From Curiosité to Utilité: The Automaton in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

From Curiosite to Utilite: The Automaton in Eighteenth-Century France REED BENHAMOU In 1738, the curious Parisian with three livres in his pocket could join his fellows at the Hotel de Longueville to hear a concert of flute music performed by an automaton. If by April of that year 7,500 had parted with a sum equal to the weekly wage of a young ouvriere,' it was because (as the Due du Luynes noted in his diary), the spectacle centered on “une machine digne de curiosite.”2 Less restrained, the newspapers of the day exhausted superlatives in praising the invention. To the Mercure de France, it was “un Phenomene de Mechanique, le plus singulier et en meme-temps le plus agreable qu’on ait peut-etre encore vu.”3 Prevost’s Pour et contre labelled it “le plus merveilleux morceau de mecanique qui ait paru jusqu’aujourd’hui.”4 And Desfontaines, in his Observations, found it to be “un chef d’oeuvre de Mecanique, un prodige de genie, un miracle de Fart”; almost breathless with anticipation, he asked of the flautist’s in­ ventor, Jacques Vaucanson, “Que n’a-t-on pas lieu d’en attendre?”5 He had not long to find out. Within two years, Vaucanson’sfluteur was once again on the concert circuit, this time accompanied by a more ambi­ tious mechanical musician which played the fife and drum —at the same time; and a duck which took grain from the hand, swallowed it, and then excreted it, as Vaucanson told Desfontaines, in a visibly changed form and from an end opposite to that from which it went in.6 (This aspect of the duck has received perhaps more attention than it deserves consider­ ing that, in 1811, an automaton in the form of a life-sized elephant could produce the same effect if given 24 hours notice.)7 91 92 / BENHAMOU Vaucanson who, despite his claim to the Academie Royale des Sciences, had constructed these automata as much to make money as to demon­ strate “les solides principes de mecanique,” sold his trio of performers in 1743; and turned to the invention of industrial equipment, including the loom which is generally, and wrongly, attributed to Jacquard.8 Their new owners continued to exhibit them; but the market began almost immedi­ ately to fill with a variety of talking heads, singing birds, moving pictures, fortune tellers, chess masters, harpsichord players, artists, and scribes.9 Contemplation of this wealth of self-powered devices can lead us in a num­ ber of different directions, all illustrative of eighteenth century life. The scatological has already been treated. The scurrilous, satirical, literary, philosophical, mechanical, and cultural remain. The Scurrilous and Satirical Vaucanson’s first automaton, modeled after the statue by Coysevox which then embellished the Tuileries gardens, was a life-sized flautist in the shape of a faun; it produced music through the action of artificial lungs, a mechanical tongue, and articulated fingers. One could even, the Due du Luynes reported, provide it with another flute: it would still play.10 It was perhaps a tribute to the dexterity with which Vaucanson was able to endow his fluteur, in combination with the faun’s goatish reputation, that inspired the anonymous author of the Epitre a Monsieur de Vaucan­ son to the first of the following verses. Desfontaines’ own reputation ap­ pears to have inspired the second. Genie en miracles fertiles C’est peu de te faire admirer Pour rendre ton art plus utile Permets que j’ose t’inspirer Cher Vaucanson, tout le beau sexe Veut que je t’implore aujourd’hui Un Sathyre avec son annexe. • • • Plus d’un galant abbe qui tremble Voyant que l’automate aura Toutes les qualites ensemble De plus jamais ne parlera Et discretement portera Un grand attribut qui ressemble A celui du Dieu des Jardins. The Automaton in Eighteenth-Century France / 93 (The Epitre was aptly credited to the Librairie Le Fouineur.)11 The pamphleteer Chevrier also employed Vaucanson’s genius to satiri­ cal effect in “Le Colporteur,” an anecdote in which he described the sale of a courtesan’s possessions. These were said to include “un corps a ressort , que le celebre Vaucanson...