Little robots of centuries past
Were these the first robots? “Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend,” by Elizabeth King and W. David Todd (Getty Publications, 245 pp., $45) by Bondo Wyszpolski “Automaton of a Friar” (mid-sixteenth century). Spain or South Germany. Wood, fabric, iron clockwork. Height: 40.64 cm (16 in.). Image courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian InstitutionThe automaton of the subtitle is a walking and gesticulating figure of a friar, referred to, however, as “the monk,” and it dates back to mid-sixteenth-century Spain or South Germany. It was purchased by the Smithsonian Institution in 1977. Although it stands just 16 inches tall and weighs a little under five pounds, it’s something of a forefather of what we’d now call an android. R2-D2 and C-390 could be considered its descendants. As the authors write midway through the book, “A small wooden sculpture with a hidden clockwork was once crafted to move as if with a mind of its own. The philosophy of mind and body in the next centuries took notice. Today we are obsessed — haunted — by robots.” The monk is wearing a Franciscan tunic and sandals, and he carries a cross. Partially wound, and…
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