Scenes from the Early History of Automation

现代自动化起源于18世纪初，这对思想史和技术史都是一个问题。在那个世纪之初，机械化的项目大多是娱乐项目，比如装饰的音乐盒和钟表上的响铃装置。在本世纪的头几十年，自动机制造者开始将他们的艺术应用于解决哲学问题。到本世纪末，他们研究的问题主要是工业问题。与机械化从大众娱乐到哲学再到工业的运动相平行，自动化的现代概念从最初的艺术、哲学和实验设备的多样性发展而来。拟议的研究将使用主要位于法国巴黎和华盛顿特区史密森研究所的一手和二手材料，开始调查这一转变。

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.