The Role of Automata in the History of Technology

Abstract

THE FIRST COMPLEX machines produced by man were automata, by means of which he attempted to simulate nature and domesticate natural forces. They constituted the first step in the realization of his dream to fly through the air like a bird, swim the sea like a fish, and to become ruler of all nature. From these attempts to imitate life by mechanical means, man subsequently utilized the principles involved to produce the complex mechanisms which have resulted in the technological advances of the Space Age. Automata had its greatest period of development following the rise of mechanicism with the revival of Greek culture during the Renaissance. In addition to the considerable progress that was made in the philosophy of science as well as in the sciences of astronomy and mathematics during this turbulent period, the stage was being set for major technological developments which came to fruition in a later era. The writings of Ctesibius, Philon, and Heron, which had been preserved in the works of the Arabs and Byzantines, were brought into the popular domain once more in translations by Renaissance humanists and exercised considerable influence on scientific thought. Distribution of these scientific treatises led to the publication of numerous commentaries by Italian and other writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, resulting in considerable preoccupation with hydraulics and pneumatics and their application to biological automata. The commentaries not only rendered translations and reconstructions of the written words of the Greek ancients, but the writers added sketches and designs to their distillations in an attempt to explain and illustrate, and elaborate on, the early mechanisms. These reconstructions often inspired other and more complicated works, which were constructed by architects of that and subsequent periods for the diversion of wealthy patrons.