First programmable robot was built 240 years ago!

Totally amazing! This Programmable 6,000-Part Drawing Boy Automata is Arguably the First Computer and It Was Built 240 Years Ago.

Created in the tail end of the 1770s, this unusual robot (and it truly is once you see inside) was created by the watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz along with help from his versatile son Henri-Louis and Jean-Frédéric Leschot.

Born in Switzerland, Pierre Jaquet-Droz was (and to this day still is) considered to be one of the most gifted automata designers in history. He was, in many ways the Sir Jonathan Ive of his time – a visionary designer and master craftsman obsessed with the minutest of details, form and function. But this robot, which he simply called ‘The Writer’ is without question his most complex, impressive and celebrated work.

theviralpost.com...

techflesh.com...

I did a search.

I doubt if we could make anything nowadays to last 240 years. It would be unaffordable. S&F for this super interesting info.

The Movie/Book HUGO had bits of true history in it including Georges Méliès and the design for the Automaton by Jaquet-Droz. It sparked my interest in the beginnings of movies as well as clockwork automatons!


Very good movie if you have not seen it!

reply to post by abeverage


Thanks I will check it out!

rickymouse
I doubt if we could make anything nowadays to last 240 years. It would be unaffordable. S&F for this super interesting info.

Im quite sure we could but its another thing why we dont, some ppl make many times more money with products that last year or few and ppl have to buy new stuff all the time. Same idea with food, water etc, some ppl figured out how to make more money with food for example, get rid off all the natural degredients and add chemicals that make food last longer without molding away etc, its highly douptful that they add it for better quality either.

it is an over-sized clock...
or designed from the same mechanisms

tech existed to make these clocks & watch's
so why not try to do something else with it...

creative and interesting none the less

reply to post by nighthawk1954

Henri Maillardet was another famous automaton creator and contemporary of Pierre Jaquet-Droz. His "Draughtsman-Writer" is on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. It's capable of producing 4 drawings and 3 poems.

info and videos at Franklin Institute

i think "the turk"pwns this one.

yiu can program yours.

but the "turk"thinks for himself

Must be worth an absolute fortune. It's bloody marvelous

reply to post by nighthawk1954


wow, I think robots are awesome and I can't believe I never heard of this one! though I wouldn't say it's the first of its kind, it is truly fascinating. very few people have heard of this guy however.. robots of the late 1100s!!

en.wikipedia.org...

Amazing they made machines like this back in the 1700s. Incredible complexity and craftsmanship.

I saw a great documentary on these automata machines a few weeks ago.

Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams
Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata.

reply to post by nighthawk1954

Really amazing.

It's a mechanized program, kind of like umm watches or hte abacus. It has a purpose and the fact it's programmable makes it seem more like a computer.

The sweet thing about computers is they're generic programmable machines - useful for lots of purposes - and operate on a nano-scale. Modern computers are like taking millions of miniature dolls and watches and other machines like them and etching them onto a circuitboard. Some dolls will show pixels on the scree nad some watches will control the keyboard and some others enable the operating system and some will control the voltages on the motherboard and so on. Computers really aren't fundamentally different in my mind, just more robust and flexible.

The problem starts when people stop thinking of computers as machines. Once you think of them as machines, you come to see the similarity. What you see is they're in fact an assemblage of nano-scale machines with specific functions integrated together to serve as a generic programmable machine.

abeverage
The Movie/Book HUGO had bits of true history in it including Georges Méliès and the design for the Automaton by Jaquet-Droz. It sparked my interest in the beginnings of movies as well as clockwork automatons!


Very good movie if you have not seen it!

It was a great film by Martin Scorsese with 5 academy awards.

reply to post by Another_Nut


Star for you! The Turk is crazy, I watched a documentary on that the other day and its impressive.

The great Nepoleon cheated and the Turk was upset and used his arm to swipe the pieces off the table.

I agree with you, Thanks

reply to post by Another_Nut


The Turk was just an illusion- there was a human operator in the cabinet, as evidenced by its ability to adapt to unprogrammed stimuli- it recognized and saluted Napoleon, then it responded in 3 different ways to Napoleon's 3 attempts to cheat. I've gotta give more respect to the actual programmable machine.

reply to post by The Vagabond


Did you watch the revised make of the lost Turk?

No human, unless he was 12" tall.

But, then again what the hell do I know? LOL

Sh*t, even basic card tricks can turn my stomach!

reply to post by JimTSpock

Cool!

The Vagabond
reply to post by Another_Nut

 

The Turk was just an illusion- there was a human operator in the cabinet, as evidenced by its ability to adapt to unprogrammed stimuli- it recognized and saluted Napoleon, then it responded in 3 different ways to Napoleon's 3 attempts to cheat. I've gotta give more respect to the actual programmable machine.

di yiu have any prood there was someone inside? that is a myrh created by those who couldnt figure it out.

turk >

unless u have proof of a lirtle man inside ( who just haooened to be a phenominal chess player) then the turk rulea all aatomaton

reply to post by Another_Nut


Actually The Baltimore Gazette outed the Turk's operator, a William Schlumberger and Mark Twain documented Schlumberger's Clark Kent like tendency to always be there before and after the Turk performed but never during. Schlumberger died on the road and stopped a tour, the Turk's owner died before he found a replacement, and lo-and-behold, the machine became essentially worthless and it was only a few more years before it was forgotten in a museum and eventually destroyed. Go figure that in 1989 it was finally possible to build a turk that a human couldn't fit in.

reply to post by Another_Nut


In the documentary I posted above The 'chess playing' Turk is 100% fully explained. The maker sat inside moving the pieces.

Look at the 46 minute mark and The Turk is revealed.