Automata (Mechanical)

03 Oct 1994 12:00

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Not to be confused with the formal or cellular varieties. Related to clockwork.

Recommended
• Edgar Allen Poe's "Maelzel's Chess-Player" is a famous examination of an automaton, marred only by the fact that Poe's solution is wrong, and lots of it is sloppy if not plagarized. Wimsatt's article "Poe and the Chess-Playing Automaton" is supposed to be the first real exposure, but there's an excellent chapter on this, based on Wimsatt, in Richard Wilcocks's Maelzel's Chess-Player: Freud and the Rhetoric of Deceit (Wilcocks compares the rhetorical strategies of Freud and Poe --- and the former comes out looking rather the worse).
• Otto Mayr, Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe [Review: Politics and Pendula]
• Joseph Needham has, of course, a quite encyclopedic treatment of Chinese automata, with brief yet thorough comparisons to the rest of the world, in Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4, Physics and Physical Technology, part 2, Mechanical Engineering. This includes a remarkable device called the "south-pointing chariot," apparently one of the first feedback devices.
• Derek J. de Solla Price, Science Since Babylon [essay collection, includes a number of important articles on the history of automata, of mechanistic philosophy and of their interconnection]

To read:
• Al-Jazari [+XII Islamic text on automta]
• S. A. Bendi, Technology and Culture 5 24-42
• Max von Boehn, Puppets and Automata
• B. Boie, German Quarterly 54 284
• Brett, Speculum 29 477
• David Brewster, Letters on Natural Magic
• James Douglas Bruce, Modern Philology X 511
• Carrera, Androids
• Carroll, Great Chess Automaton
• Chandler, Arts 43
• Alfred Chapuis
• Claflin, Street Magic
• Drachmann, The mechanical technology of Greek and Roman antiquity
• Encyclopedia of World Art, art. "Automata"
• H. S. Hatfield, Automaton
• Heron, Pneumatics [on-line version: The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria]
• Mary Hillier, Automata and Mechanical Toys
• David Hopkin, Automata
• Huet, Representations 1, 4 (1983) 73-87
• Kayser, The Grotesque
• Maskelyne
• Otto Mayr
  • Origins of Feedback Control
  • Philosophers and Machines
• Ord-Hume, Clockwork Music
• Panet, Am. Lit. 48 (Nov. '76) 370
• Antiquarian Horology
• Derek de Solla Price
  • Sci. Am. June '59, 60
  • Tech. + Cult. 5 (64), 9
  • Hist. Tech. vol. iii
• Bruno Ray, J. Pop. Cult. 14 (1980) 60
• Sherwood, Studies in Philology Oct. 1947, 567
• Shumaker, Thought 51, 255
• Strandh, A History of the Machine
• West, Flesh of Steel
• Lynn White, Medieval Technology
• Winter, Theatre of Marvels
• Jessica Wolfe, Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissancew Literature [Blurb]
• Wright, J. Hist. Ideas 41, 232