The St. Johns herald., 1898-07-09
QUEER EXPLORATIONS.
EXAMPLES FROM THE DAYS OF
 DEDALUS TO THE PRESENT.

A Wooden Venus That Walked and a
 Brazen Man That Talked-A Wonderful
 Mechanical Duck-The Greatest of All
 the Fraudulent Automatons.
 There are few things more attractive to the generality of men or more calcu- lated to excite their wonder and admira- tion than dexterously and mysteriously contrived automaton. There is, indeed, something almost uncanny in the sight of figure made by mems hands acting like creature of flesh and blood, and this uncanniness is one of the most sub- tie of Vaccinations. Hence the silver of the curious readily finds it's way into the pockets of men ingenious enough to invent such marvels.
 This passion for the automaton is cer- tainly no new thing. One meets it in almost the earliest books, sometimes yelled in myth, sometimes more direct | ly stated. Vulcan, it will be remem- bered, made automatic tripods for the gods of Olympus - stools which ad vanced of their own accord to the ban quoting table and so retired when the feast was over.
 Aristotle tells us that the human au- tomata which D8dalus made were so active that it was necessary to keep them tethered for fear they would run away. The same philosopher describes wooden Venus who walked about and gives also the secret of the phenomenon. She was filled with quicksilver-a some what crude device Albertus Magnus is credited with having made a brazen man who talked and St. Thomas Aqui- mas with having pounded it to pieces with club, suspecting it to be work of satan. Some marvellous feats of mechanism are credited to John Muller, otherwise known as Regiomontanus, who flourished in the fifteenth century, and in dealing with him we perhaps touch firmer ground. One was an iron fly which flew around table, another a wooden eagle which went out to meet Emperor Mahmilian on his entry of Nuremberg on June 2, 147O, and re- turned with him to the city gates. Whether due or not to the stimulus given by Louis XIV, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were in France times of great automatic activity. In- deed, the first named century marks the beginning of the really historical era of automata. In the eighteenth century lived MT. Vaucansou, perhaps the most wonderful of all makers of automata and the creator of the famous duck which first appeared before the public in 1741. The duck was Vaucanson's s masterpiece and completed reputation already made wide by his mechanical flute player and an automatic musician which not only blew upon the fageolet, but also kept time to it on tambourine. The bird was of life size, and not only was it outwardly an exact imitation to a feather of a real duck, but it's internal anatomy was absolutely true to life. So, indeed, were it's movements, for it swan, dived, walked, quacked, ate, drank and by an ingenious device even seemed to digest it's food.
 This automaton disappeared after its inventors death, but turned up again in 1840 in a garret in Berlin and wal purchased by George Tiets, who tool four years to put it in proper working order again. At the end of this time it was exhibited in a room in the Palail Royal, Paris, where MT. Houdin. thl celebrated conjuror, saw it, and, indeed afterward. when something happene'