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maton ate, drank, and quacked in perfect harmony with nature. It gobbled food brought before it, with avidity, drank, and even muddled the water after the manner of the living bird, and appeared to evacuate its food ultimately in a digested state. Ingenious contemporaries of the inventor, who solved all the rest of his contrivances, could never wholly comprehend the mechanism of this duck. A chemical solution of the food was contrived to imitate the effect of digestion.

This gentleman is also celebrated for having exhibited at Paris, in 1738, an androides (from avno, a man, and dog, a form; a term under which some scientific works have classed all the automata that have been made to imitate the human person), a flute-player, whose powers exceeded all his ancestry; and for the liberality and good sense with which he communicated to the academy, in the same year, an exact account of its construction. The figure was nearly six feet in height, and usually placed on a square pedestal four feet and a-half high, and about three feet and a-half broad. The air entered the body by three separate pipes, into which it was conveyed by nine pairs of bellows, which were expanded and contracted at pleasure, by means of an axis formed of metallic substances, and which was turned by the aid of clock-work. There was not even the slightest noise heard during the operations of the bellows: which might otherwise have discovered the process by which the air was conveyed ad libitum into the body of the machine. The three tubes, into which the air was sent by means of the bellows, passed again into three small reservoirs concealed in the body of the automaton. After having united in this place, and ascended towards the throat, they formed the cavity of the mouth, which terminated in two small lips, adapted to the performance of their respective functions. A small movable tongue was enclosed within this cavity, which admitted or intercepted the passage of the air into the flute, according to the tune that was executed, or the quantity of wind that was requisite for the performance. A particular species of steel cylinder, which was turned by means of clock-work, afforded the proper movements to the fingers, lips, and tongue. This cylinder was divided into fifteen equal parts, which caused the ascension of the other extremities, by the aid of pegs, which pressed upon the ends of fifteen different levers. The fingers of the automaton were directed in their movements by seven of these levers, which had wires and chains attached to their ascending extremities; these being fixed to the fingers, caused their ascension in due proportion to the declension of the other extremity, by the motion of the cylinder; and thus, on the contrary, the ascent, or descent, of one end of the lever, produced a similar ascent, or descent, in the fingers that corresponded to the others; by which one of the holes was opened or stopped agreeably to the direction of the music. The entrance of the wind was managed by three of the other levers, which were so organized as to be capable of opening or shutting, by means of the three reservoirs. By a similar mechanical process, the lips were under

the direction of four levers; one of which opened them in order to give the air a freer passage; the other contracted them; the third drew them back; and the fourth pushed them in a forward direction. The lips were placed on that part of the flute which receives the air; and, by the different motions which have been already enumerated, regulated the tune in the requisite manner for execution. The direction of the tongue furnished employment for the remaining lever, which it moved in order that it might be enabled to shut or open the mouth of the flute. The extremity of the axis of the cylinder was terminated on the right side by an endless screw, consisting of twelve threads, each of which was placed at the distance of a line and a half from the other. A piece of copper was fixed above this screw; and within it was a steel pivot, which was inserted between the threads of the screw, and obliged the cylinder above-mentioned, to pursue the threads. Thus, instead of moving in a direct turn, it was perpetually pushed to one side; the successive elevation of the levers displaying all the different movements of a professed musician.

M. Vaucanson constructed another celebrated androides, which played on the Provençal shepherd's pipe, and beat, at the same time, on an instrument called the tambour de basque. This was also a machine of the first order for ingenious and difficult contrivance. The shepherd bore the flageolet in his left hand, and in the right a stick, with which he beat the tabor, or tambourine, in accompaniment. He was ca.. pable of playing about twenty different airs, consisting of minuets, rigadoons, and countrydances. The pipe, or flageolet, which he was made to play, is a wind-instrument of great variety, rapidity, and power of execution, when the notes are well filled and properly articulated by the tongue; but it consists only of three holes; and the execution, therefore, mainly depends upon the manner in which they are covered, and the due variation of the force of the wind that reaches them. To give the androides power to sound the highest note, M. Vaucanson found it necessary to load the bellows, which supplied the air to this tone, with fifty-six pounds weight, while that of one ounce supplied the lowest tone. Nor was the same note always to be executed by exactly the same force of air; it was necessary to pay the most accurate attention to its place on the scale, and to so many difficult circumstances of combination and expression, that the inventor declares himself to have been frequently on the point of relinquishing his attempt in its progress. In the tambourine accompaniment, too, there were numerous obstacles to overcome; the variation of the strokes, and particularly the continued roll of this instrument, was found to require no small ingenuity of construction.

