Scenes from the Early History of Automation

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The early 18th century origins of modern automation pose a problem for the history of ideas as well as for the history of techniques. At the beginning of that century projects in mechanization were mostly amusements, such as decorated music boxes and ringing mechanisms on clocks. The in the first decades of the century, automata-makers began to apply their art to the resolution of philosophical problems. By the end of the century the problems they studied were predominantly industrial. Paralleling this move of mechanization from popular amusement to philosophy to industry, a modern conception of automation developed from an initial diversity of artistic, philosophical and experimental devices. The proposed research will begin an investigation of this transformation, using primary and secondary materials located predominantly in Paris, France, and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.