheel, the 2 wings of which are adjustable. This wheel train drives the bellows and the brass cylinder, 55 x 130 mm, the pins activating 10 levers that command the opening of 10 pewter pipes seven different tunes may be manually selected, by means of a wheel on one of the sides. A silent pull-stop is located on one of the sides. A pull cord commands the serinette and bird at will. The winding hole for the serinette is located on one of the sides. The bird has blue, black, and white plumage, pivoting, with a moving beak and tail. The bird’s functions are programmed by a particular portion of the serinette’s cylinder which engages several small levers; the bird’s rotation is driven by a rod connected to the going train.

The astonishing automated mechanisms of Jaquet-Droz fascinated the world’s most important people: the royal families of Europe, China, India, and Japan. The automata were initially exposed in Chaux-de-Fonds, attracting an important crowd (writers of the day reported that people flocked from all over the country to see such extraordinary works of whimsy and technical skill), but the dedication will come with the road show: Geneva (1774), Paris (1775), then Brussels, London, Russia and Madrid, where the automata will be sold to a collector in 1787. From Spain, the automata will return to Paris around 1812, to be admired at the Paris Exposition of 1825. In 1830 Martin and Bourquin bought the machines and will walk them through the whole of Europe until 1904, using them as the principal attraction of their Museum of the Illusions. The History and Archeology Society of Neuchâtel, helped by a grant from the Swiss federal government, eventually bought the three automata in 1906, for 75000 francs in gold, and gave them to the Museum of Art and History of Neuchâtel, where they have been ever since, in virtually the same condition as when they were first made, some 230 years ago.

Biography of Pierre Jaquet-Droz

Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born on 28 July 1721, on a small farm (La Ferme de Sur le Pont) north-east of La Chaux-de-Fonds, canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland (then part of the Kingdom of Prussia), to the family of Abraham (Abram) Jaquet-Droz (1686-1767) and Marie-Madeleine née Droz. Pierre was named after his grandfather, the merchant Pierre Jaquet-Droz (who died in 1718 at the age of 95), and had an elder sister, Suzanne-Marie (1713-1741). La Chaux-de-Fonds would become a major watch- and clockmaking center in the 19^th century, and at the time of Pierre’s birth, the region already had many clockmakers. His father, Abraham, divided his time between agriculture and watchmaking (he tinker and repair watches during the winter months), and other relatives, including his maternal grandfather, Daniel Droz (who lived on the same family farm), were watchmakers, as were many of the family’s friends.

Abraham Jaquet-Droz wanted his son to become a clergyman, so Pierre was educated first to elementary level in his town, then in 1738 he enrolled Collège d’Érasme in Basel, where besides courses in theology and philosophy, he takes classes in mathematics and physics, given by the famous father and son Jean and Daniel Bernoulli. The Bernoullis were interested in the construction of unusual automatic machines, so it is probably they who whetted Jaquet-Droz’s own curiosity about such devices. By 1740 Pierre continued his education at l’Académie de Neuchâtel. During this time he was also influenced by a fellow Chaux-de-Fonnier named Josué Robert (the son of Robert married Pierre’s sister). Josué Robert was born in 1691 and worked in Chaux de Fonds until his death in 1771. He was a Clockmaker to the King of Prussia from 1725 and founder of the firm J. Robert et Fils. Although Robert did not himself train Jaquet-Droz, he guided him through his early career.

In 1738, Jaquet-Droz crafted his first movement. Two years later, he began a seven-year apprenticeship. As a person, he was sober, serious, taciturn, and very careful in his work. His reputation as a gifted clockmaker grew. The year his apprenticeship ended, he received an important honor: Monsieur de Nathalys, governor of Neuchâtel and representative of the King of Prussia, came to La Chaux-de-Fonds to see one of his clocks. Jaquet-Droz was soon making frequent trips to Paris, learning from the many prominent watchmakers there. Among them was Ferdinand Berthoud (1727-1807), who would later become one of the first great chronometer makers.

In October 1750, Jaquet-Droz married 19 years-old Marie-Anne (Marianne), daughter of the La Chaux-de-Fonds Civil Lieutenant and cabinet maker Abram-Louis Sandoz-Gendre and Anna-Maria Robert (a niece of Josué Robert)‏. They moved into a new house and workshop where their three children were born: Julie (1751-1806), Henri-Louis (13.10.1752-15.11.1791), and Charlotte (1755-1756). But tragedy struck soon, as in December 1755 Marianne died after giving birth to Charlotte, and Charlotte herself died soon after. Jaquet-Droz never remarried, devoting himself entirely to clockmaking, and his children were brought up by their aunt and maternal grandparents.

These deaths were followed by one of the brightest moments in Jaquet-Droz’s career. A local enameller introduced him to the new governor of Neuchâtel, Lord George Keith (1693-1778). Keith, a Scot, had close ties to Spain (he had served as ambassador there for the Jacobites and would do so again, from 1759 to 1761, for Frederick the Great of Prussia). Recognizing Jaquet-Droz’s extraordinary ability, Keith arranged for him to show some of his works to the Spanish king, Ferdinand VI. The king was fascinated by mechanical devices and was said to go around his rooms, personally setting each of his clocks with a key. The presentation was a triumph, and for the six mechanisms (all of which were purchased for the royal palaces of Madrid and Villaviciosa), Jaquet-Droz was paid 2000 gold pistoles, a fortune at the time. He returned to La Chaux-de-Fonds in March 1759 and used the funds to expand his workshop.

Sparked by the success of the automata, the family business grew far beyond Neuchâtel. In 1774, Henri-Louis opened up a branch of the business in London which focused on selling Jaquet-Droz timepieces and automata to China. Lavishly decorated watches, often sold in pairs, were in high demand there, and Jaquet-Droz became one of the country’s key suppliers, but also in the Middle East and India.