All other exhibitions of mechanical skill, in imitation of the powers of human nature, were destined, however, to give way, in 1769, to the pretensions of the chess-player of M. Wolffgang de Kempelin, a Hungarian gentleman, and aulic counsellor of the royal chamber of the domains of the emperor in Ilungary. Called in that year

to Vienna, by the duties of his station, this gentleman was present at some experiments in magnetism, made before the empress Maria Theresa, when he ventured to hint that he could construct for her majesty a piece of mechanism far superior to any of those which had been exhibited. His manner of remarking this, excited the attention of the empress, who encouraged him to make the effort, the automaton chessplayer, which has since been exhibited in all the capitals of Europe, was, within six months after this period, presented at the imperial court. It is a presumption in favor of the pretensions of this contrivance to be a master-piece of mere mechanism, that the original artist, after having gratified his exalted patroness and her court with the exhibition of it, appeared for many years indifferent to its fame. He engaged himself in other mechanical pursuits with equal ardor, and is said to have so far neglected this, as to nave taken it partly to pieces, for the purpose of making other experiments. But the visit of the Russian grand duke Paul to the court of Joseph II. again called our automaton to life. It was repaired and put in order in a few weeks; and, from this period (1785), has been exhibited at intervals, through Germany, at Paris, and in London, first by M. de Kempelin, and latterly by a purchaser of the property from his son; De Kempelin having died in 1803.

Our chess-playing readers will be able to appreciate the bold pretensions of this automaton. The entire number of combinations which it is possible to form with the pieces of a chess-board has never, we believe, been ascertained. To push forward a plan of our own steadily, and at the same time to anticipate the designs of an antagonist, requires a constant and acute discrimination, which long experience, and some considerable strength of memory, have been required to make availing in all other cases. But this cunning infidel (for he assumes the figure of a Turk) drives kings, and castles, and knights before him with more than mortal sagacity, and with his inferior hand he never, we believe, has been beaten; and except in a very few instances of drawn games, has beat the most skilful chessplayers in Europe. Dr. Hutton, on the supposition of its being altogether a mechanical contrivance, calls it 'the greatest master-piece of mechanics that ever appeared in the world.' We shall recount his pretensions in the words of an Oxford graduate, who published Observations on them, during his last visit in London, and subjoin a statement of the best attempts that have been made to account for his apparent

skill.

'The room where the automaton chess-player is at present exhibited, has an inner apartment, within which appears the figure of a Turk as large as life, dressed after the Turkish fashion, sitting behind a chest of three feet and a half in length, two feet in breadth, and two feet and a half in height, to which it is attached by the wooden seat on which it sits. The chest is placed upon four castors, and, together with the figure, may be easily moved to any part of the room. On the plain surface formed by the top of the chest, in the centre, is a raised immovable chess-board of handsome dimensions, upon which

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the figure has its eyes fixed; its right arm and hand being extended on the chest, and its left arm somewhat raised, as if in the attitude of holding a Turkish pipe, which originally was placed in its hand. The exhibiter begins by wheeling the chest to the entrance of the apartment within which it stands, and in face of the spectators. He then opens certain doors contrived in the chest, two in front and two at the back; at the same time pulling out a long shallow drawer at the bottom of the chest, made to contain the chess-men, a cushion for the arm of the figure to rest upon, and some counters. Two lesser doors, and a green cloth screen, contrived in the body of the figure and its lower parts, are likewise opened, and the Turkish robe which covers them is raised; so that the construction, both of the figure and chest, internally, is displayed. In this state the automaton is moved round for the examination of the spectators: and, to banish all suspicion from the most sceptical mind, that any living subject is concealed within any part of it, the exhibitor introduces a lighted candle into the body of the chest and figure, by which the interior of the chest is, in a great measure, rendered transparent, and the most secret corner is shown. Here it may be observed, that the same precaution to remove suspicion is used, if requested, at the close, as at the commencement, of a game of chess with the automaton. The chest is divided, by a partition, into two unequal chambers. That to the right of the figure is the narrowest, and occupies scarcely one-third of the body of the chest. It is filled with little wheels, levers, cylinders, and other machinery used in clock-work. That to the left contains a few wheels, some small barrels with springs, and two quarters of a circle placed horizontally. The body and lower parts of the figure contain certain tubes, which seem to be conductors to the machinery. After a sufficient time, during which each spectator may satisfy his scruples and his curiosity, the exhibiter recloses the doors of the chest and figure, and the drawer at the bottom; makes some arrangements in the body of the figure, winds up the works with a key inserted into a small opening on the side of the chest, places a cushion under the left arm of the figure, which now rests upon it, and invites any individual present to play a game of chess. At the commencement of a game, the automaton moves its head as if taking a view of the board; the same motion occurs at the close of a game. In making a move, it slowly raises its left arm from the cushion placed under it, and directs it towards the square of the piece to be moved. Its hands and fingers open on touching the piece, which it takes up, and conveys to any proposed square. The arm then returns with a natural motion to the cushion upon which it usually rests. In taking a piece, the automaton makes the same motions of the arm and hand to lay hold of the piece, which it conveys from the board, and then returning to its own piece, it takes it up, and places it on the vacant square. Observations, &c. by an Oxford Graduate, 8vo, 1819. His motions have an air of great dignity and composure. On giving check to the king, he moves his head as a signal. When a false move is made, as if to puzzle him, he taps with his right hand on the chest, replaces the

