Yep, it’s true. We even published Vaucanson’s Duck in our Robot Matrix from “The Future” issue.
The early days of robots. The Age of Enlightenment inspired inventors like Jacques de Vaucanson to create ever more realistic machines that mimicked human behavior:
Vaucanson, however, was less a philosophical theorist than a practical, even greedy businessman. In 1739, as profits from the Flute Player’s performances began to decline, he added two new automatons to his exhibit. One was a pipe-and-drum player. The other—which was to make him, for a time, one of the most famous men in Europe—was a mechanical duck.
And not merely a wind-up duck that flapped its wings and quacked and turned its head. If you held out a bit of food in your palm, the duck’s head would lower, its beak would fall open, and the automaton would actually gulp down the morsel. And then, some minutes later—Reader, I am not making this up—the duck would excrete it.
“Man as Machine.” — Max Byrd, Wilson Quarterly
See also: “Robots That Care.” — Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker, Nov. 2, 2009
Photo: Joost/Flickr