Henri-Louis’s health declined in the 1780s, and he returned to Switzerland in 1784. Working with Jean-Frédéric Leschot (a neighbor’s son, whom Pierre had taken in after the death of the boy’s mother and thought of as his adoptive son), he opened a workshop in Geneva. The company’s headquarters remained in La Chaux-de-Fonds, overseen by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. Producing automata (especially the popular singing-bird mechanisms), clocks, and watches through its various offices, the Jaquet-Droz company reached the peak of its success in 1786 and 1787.

Its decline soon followed. As Pierre’s health deteriorated, he retreated to Bienne, where he died on 24 November 1790. He is buried in the city cemetery there. Only a year later, Henri-Louis died in Naples, where he had gone with his wife in an effort to improve his fragile health. Leschot was left in charge of the business and struggled to maintain it until his own death in 1824.

The first industrial application of a (semi)-automated machine was made in the early eighteenth century (at the beginning of the 1720s) by a modest textile worker from Lyon, France, named Basile Bouchon.

Basile Bouchon, working in one of the many silk centers in Lyon (starting in the 16th century, Lyon became the capital of the European silk trade and production), invented in 1725 a way to control a loom with perforated paper tape. He was born in Luzarches, Île-de-France in a family of an organ maker and a weaver and was familiar with the rotating pegged cylinders used in automated organs, such as the barrel organ. Thus Bouchon knew that the information content for the cylinders of musical automata was first laid out on paper before the design was applied to actual very expensive cylinders.

The practice then was to punch holes in the paper designs that were wrapped around the cylinders, indicating where the craftsman had to drill holes in the cylinder for the pegs. Bouchon probably had the brilliant insight that the paper layout with punched holes already contained the information put on the cylinder, thus he concluded that perforated paper could code information about patterns, which he subsequently applied to the coding of weaving patterns for the loom.

Thus Bouchon adapted the concept of music automata controlled by pegged cylinders to the repetitive task of weaving and partially automated the tedious setting up process of the draw loom in which an operator lifted the warp threads using cords, inventing an attachment for the looms, which used a broad strip of punched paper to select the warp threads that would be raised during weaving.

Bouchon’s invention involved a row of hooks. The curved portion of each hook snagged a string that could raise one of the warp threads, whereas the straight portion of each hook pressed against the punched paper, which was draped around a perforated cylinder. Whenever the hook pressed against the solid paper, pushing the cylinder forward would raise the corresponding warp thread, but when the hook met a hole in the paper, pushing the cylinder forward would allow the hook to slip inside the cylinder and the corresponding warp thread would not be raised.

In spite of its advantages, Bouchon’s invention did not have much success because the number of needles was not sufficient to allow the weaving of large designs. Besides that, he used a roll of paper (see the upper image), which was not very practical.

Only three years later, in 1728, one of Bouchon’s assistants, named Jean-Baptiste Falcon (born 1690) improved the machine, expanding the number of cords that could be handled by arranging the holes in rows. He also replaced the paper roll with a set of punched cards attached to one another in an endless loop (see the nearby image), which made it possible to change the program rapidly. Each punch card controlled a single hook or needle. Falcon’s system was superior because torn cards could easily be replaced whereas Bouchon’s system required whole rolls to be reproduced if one tear made a roll unusable.

Though the looms of Bouchon and Falcon eliminated mistakes in the lifting of threads, they still needed an extra operator (or even two of them) to operate. The loom of Bouchon and Falcon was modestly successful: about 40 such looms had been sold by 1762. The first attempt at full automation was made by Jacques Vaucanson in 1745, also not very successful. But it was not until 1805 that the widely successful Jacquard loom was finally produced.

Friedrich von Knaus(s) (1724-1789), was a German watchmaker, mechanic, and inventor, who built clockwork mechanisms that could, in a simple way, play musical instruments, write short phrases, or conduct other individual, specialized tasks. It is believed, that namely, Knaus created the first writing automaton.

Showing his capabilities at an early age, working in the workshop of his elder brother, Friedrich von Knaus was engaged with the Darmstadt great duke’s court as Kammerdiener and Hofmechanicus. Then he was taken to the service of the Prince-voter Clément Auguste of Cologne. Later Knaus went to Paris, where in 1753 presented his first writing automata to the French King Louis XV, but without success. So he moved to Holland and Belgium, where he came on the duty of the Prince Charles of Lorraine in Bruxelles, and then in 1756 he came to Vienna, where in 1757 he established the Physikalisches Hofkabinett (“Court Cabinet of Physics”), of which he was appointed President. In 1757, Knaus completed work on a mechanical musician that played the flageolet, a kind of recorder. Some of his most famous constructs were four mechanical speaking heads in 1770; however, they were not very successful. Among his other inventions are a writing desk for the Emperor with a copy machine and “movable picture panels”.

Knaus made several (at least five) writing automata of which the first was presented in France in 1753. In his earlier examples, the writing was merely traced by a hand holding a pen. The fourth writing automaton however had significant improvements, as it was a true writer (a figure) able to write lengthy text. Knaus presented it in 1760 to the Holy Roman Emperor Francis Stephen.

The automata, shown in the nearby figure, was made by Knaus in 1764 and was donated to his patron Prince Charles of Lorraine. The clockwork mechanism moves a hand, causing it to dip the pen in the inkstand and write the words “Huic Domui Deus / Nec metas rerum / Nec tempora ponat” (May God not impose ends or deadlines on this house) on a small card. The mechanism’s (made of silvered copper with dimensions 68 cm width, 100 cm height) silvered metal coating carries the words “Pro patria” (for motherland).

None of the mechanisms of Knaus’ most advanced writing automata (see the figure below) was contained in the body of the figure, but enclosed in a metal sphere on which the figure was placed. The principal mechanism constitutes a horizontal roll composed of pins, introduced into appropriate openings. When moving, the pins press on a keyboard containing keys, each key corresponding to a letter. The machine wrote a lengthy passage of 107 words and antedated the similar machine of Jacquet-Droz by almost two decades.

