1 THE SECRET OF THE AUTOMATON

In the year 1737, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the French mechanical genius Jacques de Vaucanson completed a masterpiece: a statue that could create music from a flute like a real human. Holding a real flute up to its mouth, the life-sized statue would blow into the instrument with its mechanical lungs to produce a note. By moving its lips and adjusting how hard it blew, and by moving its fingers precisely over the holes, the statue could produce a sequence of notes to form a complete song “as perfectly as any human being.”
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Vaucanson, not content with a statue that could play just a single song on its flute, endowed the statue with the ability to play 12 different songs.