King Jewelers presents JAQUET DROZ AUTOMATONS - Then and Now
Pierre Jaquet Droz watchmaker, jeweler, inventor and merchant extraordinaire, was a genius who impressed engineers, courtiers and royalty. His spectacular mechanical automa still work today, such as "The Writer," which actually sets a pen to a paper and writes.
An Excerpt from "Edison's Eve" By Gaby Wood
"Once a month, in a lakeside town of Switzerland, two little boys perform feats of great dexterity. These prodigies, who look no older than toddlers, are dressed for the occasion in identical velvet jackets and silk pantaloons. Their faces are doll-like and blank; their bare feet dangle some way off the ground. The first boy begins by dipping his quill pen in a tiny ink well at the side of his desk. He shakes it twice, then methodically moves his hand across the paper and starts to trace the letters in his message. Meanwhile, his twin works on a sketch. He slowly draws a head in profile, then drops his chin and blows away the dust from his pencil. While the boys perform their dutiful activities before a small but avid crowd, they are turned to face the wall: their clothes are pulled away and their spines prized open. Inside each child is a moving piece of golden clockwork."
These children have not aged for over 200 years. The draughtsman still draws portraits of Louis XV and George III; the writer still communicates to its audience an eerie philosophical joke: "I think," it writes, "therefore I am." They were first exhibited here, in Neauchatel, by their inventors, Pierre Jaquet Droz and his son Henri-Louis, in 1774. It was said that people came to see them as if on a pilgrimage from miles away, and ever since then these artificial beings have enchanted, frightened, and perplexed their viewers.
When Pierre Jaquet Droz exhibited his writing automaton is Spain, he was accused of heresy, both the man and the machine were imprisoned for a time by the Spanish Inquisition. Decades later, Mary Shelley passed through Neuchatel on her six-week-long tour of Europe. It is thought that she may have seen Jaquet Droz's androids then, two years before she wrote Frankenstein, and it seems fitting that the writer should have been here, watching her inanimate counterpart at work, and dreaming up a monstrous fiction about artificial life.
In 1776, another Jaquet Droz android, a "Musical Lady" that played the harpsichord, was exhibited in London. As she played the five tunes in her repertoire, her eyes would move coyly from side to side, and her bosom would have slightly as if she were breathing. The machine was advertised on the poster as "a vestil virgin with a heart of steel."
Jaquet Droz brings the Automaton into the 21st Century with the unveiling of La Machine Ecrire le Temps or
"Time Writing Machine." This was just introduced at Basel, 2009 and was undoubtedly the hit of the fair. It is the first machine that is able to capture the ultimate luxury, time.
This breathtaking automaton translates the time told by the hands on a watch into “mechanical digital time.” Simply stated, this “time machine” uses hundreds of ball bearings, belts and cams that, when activated by touch, propel a stylus to write out the present time in hours and minutes, e.g., 10:45. It’s a reversal, or at least a denial, of technology that alludes to the constant passing of time and our fruitless efforts to capture or stop it. It was eight years in the making and is a wonder to view.
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