While the first three machines produced a programmed text, the fourth, preserved to the present day in Vienna (Wien, Technisches Museum), could write any phrase composed in advance, and it could also write to dictation by means of a hand-operated control on the letter keyboard. The machine is called the Miraculous Writing Machine, or simply the Writer.

After having drawn some characters, the Writer automatically dips his feather in the inkpot in front of him. A special mechanism located behind moves the shelf towards the left after each letter; when a line is finished, the shelf is pushed at the same time in the horizontal and vertical directions.

During his show in front of Emperor Franz I, on 4 October 1760, the Writer of von Knaus filled the Emperor and the entire Court with wonder, by writing under his eyes the following headwork in French:
Dear Sir, do me the honor of listening to me and to what I am writing for you. The world thought that I would never be perfected by my maker, he was even so persecuted, that it was possible: but now, he put me into such a state that I write all languages, despite all his envious people, and I am truly, Dear Lord, the most loyal secretary.

Von Knaus’ masterpiece (overall dimensions: 182 × 107 × 98 cm) was an imposing piece set on a 3-inch high wood pedestal. It measures almost 1.9 meters from the ground to the writer’s head. There is a large metal sphere about 80 cm across, with six opening sectors, which contains the mechanism for writing and is supported by two bronze eagles. The mechanism is cast iron. Originally, it was gold-colored and the meridian circles were shown by meshes of silver. Over the sphere, on a platform imitating a cloud, on the right side, sat a goddess, from who a little genius is getting inspired.

In the center, a little shelf is erecting a vertical little table, which supports the sheet of paper on which the automaton, with its quite long arm, writes the characters previously printed on a cylinder. At each end of the line, the goddess puts up her hand and the sheet of paper moves, thus ensuring to start again a new line. The entire sheet of paper is covered in fifteen minutes. After having written several characters, the writer automatically dips his quill into the ink pot which is in front of him. A special mechanism situated at the rear side moves the little table to the left after each letter. When a line is finished, the little table is pushed both in the horizontal and vertical directions.

If the cylinder is taken out of the mechanism, the operator can manually operate the levers register, thus “dictating” to the writer what we want him to write.

Biography of Friedrich von Knaus

Friedrich von Knaus(s) was born on 7 April 1724, in Aldingen near Ludwigsburg, now a suburb of Stuttgart, in the family of Johann Peter Knauß II (1689–1742), the son of Johann Peter Knauß, a schoolmaster in Berwangen and Anna Barbara Hüß, and his wife Anna Margarethe Knaus (1689–1756), the daughter of master craftsman Hans Balthasar Nollenberger from Ottmarsheim and Ursula Scheunig. Johann Peter Knaus II was a watchmaker and schoolmaster in Ottmarsheim, from 1715 in Hößlinsülz near Heilbronn, from 1726 Baronial Kaltental court clerk, schoolmaster, and organist in Aldingen, allegedly the last secretary of the Counts of Wied and Isenburg. He married Anna Margarethe Nollenberger on 30 September 1713 in Erligheim, and his first child, Johann Philip Ludwig was born on 29 September 1715 in Hößlinsülz. Johann Ludwig also became a prominent watchmaker and worked together with his brother Friedrich on several automata.

From 1739 into the 1750s, von Knauss was busy with the Darmstadt great duke’s court, and in 1749 he became “Hofmechaniker”, Imperial and Royal Court Mechanician. Together with his brother, he produced the famous Kaiserliche Vorstellungsuhr (the Imperial Representation Watch) in 1750, commemorating the tenth anniversary of Maria Theresia’s rise to the throne. Some of his most famous constructs were four mechanical speaking heads in 1770, however, they were not very successful. A contest for mechanicians and organ manufacturers held in 1779 in Russia attests to their lack of success, in that the contest, held by the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, used the production of a speaking head as the theme, and specified that the machine be capable of speaking the five vowels.

When in 1760 after the demonstration of his remarkable writing automaton Knaus asked to be appointed Hofrat for his invention, he fell out of favor and was only able to return to court after the death of Franz I (1765). Besides his writing automata, among his other inventions are a desk for the emperor with a copying machine for copying important decrees, as well as his “movable picture boards”. Until his death, he was tirelessly involved in the design of new machines, not only clockwork and automata but also mining machines.

Knaus married Catharina Reutter von Reiterswinkel (died in Vienna on 3.2.1804), from Strassburg. They had a daughter, Maria Theresia, who married Jakob Josef Rittig von Flammenstern, government secretary in Vienna. Knaus had acquired the title of nobility himself.

In 1778, Friedrich von Knaus was requested as an artillery captain (Hauptman) in Vienna, where he died on 14 August 1789. At the time of his death, he bore the title Director of the physical and mathematical cabinets at the Hofburg and golden knight, also holy papal and lateranian palatine count.

Starting from 1580, Hans Schlottheim, a German goldsmith, watchmaker, craftsman, and above all a mechanic, working in Augsburg, created quite a few wonderful automata, several of which managed to survive to our time. Schlottheim’s automata had been known to feature vignette scenes populated by animated figurines, music-producing mechanisms, hourly chimes, and firing miniature cannons, in addition to mechanisms that displayed the time.

It is known, that thanks mainly to Schlottheim’s efforts, who was Augsburg’s leading clock- and automaton-maker at the turn of the 16^th century, Augsburg became the center for the production of intricate jukeboxes and clocks, which were ordered by representatives of the European aristocracy for their collections. For some parts of his automata, Schlottheim used the service of his fellow craftsmen, like Egidius Lobenigk (a court turner to the Electors of Saxony), the gem cutter and goldsmith Valentin Drausch (1550-1600), and goldsmith Sylvester II Eberlin.