piece wrongly moved, and proceeds to take the due advantage of moving a piece of his own. At other times he will tap on the chest for his adversary to move; and at the close of the game he bows gracefully round to the company. It is a remarkable, and somewhat suspicious circumstance, that neither the present proprietor of this automaton (in a pamphlet circulated by him on this subject), nor the Oxford graduate, from whose observations we have abridged the above account of his performances, takes any notice of the attempted solution of them by Mr. Collinson, a correspondent of Dr. Hutton, to whom we have before alluded. In the same letter in which this gentleman describes the automaton inventions of the Droz family, he speaks of a pamphlet presented to him at Dresden, which affirms the whole phenomena to be produced by human agency; a conjecture which is confirmed by a writer in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. A welltaught boy is said to be partly concealed in the ample drapery of our automaton's lower limbs, and partly in the commode on which the chessboard is placed. He cannot be seen when the doors are opened, we are told, 'because his legs and thighs are then concealed in two hollow cylinders, which appear designed to support the wheels and levers, the rest of the body being at that moment out of the commode, and hid in the drapery of the automaton. When the doors of the commode are shut, the clacks which are heard by the turning of a rounce, permit the dwarf to change his place, and re-enter the commode without being heard; and while the machine is rolled about to different parts of the room, to prove that it is perfectly detached, the dwarf has an opportunity of shutting the trap through which he has passed. The drapery of the automaton is then lifted up, and the interior part of the body is shown, to convince the spectators that all is fair, and the whole terminates to their great astonishment, and in the illusion that an effect is produced by simple machinery, which can only arise from a well-ordered head.' This writer proceeds to conjecture, that the chessboard is semi-transparent, so as at once to conceal the party within, and afford him sufficient light to perceive the moves of his antagonist, which are met by an interior lever, governing the arm of the automaton, on the principles of the pantograph.

With these accounts of the chess-player very distinctly in his mind, and an extract of the supposed method of concealing the dwarf or boy, in his pocket, the writer of this paper went with some friends a short time ago, to visit, and, if possible, to play at chess with the automaton. His engagements, however, were far too numerous for the writer to obtain that honor on this occasion. Some slight changes had taken place in the manner of exhibiting the automaton (compared with the account of the Oxford graduate); having, therefore, avowed to the proprietor, that his object was to obtain a scientific knowledge of his proceedings, as far as it could be done with propriety, the writer took memoranda of what passed.

From a door in a canvass screen the automaton and commode were wheeled out at the

time appointed, and the figure was made to face the company. Then the inferior chamber of the commode (occupying about one-third of its dimensions), was opened before and behind, when a taper was held by the proprietor in such a situation, as to throw a full light through the machinery that occupied this part of it. He now closed and locked the doors of this chamber, opened the drawer, and took out the men and cushion, as described by the Oxford graduate; after which he opened the larger chamber of the commode in front, and put the taper through the front door within it. Perhaps one-sixth, or oneeighth of this chamber was occupied by machinery; the rest was a perfect cavity, lined with green baize. He now shut and locked these doors; then wheeled the commode round, opened and took up the drapery of the figure, and exhibited the body, partly occupied by machinery, and partly left with imperfect imitations of the prominent parts, to the shoulders. The drapery was then carefully pulled down, and the figure wheeled round, so as again to front the spectators, before whom it played a masterly and successful game. The conviction of the writer and his friends (with the figure before them) was, that the concealment of a small thin boy or dwarf was barely possible. The larger chamber would contain him, and that chamber never was opened from behind, nor at the same time that the back of the figure was exposed; while it is observable that the inferior chamber had the light of a taper thrown through it. So that it appeared a practicable contrivance that a boy should be concealed in the drapery while the commode was opened, and in the commode while the figure was exposed.

Under these impressions, the writer addressed a letter to the proprietor, in which he stated, that having with his friends, been highly gratified by the wonderful powers of the automaton chessplayer, and intending to communicate the result of his investigation to the public, which must, if satisfactory, prove extremely creditable to the invention, he requested leave to visit the exhibition (accompanied by two or three scientific friends, and probably in the presence of a member of the Royal family), in order to see a game played by the figure, with the doors of the commode open; his object being merely to ascertain the impossibility of any human intervention, and not in any degree to inspect the machinery; but to this application a polite negative was returned, declining any other than the ordinary public exposure of the machine.

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Since writing the above, we have seen 'An Attempt to analyse the Automaton Chess-player of M. De Kempelin,' Lon. 1821. The anonymous author is sanguine enough to add, With an easy method of imitating the movements of that celebrated Figure.' The solution of these movements here offered to the public, is so far similar to our own, as that the writer confidently ascribes them to the concealed presence of a living agent. Five lithographic plates illustrates his supposed mode or operation. But this tract suggests, that the operator is introduced into the body of the automa ton; that he sees the chess board, while playing, through the waistcoat, as easily as through a

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