I've quite forgotten how to start a new thread (which would probably only be short here anyway).  I'm sure there was some posting on automata at one time - thinking for example about the galleon clock that is now in the British Museum (and was mentioned in the "history of a 100 objects" radio show some years ago - that may not be the exact name).  Anyway, using this as a general purpose thread, I've just read a book by a writer called Kate Ellis.  She writes mysteries set in the present but there is usually a link to the past as well (her detective has a best friend from university days who is an archaeologist).  Anyway, without spoiling the narrative there is reference in the book to a medieval automaton (which the author says was based on the one in the shape of a friar now housed in the Smithsonian).  The quality of the video is not great but the machine seems to be working well for its age.  Ms Ellis said it appeared when she did her research that there were statues with parts that could be moved with levers in Roman times.  I don't think I'd ever heard that before - if I had then I had forgotten it. 

Hi LiR - indeed worth its own thread, and a fascinating subject. I've therefore moved it here if that's ok with you!

I've always had a lot of time for Ctesibius - his main claim to fame having been the chief librarian of the first Great Library in Alexandria, a post to which he was promoted having started out, of all things, as a barber! When still a barber he had invented a self-adjusting and self-balancing pneumatic mirror apparatus that so impressed his customers that one of them (we assume) invited him to lecture locally on pneumatics at the local philosophy school around the corner. One thing led to another and soon he was adapting pneumatics for all sorts of different applications, including probably being the first in the world to invent a deep-mine pump (equally useful for displacing water and air, and an example of which was found in, of all places, Roman Silchester) and the world's first pipe organ.

When the job came up at the new library he couldn't say no once offered, though they forgot to mention to him that the job carried no salary (the philo- in philosopher once meant what it said), that kind of academic post normally reserved for men of private means with the time and money to make a go of it. He couldn't really turn it into a hairdressers (at least not immediately), so he hit upon the novel idea of reserving a corner as an exhibition space in which people could pay to see his novel "automatons", designed using the same pneumatic skills that should by right have already made him a millionaire had patents been invented at that time.

To this day we don't know - as attested by several witnesses - how he managed to build an automatic owl that not only could fly around the library but also appeared to follow spoken instructions to fetch mice, return to his arm etc, and even hoot in reply to questions. He allegedly based it on Archytas of Tarentum's wooden flying dove (probably apocryphal), and then in turn 1980s Hollywood advanced the apocrypha by basing a very young "Mad Men Perseus" Harry Hamlin's Bubo on Ctesibius's invention. However in amongst all the apocrypha and hammy acting Ctesibius seems to have been the real deal.

It is a very interesting subject, I remember starting a thread after watching a TV programme a while back but the videos are gone now.

This machine dates from the 1770s, and is currently on display in Bowes Museum, County Durham:

Found it again, well worth watching:

I admire people who are able to recycle things, Caro.  Are there any bona fide gypsies in New Zealand?  A lady I know who has a daughter living Christchurch said that the immigration rules had been tightened up in NZ.  Her daughter and son-in-law became naturalised New Zealanders (is that the correct term?) last year.  But that is rather off-topic - the article you linked about the automata is interesting.

Edited to add that I see Trike has mentioned linking something about automata earlier but that the videos had disappeared.  I think if the original video has been taken down from YouTube the link has gone also.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I've quite forgotten how to start a new thread (which would probably only be short here anyway).  I'm sure there was some posting on automata at one time - thinking for example about the galleon clock that is now in the British Museum (and was mentioned in the "history of a 100 objects" radio show some years ago - that may not be the exact name). 

Lady,

I remember that you posted here something on the "Spanish Galleon" some time ago. I then searched and published on this board, first of all the BBC link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00tt49x




But I am nearly sure that I then also found a film (fiction perhaps and with a copy of the real galleon perhaps), where the galleon rolled on the table and fired its guns) but after a quarter of seeking on the net I don't find it back...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul, thank you for posting the clip.  Sometimes YouTube deletes videos if the uploaders are deemed to have inserted something from another creator's content which exceeds the rules on "fair use", so maybe that happened to the fictional recreation of the mechanical galleon.  

My original inspiration for posting about automata was reading a Kate Ellis novel The Mechanical Devil.  I have recently read another of her works The House of Eyes - not about automata this time, but she refers to a picture which has been linked on this website at some time of a bird in a vacuum glass flask having the air it needed to breathe pumped out.  That picture upset me and I always like to think that the experiment was stopped before the bird died.  Probably me being sentimental.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul, thank you for posting the clip.  Sometimes YouTube deletes videos if the uploaders are deemed to have inserted something from another creator's content which exceeds the rules on "fair use", so maybe that happened to the fictional recreation of the mechanical galleon.  

My original inspiration for posting about automata was reading a Kate Ellis novel The Mechanical Devil.  I have recently read another of her works The House of Eyes - not about automata this time, but she refers to a picture which has been linked on this website at some time of a bird in a vacuum glass flask having the air it needed to breathe pumped out.  That picture upset me and I always like to think that the experiment was stopped before the bird died.  Probably me being sentimental.

No, Lady, you are not sentimental. It is just unneccesary animal cruelty. And in that I am with the Animal Liberation Front.

Kind regards from Paul.

I thought this looked quite interesting though I don't know if I'd be able to make a sand automaton myself.  The same lady has a video showing how to make a camera lucida which might be more within my capabilities.  I must be honest I don't know the difference between camera lucida and camera oscura (I know the meanings of the Latin words from school).  

I've found out that in these days of "There's an app for that" there is a Camera Lucida app.  Still doing something practical can help someone (well me at least) to understand the principle(s) of something.