Known for us automata of Schlottheim are the Bell Tower Automaton (1580), the Trumpeter (1582), Christmas Grib (1585), three Mechanical Galleons Automata (built between 1585 and 1590), Crayfish Automaton (1588), Triumph of Bacchus (1602), and several figure automaton clocks, created from the 1580s until 1600s.

The Bell Tower Automaton (Glockenturmautomat), made by Schlottheim around 1580 (see the nearby image), kept now at the Kunstkammer of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, refers to a performance by a group of actors that Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria, personally witnessed in Venice in 1579. His nephew, Duke Ferdinand of Bavaria, later gave him the tower as a gift, whose figures take up the rough and drastic scenes of the performances. The dimensions of the automaton are—height 110.8 cm, base 24.7/20.5 cm. The materials used are bronze, fire-gilded, figures partially clothed, painted glass, metal, and wood.

The bell tower rests on four sphinxes and has five tiers, not counting the base with a door in the center (the final surprise is hidden behind it). On the two lower tiers there are celebrating companies, on the two upper tiers there are bells that ring during the performance. One of the figures stretches out her bare buttocks towards the viewer through a door that opens when the song is played.

In 1582 Schlottheim, together with the goldsmith Valentin Drausch, built the Trumpeter Automaton (see the nearby image), also kept now at the Kunstkammer of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien). The automaton has the form of a low tower, with dimensions—height of 33.4 cm, and a base of 36/23.5 cm. The materials used are ebony, palisander wood, gilded silver, enamel, gilded brass, and iron. Inside is the ingenious clockwork for the musical mechanism and the movements of the drummers and trumpeters, with a 10-note automatic shelf and a drum membrane with two mallets stretched over the case back. A preambulum and a main piece are set on the wheel-shaped information carrier and the figures on the two floors of the structure move to the music (ten trumpeters and a drummer).

Schlottheim is known today almost exclusively for three clockwork ships (galleons) that he built between 1585 and 1590. These three mechanical marvels survive and can be seen in the Musée de la Renaissance in Écouen, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and in the British Museum in London. The Viena device is a smaller, less complex, and presumably earlier mechanical galleon than the two now in Lodon and Écouen, which are very similar in design and movement. They represent that staple of European navies in the late 16^th century, the galleon, a ship built for both exploration and warfare. Such a table-top ship is usually called a nef, after the French word for a galleon.

The British Museum model (see the nearby image), with dimensions: height 104 cm, length 78.5 cm; width 20.3 cm, was intended to sit on a royal table. It is filled with clockwork driven by coiled springs that would have been wound daily. The ship originally had 4 wheels, and one clockwork motor would trundle it down the high table. Another clockwork provided the time (there is a clock face on the lower main mast of the ship) and also powered two sailors in the crow’s nests of the main mast who rang the hours and quarter hours on tiny bells. On the quarterdeck at the stern sat the Holy Roman Emperor, and as the ship moved along, the 7 Imperial electors glided past him and bowed when they came in front of His Majesty, who at the time would have been Rudolf II (reigned 1576-1612).

Meanwhile, on the main deck, there were seven trumpeters and a drummer who played music, while inside the ship a small mechanical organ, the bellows of which was driven by yet another clockwork motor, contributed its share to the festivities (and a taut membrane on the ship’s bottom provided the drumming surface for some mechanical hammers). When the ship reached the end of its table-top journey, the fore cannon on the bowsprit fired and ignited another ten small canons arranged around the ship, all of which were fully operational. The cannon explosions and a musical crescendo might have marked the summons to the feast, or perhaps a thunderous conclusion.

Biography of Hans Schlottheim

Hans (Hanns) Schlottheim (also spelled “Schlotheim” or “Schlotthammer”) was born circa 1546 in Naumburg, a small town on the Saale River in Saxony, Central Germany. He was the son of a local watchmaker and in his early to mid-twenties, between 1567 and 1573, he left his father’s workshop and moved to the Free Imperial City of Augsburg. In Augsburg, he worked in the workshop of the famous German clockmaker Jeremias Metzger (1527-1599). In 1573 Schlottheim received Schmiedegerechtigkeit (right to forge, a privilege of blacksmith), which allowed him to work on his own account within the guild of Augsburg watchmakers. In 1576 he presented his Meisterwerk (masterpiece) to the jury of master inspectors and was awarded the title of Meister (master). In 1577 Schlottheim installed a large clock on the facade of his house. He bought a second house in Schmiedegasse in 1579, which became known as the watchmaking center of the empire and a mark of its success. In 1586 Schlottheim became the head of the guild, responsible for overseeing the quality of the work of other clockmakers in Augsburg.

Emperor Rudolf II’s visit to Augsburg in 1582 to attend the Diet must have played a crucial role in Schlottheim’s career. In 1586 he received permission to work for three years at the imperial court in Prague, then from 1589 until 1593 worked with the Elector of Saxony in Dresden. During his stay in Prague, he had to build at least two mechanical galleons for Rudolf II. Throughout his career, Schlottheim knew how to respond to the tastes of royal and princely dishes, as well as the wealthy bourgeoisie for automated machines and watchmaking automatons presented as the centerpieces of banquets and receptions.

On 15 December 1573, Schlottheim married Ursula Geiger, widow of the master locksmith Hans Schitterer. The marriage to Geiger presumably afforded Schlottheim social and occupational advancement, as the tools of a clockmaker and a locksmith in the late sixteenth century were by and large the same. In the sixteenth century, the clockmakers were subsumed under the general guild of smiths, which included painters, saddlers, and goldsmiths.

Hans Schlottheim died circa 1625 in Augsburg.

