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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Maillardet’s Automaton (Classic)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This mechanical boy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was a mystery - until it began to write. READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/maillardets-automaton

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

It's November 1928 in Philadelphia, and a box arrives at the doors of a science museum called the Franklin Institute.

0:08.0

It's a donation from the estate of a wealthy local lawyer.

0:12.0

And what they find inside is in a pretty sad state.

0:15.8

It's a jumble of gears and metal pieces and levers. There's tattered cloth. The whole thing

0:21.2

is really damaged, this broken down machine.

0:25.0

But the machine has a face, the face of a little boy and little human hands too molded to hold a pen. The people at the Franklin

0:36.0

Institute think, what is this thing? Where did it come from? And they fix him up as best as they can. They set up a little pen in his hand and they wind him up.

0:48.0

And as if this lifelike figure could hear their questions.

0:55.1

It writes very carefully in French,

0:59.1

the automaton of Myard Day.

1:10.0

I'm Delantheras and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

1:15.0

Today we are telling you the story of an amazing automaton, a mechanical boy machine

1:21.0

made in the days before electronics and computers, it dazzled audiences, but then was lost to history, only to be rediscovered by surprise.

1:32.0

That story, after this. Let's begin in 1826. We're at an exhibition hall in London.

1:56.4

Nesho is drawn a big crowd. There are ladies in feathered hats holding their little

2:01.0

kids hands. There's men in silky top hats. There's army

2:04.4

officers carrying swords. And they're all turned towards this little boy.

2:10.9

He's kneeling at a writing desk on top of a large ornate chest, jotting down the words of a poem on a page.

2:18.5

The crowd leans in eagerly, and the boy pauses. And the head lifts up and the eyelids widen and the eyeballs roll up away from the work and gaze out.

2:30.0

You could say it's looking at the audience or he's thinking, you know, looking into his own imagination to think about what he's going to continue writing.

2:39.0

This is Andrew Barron. He runs a clock repair shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

2:43.0

So you might hear some ticking and cuckoo clock sounds while he's talking.

...

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