Adam & Amber’s Blog

I came across this blog article about a mechanical robot built in 1772 by Pierre Jacquet-Droz, a Swiss Clockmaker. The “automata” in the article is called “The Writer”, it can be programmed to write any 40 character phrase. That’s right you can program this machine built in 1772, long before the first computer, to do something I can’t even do very well today.

After doing a little Wikipedia research I found a couple of other automata built by Jacquet-Droz. I am particularly impressed by “The Drawer” which can draw four different images (see the examples below).

I can’t imagine how a person in the 1770’s would react to seeing something like this, keep in mind that the 1770’s is American Revolution and Marie Antoinette time frame so something like this would be fairly, well, revolutionary. It is amazing to me that with today’s complex technology, we can still be floored by what someone could do in 1770, I think that it shows that if you have an idea you will use any technology available to you to realize that vision. It makes me wonder what other inventions could be revisited with modern technology.