The first android in the Western World, a completely mechanical figure which simulated a living human or animal, operating with an apparently responsive action, is believed to have been constructed in 1525 by Hans Bullmann (?-1535) of Nuremberg, Germany. Bullmann actually reportedly produced a number of extremely ingenious figures of men and women that moved and played musical instruments, for which Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman emperor, summoned him to Vienna, for whom Bullmann produced a variety of novelties before returning to Nuremberg. Bullmann was an ingenuous master locksmith and mechanic, who is known also to be the first to set up a true astronomical clock and to invent the letter lock. Unfortunately, neither a working mechanism nor a description of his devices survived to the present time.

At least one automation of his contemporary however—the Italian/Spanish inventor and clockmaker Juanelo Turriano (1501-1585), namely the so-called Lute Player Lady automaton, created in the middle 1550s, did survive to the present and now is displayed in the Kunstkammer of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

The height of the Lute Player automaton (see the lower image) is 44 cm. Though no longer able to actually function, it is said to move with small tripping steps, strumming the lute with its right hand, and turning its head from right to left. It can advance in a straight line, or follow the path of a circle.

Ambrosio de Morales, a court annalist to King Philip II, professor at the University of Alcalá de Henares, and close friend of Turriano, wrote the following passage in his great history of the antiquities of Spain:
Juanelo as a diversion also wanted to create anew the ancient statues which moved and, on that account, were called automata by the Greeks. He made a lady more than one tercia (28 cm) high who was placed on a table, dances all over it to the sound of a drum which she meanwhile beats herself, and goes around in circles, returning to where she started from. Though it is a toy and fit for mirth, it is nevertheless great proof of his high intelligence.

The Italian Jesuit and historian Famiano Strada (1572—1649) also mentioned Turriano’s devices in his De Bello Belgico (1632), including small men on horses that staged battles and moved and blew trumpets, and birds that flew about the room as if alive. Strada mentioned also that these devices scared the monks and prior of the abbey where his patron Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, was staying, making them suspect that Turriano was a wizard 🙂

Charles V called Turriano to Spain in 1529, and there he was appointed as a Court Clock Master and later as Matemático Mayor. When the infirm Charles V abdicated his throne in 1555 and retired to the monastery at San Yuste, Turriano accompanied him and devoted himself to averting the Emperor’s moods of depression by creating little automata for his diversion. Tradition relates that Turriano’s little figures often appeared on the dinner table after the Emperor’s meal in the form of armed soldiers who marched about, rode horseback, beat drums, blew trumpets, and engaged in battle with lances. At another time Turriano is said to have released little birds carved of wood which flew about the room, out of the windows, and returned, to the great disapproval of the Father Superior, who considered them to be works of the devil. It is believed also that he created a wooden robot that could fetch the Emperor’s daily bread from the store.

It seems the most famous invention of Turriano, the Lute (mandolin) Playing Lady automaton was built namely for Charles V between 1555 and 1558 when Charles V died. It was extremely lifelike in its motions for its time automaton. Besides the music playing, the automaton could walk and tilt her head.

In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, there is a sixteenth-century automaton of a monk (see the nearby image), which some historians believe was made by Turriano around 1560 (while others attributed it to Hans Bullmann).

The so-called Clockwork Prayer was made of wood and iron, 39 cm in height. Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square (turns approximately every 50 cm), striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. Every once in a while, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. Amazingly, after some four and a half centuries, the automaton remains in good working order. A legend is told that King Philip II, praying at the bedside of a dying son of his own (Don Carlos), promised a miracle for a miracle, if his child is spared. And when Don Carlos did indeed recover, Philip kept his bargain by having Turriano construct a miniature penitent homunculus.

Biography of Juanelo Turriano

The hero of our story was known as Juanelo Turriano in Spain and as Janello (Gianello) Torriani (Torriano) in Italy, but he was born Giovanni Torresani (or della Torre) in the town of Cremona, Lombardy, Italy, around 1500. Janello was from a humble family, and his father Gherardo Torresani (?-1536) was a small landowner and rented a mill on the Po River. Still a child, Janello had as a mentor Giorgio Fondulo (1473-1535), a physicist, doctor, mathematician, astrologer, and philosopher, who exerted a fundamental influence on his formation. Antonio Campi (1524-1587), a countryman of Turriano, wrote in 1585: Of all the craftsmen our city had, none has given to it more honor than Gianello Torriano, a man of low origins, but gifted by God with such a sublime ingeniousness that he astonished the world, and everybody reckoned him to be a miracle of Nature because, even though he has always been illiterate, he was able to talk about astrology and about the other mathematical arts so profoundly and on such a strong basis, that he seemed to have always attended to nothing but that. He learned astrology before reading, his teacher being Giorgio Fondulo, a doctor in medicine, philosopher, and excellent mathematician, who, recognizing his supernatural genius, loved Torriani very deeply.

When he grew up, Janello entered as an apprentice a watchmaking workshop, where he learned the trade, and became very skilled in clockwork and mechanics from his teen years. In the late 1520s Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, sent word to major cities that he needed a skilled clockmaker who could repair the Astrarium in Padua, built in the 14^th century by Giovanni de’ Dondi. Turriano was hired for the job, and upon inspection he came to the conclusion that the clock was rusted and worn beyond repair. He then decided that he was going to build a similar clock, and it took him 20 years to design the clock of 1800 wheels, and then three and half more years to make it all by hand.

In the late 1530s, Turriano is listed as “magister” in the construction records for Cremona Cathedral, which mention his work on two clocks, one on the bell tower and the other on the doors to a christening font.

After entering the service of Charles V, Turriano not only managed the court workshop, in which he built and supported clocks and instruments but also wrote technical treatises for the Crown, partake in astronomical observations with academicians, surveyed other people’s work, and drafted projects. When Charles V died in 1558, Turriano entered the service of his son Philip II (although he had already a life-long pension of 100 gold escudos, granted by the Emperor in 1552), where he further distinguished himself with works of hydraulic and civil engineering. It seems however that Emperor Philip II did not have his predecessor’s love for automatons, so Turriano found other ways to work.

