![]() ![]() Motionless among such objects, they can often surprise a foe. The Writer, the Musician and the Draughtsman together form the Jaquet-Droz automata, which can be admired at the Art and History Museum in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Clockwork abominations are canny enough to collect bits of old wagons, tools, or machinery as camouflage. The Writer is one of the three automatons designed and manufactured by Jaquet-Droz that have continued to fascinate ever since they were displayed in front of the European Royal Courts. ![]() Thanks to the technologies used by the watchmaker, namely homeostasis (the process through which a system self-regulates) and miniaturization, The Writer does not require an external source of energy to work, as the mechanism found inside its body produces the necessary force to function by itself. The mechanism contains around 6000 parts, each hand-crafted, miniaturized and adapted to fit into the body of the boy. Actually, the fact that it is “programmable” makes The Writer the ancestor of modern computers. What makes this possible is the fact that the wheel controlling the cams is composed of signs and letters that can easily be re-arranged in any order to form various combinations. Indeed, as Professor Simon Schaffer states in BBC Four’s documentary “Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams”, The Writer is “one of the most remarkable realizations of cam technology”. Another fascinating detail regarding the mechanism of the automaton is that it can write any word (and, therefore, any sentence) and follow the text with its eyes. The cams play an important part in the mechanism because they control not just the strokes of the pen, but also its pressure on the paper. The Writer uses cam technology: as the cams move, the cam followers interpret their trajectory and move the boy’s arm accordingly. ![]()
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