Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–1782)

Abstract

Jacques de Vaucanson is a famous French automata (especially androids) inventor in 18th century, the two automata he builds, “the Flute Player” and “the Pipe Player” are the first two androids in the world which base on the method of imitation, and his automaton “the Digesting Duck” could show natural digestion process as real ones. Vaucanson opens a golden era for android making from the middle 18th century to the first half of 19th century. In the Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières, Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783) once describes the Flute Player as the prototype of android which could perform human functions (Diderot et al. in Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de Lettres. F. Frommann Verlag – G. Holzboog, Stuttgart, pp. 896–897, 1990 [1]). Vaucanson also integrates his automata making experience into loom design and invented the world’s first fully automatic loom, this loom offers inspiration for Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752–1834) to invent the extensively used Jacquard loom of that time.