One of his final projects was a massive water delivery system in Toledo, the so-called Artificio de Juanelo, which was to carry 12000 liters of water a day from the River Tagus to a height of almost 100 meters, to supply the city and its castle (Alcázar). The contract was signed in 1563 by Juanelo, the city and a representative of the king. The works began in 1565 and the water reached the top of the hill in 1569. Not only the amount promised but something more, a total of about 18000 liters per day, which was more than what was agreed. Juanelo built a second Artificio that finished in 1581, and it worked for some 60 years.

Turriano was a friend of the Italian polymath Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576) and made instruments upon his order, and of the humanist, bishop, and poet Marco Girolamo Vida (1480-1566). Cardano described him as “a man of great ingenuity in anything that concerns machines”. There is an interesting text by Vida from 1550, who compared Turriano to the ancient Roman God Vulcan “with his face, hair, and beard covered and smeared with abundant ash and disgusting soot, with his thick and enormous hands and fingers always full of rust, unkempt, poorly and extravagantly dressed… However, lest anyone should imagine that some excellent master in mathematics has prepared for him the calculations of the orbits, of the motions of the stars and has solved it all for him before because he understands nothing about these things, but is only skilled in craftmanship, let him know that he invents them all and fabricates them by himself with no help of any kind, using his own talent, his own research, his own fancy. He is both inventor and executor at once…”.

Turriano married Antonia de Segiella in 1530 at Cremona. The next year, in 1531, was born their daughter, Barbara Medea. Then, they had a son. Around 1539 the family moved to Milan, where their son died in the middle 1540s. In 1650 Turriano was elected head of Milan’s ironsmith guild. He remained in Milan (except for his stays at court in Germany and Netherlands) until early 1556 when he joined the retinue of Charles V who abdicated the throne in 1555 and retired to the monastery at San Yuste. After the death of Charles V in 1558, Turriano lived mainly in Toledo.

Turriano was attributed also with the invention of history’s first known gear-cutting machine and with a significant role in the calculation of the calendar reform of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. He was also known for Cristalino and Microcosmo, magnificent astronomical clocks, and two splendid planetariums.

Juanelo Turriano made his will on 11 June and died at Toledo two days later, on 13 June 1585. He was buried there, a few meters above the place where the Artifice stood, in the now-defunct Convento del Carmen. Some sources say that he died in misery, after not having received payment for his work in Toledo.

One of the most important medieval works in the field of automata is al-Jamiʿ bayn al-ʿilm wa ʿamal, al-nafiʿ fi sinaʿat al-hiyal (The book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices) of Al-Jazari from 1206. Ismail Al-Jazari (1136-1206) (full name Al-Shaykh Ra’is al-A’mal Badi’ al-Zaman Abu al-‘Izz ibn Isma’il ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari) was an influential Arabic scholar and engineer, who lived in the second half of 12^th and in the beginning of 13^th century. He died at the beginning of 1206, just a few months after he had completed his famous book in January 1206. Al-Jazari was in service at the court of three Artuqid rulers from 1174 until his death, and the above-mentioned book was created in the period 1198-1206 in response to the request of Nasir al-Din Mahmud (r. 1200–1222) of the Artuqids of Hisnkeyfa.

According to his name, Al-Jazari was born in Al-Jazira (the traditional Arabic name for what was northern Mesopotamia and what is now northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria, between the Tigris and the Euphrates). Like his father and his brother before him, he served as chief engineer at the Artuklu Palace, the residence of the Diyarbakır branch of the Turkish Artuqid dynasty, which ruled across eastern Anatolia as vassals of the Zangid rulers of Mosul. Apart from Archimedes’ work, Al-Jazari also studied Banu Musa brothers’ contribution in making water fountains.

The book of Al-Jazari describes in detail fifty devices, which are grouped into six categories:
1. Ten water and candle clocks
2. Ten vessels and figures suited for drinking sessions
3. Ten pitchers and basins for phlebotomy and washing before prayers
4. Ten fountains that change their shape alternately, and machines for the perpetual flute
5. Five water-raising machines
6. Five miscellaneous devices

The earliest copy of the book, survived until now (from 1206) is a fine manuscript with excellent illustrations. Each device is described in simple and easy-to-understand Arabic, and each is accompanied by a general drawing. For the complicated devices, the author gave detailed drawings for the components of the device or for subassemblies so that the operation can be understood. There are a total of 174 drawings in the book.

The automata in the book of Al-Jazari included:
1. An automated girl serving drinks (see the upper image)
2. An automated moving peacock driven by hydropower
3. Automatic gates, which were driven by hydropower
4. Several other automata, including automatic machines, home appliances (table devices), and musical automata powered by water

Al-Jazari also invented water wheels with cams on their axle used to operate automata.

The humanoid automata of a girl who could serve water, tea, or drinks, shown in the upper image, is very interesting. The drink was stored in a tank with a reservoir from where the drink drips into a bucket and, after seven minutes, into a cup, after which the waitress appears out of an automatic door serving the drink.

Al-Jazari described a hand-washing automaton (see the upper image), incorporating a flush mechanism, now used in modern flush toilets. It features a girl automaton standing by a basin filled with water. When the user pulls the lever, the water drains and the girl refills the basin.

Al-Jazari’s peacock fountain (see the nearby image) was a more sophisticated hand-washing device, featuring humanoid automata as servants who offer soap and towels. Pulling a plug on the peacock’s tail releases water out of the beak, and as the dirty water from the basin fills the hollow base a float rises and actuates a linkage, which makes a servant figure appear from behind a door under the peacock and offer soap. When more water is used, a second float at a higher level trips and causes the appearance of a second servant figure, this time with a towel! The basin of the peacock fountain formed the basin for performing wudu, and it would have been operated by a servant, who would have pulled the plug and positioned the peacock’s beak, thus allowing the mechanism to release the water into the basin in front of the user.

