Early Automatons

I have always heard the term automaton but I never knew what they are or how they are different from robots. From what I researched, automatons and robots are very closely related. One major difference is automatons are made with non-electronic moving parts. Automatons are usually created to mimic human or animal actions.

Due to the use of non-electronic parts, automatons have been around for thousands of years. The earliest automatons have been traced all the way back to ancient China. King Mu of Zhou was presented with a life-size human shaped automaton by a Chinese mechanical engineer.

"The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted."

I found this to be astonishing how something this complex was created around 1000 BC. This also brings up the thought of how was this technology was not explored more by the ancient societies. If this technology had been expanded, the world could have definitely panned out differently. There could have been armies of automatons that fought in the wars instead of people.

The automatons of the 13th to 19th centuries were a lot more complex than the ancient Chinese. Automatons started to become programmable but were used mostly for entertainment purposes. There were automatons created to play instruments, sing songs, hand washing, and other purposes that manipulated the environment for human comfort.

Due to the invention of electricity and creation of computers, automatons are not that big of news anymore. Now a days, companies are investing millions of dollars for robotics. There goal is very similar to the goals of the ancient mechanical engineers. However, companies today have much more resources and I think it is only time until robots become a major part of society.