Scenes from the Early History of Automation

现代自动化在世纪早期的起源给思想史和技术史都提出了一个问题。 在那个世纪初，机械化的项目大多是娱乐，如装饰音乐盒和时钟上的响铃机制。 在世纪的头几十年，自动机制造者开始将他们的艺术应用于解决哲学问题。 到世纪末，他们研究的问题主要是工业问题。 随着机械化从大众娱乐到哲学再到工业的发展，现代自动化的概念从最初的艺术、哲学和实验设备的多样性发展而来。 拟议的研究将开始对这种转变进行调查，使用主要位于法国巴黎和华盛顿，华盛顿特区史密森学会的一级和二级材料

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.