Al-Jazari described also a musical automaton (see the lower image), which was a boat with four automatic musicians (a harpist, a flutist, and two drummers), that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. The mechanism featured a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams), that bump into little levers that operate the percussion. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. The automata were a robot band, which performed more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection.

Unlike other practical inventors of the period, who left little record of their work, al-Jazari had a passion for documenting his work and explaining how he built his incredible machines. Several incomplete copies of his Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices have survived, including one held by the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, prized for its artistic detail and beauty. The text exalts Al-Jazari as Badi al-Zaman (unique and unrivaled) and al-Shaykh (learned and worthy), but it also acknowledges the debt he owed to “ancient scholars and wise men.”

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the 5th century, the western and central part of Europe was swept down by many barbarian tribes and fall into the so-called Dark Ages for some five centuries. During this time, the centers of the world’s art and science moved to the east—to the eastern Roman Empire, which managed to survive the attacks, China and India, where great civilizations grew and spread, and into the mighty Arabic empire. The period 9-13^th century was full of extraordinary activity in science and technology in the Arabic empire. In the 8^th century, the Abbasid dynasty took over the rule of the vast Muslim world and moved the capital to the newly-founded city of Baghdad. Over the next five centuries, the city would become the world’s center of education and culture.

The Abbasid Caliphs were very interested in clocks and ingenious devices. There are many recorded contributions to the area of automatic machines from this period. The Arabic automata technology, as well as many other Arabic technologies, had as a basis the Greek automata tradition of mainly two engineers, namely Philon of Byzantion and Heron of Alexandria. Several Arabic scientists are known to have worked in the field of automata—Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan from the 8th century, the so-called pseudo-Archimedes and Banu Musa brothers from the 9th century, Al-Muradi and Al-Khazini from the 11^th century, Hibat Allah ibn al-Husayn and Ridwan Al-Khurasami from 12^th century, and Al-Jazari from early 13^th century.

Banu Musa brothers—Moḥammad, Aḥmad, and Ḥasan ibn Musa ibn Shakir, were Persian scholars who lived and worked in Baghdad in the 9th century, under caliph Al-Ma’mun and his successors, who recognized their abilities and enrolled them in the House of Wisdom, an institution created by him as a center for collecting, translating and studying books from other lands. Moḥammad was the most productive of the brothers, and he took a general interest in all the sciences, Ahmad was the engineer of the family, and Hasan was the geometer.

The works of the Banu Musa brothers encompass both translations and original contributions in the fields of geometry, astronomy, mechanics, and music. While they took Greek works as a starting point, they went well beyond anything achieved by Hero, Philo, and Archimedes. Their preoccupation with automatic controls distinguishes them from their Greek predecessors, including the Banu Musa’s use of self-operating valves, timing devices, delay systems, and other concepts of great ingenuity. They wrote almost 20 books, but only several survived to our time.

One of them, A Book on the Description of the Instrument Which Plays by Itself (al-Āla allatī tuzammir bi-nafsihā), written about 850 CE, describes the first music sequencer, an example of an early type of programmable machine. The instrument is a mechanical hydraulic organ that operates automatically by the action of weight and water pressure. The air pushed by the hydraulic pump is compressed in a sphere to power a flute with nine holes. The holes are opened and closed by eight levers, the ends of which make contact with the fixed raised pins arranged on the lateral surface of a revolving cylinder to produce a well-known melody.
Banu Musa even proposed a mechanism of an automated flutist, an embryonic stadium of the first musical humanoid automaton:
If we want to create a humanoid flutist, we simply have to incorporate the whole device in the body of the statue, fix the flute in its mouth and disguise the levers as fingers and adapt it to his arms. Furthermore, we have to bend back these levers inside the body of the statue so that they reach the pins fixed on the revolving cylinder. Finally, we put in place the air conduits in the body of the statue and direct them towards the mouth of the flute. We can also hide the entire mechanism so that only the flutist who is playing can be seen.

Another book by the brothers, Kitab al-Hiyal al-Naficah (“The Book of Ingenious Devices”), written about 830 CE, the only surviving work by Aḥmad, describes 100 inventions. Some of the devices described in the book were inspired by the works of Hero of Alexandria and Philo of Byzantium, as well as ancient Persian, Chinese, and Indian engineers. Most of the devices described in the book, however, were original inventions by the Banu Musa brothers. The list of devices includes beakers, pitchers, jars, basins, troughs, boilers, whistles, pipettes, flasks, fountains, lamps, bellows, a dispenser, and a grab.

Let’s examine Model 97 from The Book of Ingenious Devices, describing a lamp, known as “the lamp of the God” (see the lower drawing). It features a wick that comes out by itself and the oil flows by itself and everyone who sees it thinks the fire has consumed nothing whatsoever from the oil and from the wick.

The pulley (k) which is in it for the chain to be passed over it, and the weight (s) to which one end of the chain is fixed. We position the pipe into which the air passes from the lamp into the oil reservoir in the column (jb). The chain goes through into the hollow of this pipe. And we install another small pulley (h) above the top of the pipe and lead over it the chain in the way we have illustrated so that chain terminates, as we have illustrated, at a float (t). Float (t) should be double the weight of weight (s), although the float rides above the oil. Between the reservoir containing the oil and the lamp, we make another hole (a) like hole (j) and we lead out from hole (a) and pipe (ae) that terminates at the mouth of the bird. The bird’s beak should be above the hole (f) in the lamp so that when the oil flows through pipe (ae) it discharges into hole (f) and enters the lamp. It should be clear that when we pour the oil into the hole (l) it enters pipe (ls) and flows through pipe (wz) into the reservoirs in which the pipe is. Float (t) rises, weight (s) sinks, and in sinking pulls the chain, which rotates pulley (k), and the toothed wheel (y) rotates with it. Toothed wheel (mx) slides, together with the wick in direction (x). We pour the required amount of oil, the lamp (fb) fills with oil, and we light the wick while we are observed. The oil diminishes until hole (j) is uncovered and the air enters the reservoir through hole (j) and the oil runs from the reservoir into the lamp through pipe (ae), and the oil drips from the bird’s beak until the end (j) of the pipe is closed. When the oil diminishes in the reservoir, float (t) sinks, pulling the chain, weight (s) rises, pulley (k) and toothed wheel (y) rotates, and the rod to which we attached the wick moves in the direction of the mark (x) and the wick therefore emerges.

