A "microprocessor" from the 18th Century!

[bigmoose]

Unbelievable! A programmable "microprocessor" from the 18th century. Video was amazing to me!
http://www.chonday.com/Videos/the-writer-automaton

Tremendous Kudos to the Swiss!

 

[gogo]

Burn him at the stake! He turned me into a newt!

This predates the Babbage difference engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

 

[Ratking]

Thank you for sharing this beautiful video
As an automatician I almost shed a tear for this amazing work. It would have been incredibly interesting talking to the builder and seeing his workshop.
I can't imagine how talented he must have been in both mechanical and logical thinking making this art

 

[Arlo1]

Thanks Dave. That's amazing!

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13299

 

[liveforphysics]

That is incredibly beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I watched Toorbough's video again as well, because that device always blows my mind to see. When you have that high of prevailing torque budget to drive something with watch-tooth gears, you have the ability to some very complex geometric math mechanically. Think about how hard it is to make something with just a few interacting moving pieces be smooth and reliable with no jams. Now think of doing it with no computers, and no CNC machine.

When I looked at the forbidden city in China, I was more impressed with the craftsmanship and scale than I am with any modern man-created structures I've seen.

Even thousands of years ago, smart skilled people still existed and still applied themselves completely. There were ancient Elon Musks.

 

[biohazardman]

Thanks very much for the vid I had not known of this before. Hard enough to make things werq with more modern tools but on such a complex scale in those days with primitive tooling had to be difficult. Always a pleasure to see the handywerq of the gifted.

 

[Dauntless]

Even if the 4,700 year old robots of ancient China pale compared to Pierre Jacquet-Droz, his work was hardly revolutionary. He himself learned at the feet of Fredrick von Knauss. The 'bot in the video came over 100 years after Descartes 'Automatic Woman' was thrown overboard. Who knows, perhaps the Gollem was real.

This was a favorite subject of mine growing up.

If you go to Philadelphia, maybe the Franklin Institute is still displaying this robot from Henri Maillardet, one of the guys that built the writer. Jacquet-Droz had quite a staff. P.T. Barnum brought this one to the U.S. in 1850, it was damaged in the fire at his museum to be left dormant for 90 years and not fully restored so it can no longer dip the pen to write and needs a ball point. I understood it to have been redressed as a woman for time after the restoration, but the photo looks like it's back to the original boy in court jester dress look. Writing:

Unerring is my hand, tho’ small.
May I not add with truth:
I do my best to please you all;
Encourage, then, my youth.

The writer (And sketch artist) from the video is one of 3 robots that can be seen in Neuchatel, Switzerland. close to 250 years old and still working. I find the piano player more fascinating. Then there's one that reads the book aloud. (The video creates a distorted view of things.) All these old robots are cam driven. HOW did they ever coordinate the movements with all those stacks of cams?

But there were all manner of robots built as parts of clocks back then, some playing musical instruments at the top of the hour, one mechanical dog that protected the contents of a bowl by running to it and barking, door answering 'bots, etc. BEFORE the French Revolution. Oh, the accusations of witchcraft, eh?

And there were touring shows entirely of these robots, perhaps a dozen or more at a time, travelling all over Europe. The biggest market for the work of the shop of Jacquet-Droz was in Asia, but I haven't heard of the old machines turning up there. Who knows what might reappear.