Notes on automata and “contrivances of magic machines”

Note: this text is extracted from Book VI, chapter 29:

The mechanical dolls of wood and “contrivances of magic machines” mentioned in this chapter, as well as the city peopled by wooden automata which we shall come across in Chapter XLIII, give rise to the question as to when and where such objects originated. As is the case with nearly all such inquiries, we have very largely to be content with bringing together what fragmentary evidence we can find, in the hope that it may give rise to further research or attract to it fresh references from unexpected quarters.

The earliest legends about moving figures, flying machines and so forth are connected with the mythical Greek architect and sculptor Dædalus. He it was who built the hollow wooden cow, covered with hide, into which Pasiphaë crept in order to satisfy her passion for the bull. He also constructed the famous Cretan labyrinth for King Minos, in which the Minotaur was confined, and made the wonderful bronze figure of a man which drove back the Argonauts. Incurring the anger of Minos, he built a pair of wings, by the help of which he fled, with his son Icarus, from Crete across the Ægean Sea to Sicily. He is regarded as the inventor of carpentry and of most of its tools.

The magic tripods, bellows, and golden handmaids of Hephaistos, the magic car of Medea drawn by dragons, the flying sandals of Hermes, and Pegasus, the famous winged horse which sprang from the headless trunk of Medusa, are all too legendary to have any place in this note. At the same time it is interesting to notice these early devices of Greek mythology, which, to a certain extent, correspond with the magic car, flying throne, Garuḍa bird, etc., of Hindu fiction. (See Burton, Nights, vol. v, p. 2n², and Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i, pp. 373-380.) In a Mongolian story (Jülg, Die Märchen des Siddhi-Kür, 1866, first tale, p. 57 et seq.) the plot centres round a wooden Garuḍa bird made by a carpenter’s son to help a friend of his to rescue his stolen wife. When inside it if the top is knocked the bird flies upwards, and if the bottom is struck it descends. We are, however, given no further details as to its mechanism.

The first scientific inventor of such objects as are mentioned in our text was probably Archytas (c. 428-347 B.C.), the Greek philosopher of Tarentum. Apart from his mathematical inventions, he constructed a kind of flying machine, consisting of a wooden figure balanced by a weight suspended from a pulley, and set in motion by “hidden and enclosed air” (Aul. Gell., Noctes Atticæ, X, xii, 9). This was apparently air escaping from a valve—in fact, an anticipation of the hot-air balloon. Archytas is also regarded as the inventor of the kite.

In the Middle Ages numerous attempts at inventing automata are recorded. In Europe the names of Ctesibius, Vitruvius, Hero of Alexandria, Regiomontanus, Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus may be mentioned; while those of Wilkins, Leonardo da Vinci, Fleyder, Borelli, etc., are all connected with early attempts at flying.

Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer of the time of Julius Cæsar. The tenth book of his famous De Architectnra Decern is entirely devoted to mechanical inventions of all kinds. It is particularly interesting to note that, like Somaprabhā in our text, he states that the influence of astrology on machines is of considerable importance and that all machinery is derived from nature, and is founded on the teaching and instruction of the revolution of the firmament (X, i, 4). He claims to have constructed the first water organs, that he “discovered the natural pressure of the air and pneumatic principles... devised methods of raising water, automatic contrivances, and amusing things of many kinds... blackbirds singing by means of waterworks, and angobatæ, and figures that drink and move, and other things that have been found to be pleasing to the eye and the ear.”

Hero of Alexandria, now considered to have flourished in the second century a.d., invented numerous complicated magic jugs and drinking animals. He wrote many works on his inventions, including Catoptrica, Pneumatica, and Automatopoietica. Several inventions mentioned in the Pneumatica bear a certain resemblance to those in our text. There are mechanical birds made to sing by driving air through a pipe by the pressure of flowing water. In other chapters a dragon is made to hiss and a thyrsus to whistle by similar methods. By the force of compressed air water is made to spurt forth and automatons to sound trumpets. The heat of the sun’s rays is used to warm air w’hich expands and causes water to trickle out. In a number of cases as long as a fire burns on an altar the expansion of enclosed air caused thereby opens temple doors by the aid of pulleys, or causes statues to pour libations, dancing figures to revolve, and a serpent to hiss. The force of steam is used to support a ball in mid-air, revolve a sphere, and make a bird sing or a statue blow a horn. Inexhaustible lamps are described as well as inexhaustible goblets, and a self-trimmed lamp in which a float resting on the oil turns a cog-wheel which pushes up the wick as it and the oil are consumed. Floats and cog-wheels are also used in some of the tricks already mentioned. In another the flow of a liquid from a vessel is regulated by a float and a lever. Cog-wheels are also employed in constructing the neck of an automaton so that it can be cut completely through with a knife and yet the head not be severed from the body. A cupping glass, a syringe, a fire-engine pump with valves and pistons, a hydraulic organ and one worked by wind include the chief devices mentioned (Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. i, p. 192).

In both the Middle and Far East the manufacture of automata of one sort or another was quite common at the royal courts, as we can judge by the casual mention of such articles by early travellers.

Friar Odoric (1286-1331), in describing the palace of the Great Khan, says (Yule and Cordier, Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. ii, p. 222, Hakluyt Society, 1913):

“In the hall of the palace also are many peacocks of gold. And when any of the Tartars wish to amuse their lord then they go one after the other and clap their hands; upon which the peacocks flap their wings and make as if they would dance. Now this must be done either by diabolic art, or by some engine underground.”

