Jacques de Vaucanson

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Jacques de Vaucanson
Portrait by Joseph Boze, c. 1784
Born
Jacques Vaucanson

(1709-02-24)February 24, 1709
Grenoble, France
DiedNovember 21, 1782(1782-11-21) (aged 73)
Paris, France
EducationJesuit school in Grenoble (now Lycée Stendhal)
Occupations
  • Inventor
  • artist
Known forBuilding first all-metal lathe, Designing the first automatic loom, and Automata
SpouseMadeleine Rey
Children1

Jacques de Vaucanson (French:

automatic loom
.

Early life

De Vaucanson was born in

Order of the Minims in Lyon. It was his intention at the time to follow a course of religious studies, but he regained his interest in mechanical devices after meeting the surgeon Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, from whom he would learn the details of anatomy. This new knowledge allowed him to develop his first mechanical devices that mimicked biological vital functions such as circulation, respiration, and digestion.[5]

Automaton inventor

All three of Vaucanson's Automata: the Flute Player, the Digesting Duck, and the Tambourine Player.

At just 18 years of age, Vaucanson was given his own workshop in Lyon, and a grant from a nobleman to construct a set of machines. In that same year of 1727, there was a visit from one of the governing heads of

automata would serve dinner and clear the tables for the visiting politicians. However, one government official declared that he thought Vaucanson's tendencies "profane", and ordered that his workshop be destroyed.[6]

In 1737, Vaucanson built The Flute Player, a life-size figure of a shepherd that played the tabor and the pipe and had a repertoire of twelve songs. The figure's fingers were not pliable enough to play the flute correctly, so Vaucanson had to glove the creation in skin. The following year, in early 1738, he presented his creation to the Académie des Sciences.[7]

Johann Joachim Quantz, court musician and long-time flute instructor to Frederick II of Prussia, discussed the shortcomings of Vaucanson's mechanical flute player. In particular its inability to sufficiently move the lips resulted in the necessity of increasing the wind pressure for the upper octaves. Quantz discouraged this method as producing a shrill, unpleasant tone.[8]

At the time, mechanical creatures were somewhat a fad in Europe, but most could be classified as toys, and de Vaucanson's creations were recognized as being revolutionary in their mechanical lifelike sophistication.

Later that year, he created two additional automata, The Tambourine Player and The Digesting Duck, which is considered his masterpiece. The duck had over 400 moving parts in each wing alone, and could flap its wings, drink water, seemingly digest grain, and seemingly defecate.[7] Although Vaucanson's duck supposedly demonstrated digestion accurately, his duck actually contained a hidden compartment of "digested food", so that what the duck defecated was not the same as what it ate; the duck would eat a mixture of water and seed and excrete a mixture of bread crumbs and green dye that appeared to the onlooker indistinguishable from real excrement. Although such frauds were sometimes controversial, they were common enough because such scientific demonstrations needed to entertain the wealthy and powerful to attract their patronage. Vaucanson is credited as having invented the world's first flexible rubber tube while in the process of building the duck's intestines. Despite the revolutionary nature of his automata, he is said to have tired quickly of his creations and sold them in 1743.

His inventions brought him to the attention of

Frederick II of Prussia, who sought to bring him to his court. Vaucanson refused, however, wishing to serve his own country.[3]

Government service

Vaucanson's chain[9]

In 1741 de Vaucanson was appointed by

binary form. His proposals were not well received by weavers, however, who pelted him with stones in the street[11]
and many of his revolutionary ideas were largely ignored.

In 1746, he was made a member of the Académie des Sciences.[12]

Lathe

In 1760 he invented the first industrial metal cutting

slide rest lathe.[13] Others place his invention in 1751.[14] The lathe was described in the Encyclopédie and is exhibited at Musée des Arts et Métiers in France. It was designed to produce precision cylindrical rollers for crushing patterns into silk cloth.[15][16] These were of copper rather than steel, so far easier to turn on a lathe, which may account for Vaucanson's omission from such works as Derry & Williams,[17]
who place this invention around 1768.

Legacy

Jacques de Vaucanson died in Paris in 1782. Vaucanson left a collection of his work as a bequest to

Louis XVI
. The collection would become the foundation of the
Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. His original automata have all been lost. The flute player and the tambourine player were reportedly destroyed in the Revolution. Some had been sold to a glovemaker called Pierre Dumoulin (d. 1781), who exhibited them throughout Europe with great success.[18] Dumoulin’s shows with Vaucanson’s automata in Saint Petersburg started the fashion of automata in Russia.[19] In 1783, it was reported that the automata once exhibited by Dumoulin were still stored in Russia, but Dumoulin had manipulated them so that they would not work after his death.[18]

Vaucanson’s proposals for the automation of the weaving process, although ignored during his lifetime, were later perfected and implemented by

Jacquard loom
.

Lycee Vaucanson in Grenoble is named in his honor, and trains students for careers in engineering and technical fields.

See also

References

  1. ^ Jacques de Vaucanson at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ISBN 978-9380578576
    .
  3. ^ a b Account by Christiane Lagarrigue
  4. ^ Mahistre, Didier. "Jacques de Vaucanson". Archived from the original on 2004-06-12. Retrieved 2020-02-21.
  5. ^ "Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782)". Archived from the original on 2004-03-06. Retrieved 2004-01-17.
  6. ^ Wood, Gabby. "Living Dolls: A Magical History Of The Quest For Mechanical Life", The Guardian, 2002-02-16.
  7. ^ a b SCHMIDT, PETER. "on Jacques de Vaucanson and his Duck". Swarthmore College. Archived from the original on 2017-07-02. Retrieved 2004-01-15.
  8. ^ Quantz, Johann Joachim (1752). Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen [Attempt at instruction in playing the transverse flute] (in German). Berlin, (Germany): Johann Friedrich Voß. p. 46. Available at: Deutsches Text Archiv
  9. ^ Otto Lueger (Hrsg): Lexikon der gesamten Technik und ihrer Hilfswissenschaften. Bd. 5, S. 452, Zweite, vollständig neu bearbeitete Auflage, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt Stuttgart, Lei
  10. ^ Chronology of Lyon
  11. ^ Gaby Wood (2002). Edison's Eve. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
  12. ^ Biography at Vaucanson.org (fr) Archived 2003-12-20 at the Wayback Machine
  13. S2CID 111617989
    .
  14. ISBN 2747534677. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |agency= ignored (help
    ).
  15. ^ "Metal-turning lathe – Jacques Vaucanson".
  16. ^ "Tour à charioter de Vaucanson".
  17. ^ T.K. Derry & Trevor I. Williams (1960). A Short History of Technology.
  18. ^ a b Wang, Yanyu (2020). "Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–1782)". In Ceccarelli, Marco; Fang, Yibing (eds.). Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science: Their Contributions and Legacies, Part 4. New York: Springer. pp. 15–46.
  19. ISBN 978-9081956888
    .

External links

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