More than half a century before the extraordinary machine drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, the first technology manuscript of the Italian Renaissance was produced by a Venetian scholar and engineer, who portrayed himself as a magus—Giovanni Jacopo Antonio de (la) Fontana, known also as Johannes de Fontana and Johannes Fontana de Venetiis.

Giovanni Fontana was born in the early 1390s in Padua (or in Venice), in the craftsman’s family of Michele from Venice. He spent his youth in Venice or in the surroundings. From the records of the University of Padua, it is known, that he attended the University from the middle 1410s (in a record from May 1417, he was already designated as “maestro”) until 1421 and received a degree in arts in June 1418 and a degree in medicine in May 1421. University records list him as Master Giovanni, son of Michele de la Fontana, though later Fontana claims that in his youth he made inventions, built organs, and especially designed advanced fountains, whence his nickname Fontana.

Fontana was promoted at the University of Padua by the scholastic scientist Paolo Nicoletti da Udine (c. 1370-1429), known also as Paul of Venice, who was a professor of logic and philosophy in Padua from 1395 until 1420. Besides Paolo da Udine, his promoters were Antonio Cermisone, Bartolomeo da Montagnana, Galeazzo di Santa Sofia, Stefano de ‘Dottori, Biagio da Parma, and Prosdocimo de Beldomandi. Paul of Venice tells us that the Doge of Venice Francesco Foscari sent Fontana to Brescia to deliver a message to the condottiere Francesco Carmagnola around 1428. It seems Fontana spent the rest of his life as a physician, appointed first as a physician to the Venetian army in Brescia, and later after 1438 as the municipal physician by the city of Udine. Fontana had at least one son, named Ottaviano. The date and place of Fontana’s death are still unknown, probably around 1455-1456.

Fontana had a wide range of interests and studied mechanical arts from the Greek and Arabic texts, reading historical works on optics, astrology and alchemy (intrinsic medical studies back then), pneumatic and hydraulic mechanics, military machines, and the art of memory. Besides his interest in such devices, Fontana applied his knowledge to analyze some natural phenomena, e.g. to produce a treatise on perspective, which he presented to the painter Jacopo Bellini.

In the early 1420s, Fontana’s career in Padua must have been struck down by accusations of witchcraft. When witnesses at Padua exclaimed that a torpedo he had designed must run by diabolic power, he refuted them with contempt: the device was purely mechanical, as befitted a maker who was also a master of both medieval Archimedean statics and optics and of Renaissance engineering craft.

Sometime in the 1420s, Fontana composed a very interesting treatise—Bellicorum instrumentorum liber, cum figuris et fictitys litoris conscriptus (Illustrated and encrypted book of war instruments), still preserved in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek . It was dedicated to a character whose name is not mentioned, but who must have been placed rather high in the social hierarchy, as demonstrated by the accuracy with which the volume is executed, the expensive parchment, and the abundance and beauty of the drawings. In fact, Fontana was a prolific author in a range of technology, that was far wider than scientific instrumentation and military devices. At least ten of his treatises survived to the present and five others, still unidentified, are mentioned in his writings.

The title of the above-mentioned treatise is a little misleading or at least fails to take into account the wide range of technologies included in the 70 folio pages (with some 140 illustrations). Fontana’s Bellicorum instrumentorum features, among others, siege engines, fountains, and pumps, lifting and transporting machines, defensive towers, dredges, combination locks, battering rams, rocket-propelled animals, the first-ever depiction of a magic lantern, scaling ladders, measuring instruments, alchemical furnaces and the most interesting in the context of this site—several robotic automata (see the nearby images).

Almost every picture in Bellicorum instrumentorum is accompanied by a few lines to a couple of paragraphs of text. The first sentence is usually in Latin with the remainder written in a substitute cipher system. There are probably various reasons that account for why the text was encoded, although secrecy is unlikely to have been the main priority. There was something of a magician in Fontana (who even portrayed himself as a magus), who is thought to have built toy models of a few of the automata, so projecting a veil of esoteric mysticism will have appealed to his desire to amaze readers. Coded writing may also have offered a form of copyright, providing one level of difficulty for any unauthorized copying. As Fontana’s only other extant manuscript (Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum), devoted to mnemonic devices, memory, and natural philosophy experiments, was also drafted in the same code, it is speculated that the author considered the code a symbolic writing system that conferred particular significance on the contents.

The other treatises of Fontana discussed also many other devices and problems, e.g. sand clocks, surveying methods, parabolic burning mirrors, methods of painting, hydraulic engineering, etc. Most probably Fontana was, as his predecessor Villard de Honnecourt, not a genuine inventor, but simply a clever and curious man, who managed to bring together a range of many known technologies, drawn from Ctesibius of Alexandria, Philon of Byzantion, Archimedes, etc up to the medieval Arabic scientists like Al-Jazari and Al-Kindi, augmented with Fontana’s own, sometimes fanciful, designs and dared to present them in an accessible format as a kind of a technical manual.

Moreover, around 1430 in the already mentioned encrypted writing “Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum” Fontana investigated the different types of memory and explained the functions of artificial memory. He proposes some memory devices and “machines”, having a fixed structure (wheels, spirals, cylinders) and a mobile and variable part allowing to change the combinations of signs within this system, an engineer’s realization of the Lullian dream.