Then there is the work of Al-Jazarī to be considered. He was in the service of the Sulṭān Maḥnūd al-Malik aṣ-Ṣāliḥ at Āmida, and it was at his orders that in 1206 he wrote his Kitāb fī ma‘rifal al-ḥiyal al-handasīya (“Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Contrivances”). The work is in six sections:

1. On the construction of clocks from which can be told the passage of the regular secular hours (10 chapters).
2. On the construction of vessels and figures suitable for use at carousals (10 chapters).
3. On the construction of ewers and cups for bloodletting and washing (10 chapters).
4. On the construction of fountains in tanks which change their form, and on perpetual flutes (10 chapters).
5. On the construction of instruments for raising water from shallow bodies of water, and from running water (5 chapters).
6. On the construction of various things of different sorts (5 chapters).

Eight of the plates accompanying the work have been recently published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (The Treatise of Al-Jazarī on Automata, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, No. 6, 1924). It will suffice to give the description of one of them (pp. 15, l6). It is a peacock apparatus for washing the hands, and occurs in the ninth chapter of the third section of Al-Jazari’s treatise.

The body of th’e peacock is filled with water; the ring at the tip of the tail is attached to a plug which closes the body chamber, preventing the entry of air, so that no water can flow out until the plug is lifted by pulling the ring. The peacock stands on a “castle,” consisting of a chamber which rests on four columns standing in a basin which rests on a hollow base. The dirty water flows into the hollow base and can afterwards be drawn off by the faucet.

The chamber (“castle”) below the peacock has two doors side by side, each with two swinging wings opening very easily. Behind the first door stands a servant holding a bowl of alkaline vegetable ashes, used as soap. When the water enters the base of the apparatus it pushes up the lower float, and this raises the rod attached to it and pushes up the board on which the servant stands, so that the door opens and he emerges offering the “soap” for the king’s use. Behind the second door stands another servant with a towel. When still more water has entered the lower chamber (and by this time most of the water in the peacock has been used, and the king will have completed his ablutions) the second float, which is attached to a shorter rod, will also be raised, and in the same way as before the second figure with the towel will emerge. When the dirty water is drawn off, the two floats fall and the figures retire. The total height of the apparatus would be about six spans.

The above examples of early mechanical inventing are almost entirely confined to what we might describe as clever toys. They are, in fact, analogous to those which Somaprabhā produced from her basket in order to amuse her friend Kaliṅgasenā.

In Chapter XLIII, p. 281, Naravāhanadatta comes across a city entirely populated by wooden automata that move as if they are alive. They had been made by one Rājyadhara, a carpenter, to compensate for his loneliness in the empty city which he had discovered. We are at once reminded of the Golem of Jewish legend, about which I am able to give a short account owing to the assistance of Dr Gaster.

The first reference to a man created from clay in Rabbinical literature is found in the Talmud (Sanhedrin, f. 656), where Rabba made a man of clay by means of the “Book of Creation” and sent him to the son of Rabbi Zira. The latter spoke to him, but received no reply, so he caused the automaton to return to its origin.

There is no similar legend until the time of Aben Gabirol of the eleventh century. It is related that by means of the mystical name of God he was able to create a servant who did his bidding. He was denounced to the sultan, but was able to prove that it was only of a mechanical nature which derived its strength from the Divine Name placed either in the forehead or else in the mouth of the automaton.

There was a certain Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, in Poland, who was credited with having the knowledge of the mystic creative name of God, and to have applied it for the purpose of making an automaton. The figure grew to such an extent that the people became frightened and he was forced to destroy it.

The most famous of these automatons, however, is the one that lives in the legend connected with the name of the “Exalted Rabbi Low of Prague.” He flourished at the end of the sixteenth century and fashioned a figure known as a Golem—that is to say, “something rolled together,” a “lump.” This automaton worked on all days of the week, and was able to carry out the work by means of a plate placed under its tongue on which was inscribed the Divine Name. Every Friday evening the plate was removed so that the Golem should not desecrate the Sabbath. On one occasion, however, Rabbi Low forgot to do this, and on that evening he stopped the service before intoning the introductory psalm to the Sabbath service in order to get hold of the Golem and remove the plate in time. But the Golem fell to bits, and legend has it that to this day the pieces are still preserved in the attic of the synagogue (A. M. Tendlau, “Der Golem des Hoch-Rabbi-Löb,” Das Buck der Sagen und Legenden Jüdischer Vorzeit, 1845, 2nd edit., p. 1 6 et seq.).

Rabbi H. B. Fassel in his Neun Derusch Vorträge, Gross Kanizsa, 1867, p. 93, refers to a similar legend where such a Golem is used and works by means of the Divine Name placed under his tongue all day, being removed at night.

The most modern idea of the mechanical figure is, of course, the Robot invented by Karel Kapek. Robot is the Czech word to express a being with capacity for work, but not for thinking. It is interesting to note that it was also at Prague that Kapek first conceived the idea, for as he watched the crowds of men and women being herded in and out of the suburban trains, he began to think of them, not as individuals, or even animals, but as machines—and so the idea of the Robot originated in the very town where, according to legend, the broken pieces of the Golem still repose.—n.m.p.