Automata

Automata. The crucial distinction between natural and artificial objects was not form but motion. According to Aristotle, natural objects had the principle of their movement or change (understood broadly to include growth and reproduction) within themselves, while artificial things did not. An acorn planted in the ground begets and oak, but an oak bedstead planted in the ground does not beget more beadsteads. This distinction posed a further challenge to the artisan: to craft devices capable of moving -- hands, feet, heads, eyes, and whole bodies -- in a lifelike manner by means of some hidden, internal principle. Automata had been made since antiquity, some of which 'sang' as well as moved. Even more elaborate devices were constructed in China and the Islamic world during the Middle Ages, but most were powered by water pressure and therefore were incapable of locomotion. The development of spring-powered clockwork in the sixteenth century permitted the development of automata which were capable, not only of moving limbs, but of propelling themselves from place to place.

'Mechanical Marvels, Clockwork Dreams' is a BBC4 documentary, presented by Professor Simon Schaffer of the University of Cambridge, which charts the little-known story of automata, the clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life. Major examples of these machines from across Europe are examined, mainly from the eighteenth century, including the entire mechanical city pictured above (in Salzburg), a small boy who can be programmed to write, and a device that can play chess. As well as the automata themselves, Schaffer explores the world in which they were made: the patrons, designers, and workers and their role in global trade and the industrial revolution. Perhaps most significant is the extent to which these forgotten works of 'art' in the broad, pre-modern sense represent the ancestors of many modern technologies, from recorded music to the cinema and much of the digital world (Commentary derived from BBC4).

This segment includes some of the antecedents to these eighteenth-century marvels from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Credits: Howard Hotson (May 2018)