MDDM23: The Man Voltaire Call'd a Prometheus

Mon Feb 25 10:00:18 CST 2002

   "Too true, alas.  A Mechanician of blinding and
world-rattling Genius, Gentlemen, yet posterity will
know him because of the Duck alone,-- they are already
coupl'd as inextricably as...Mason and Dixon?  Haw-
hawhawnnh.  The Man Voltaire call'd a Prometheus,--"
(M&D, Ch. 37, p. 272)

>From Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the
Cult of the Machine, trans. Allison Brown (Princeton,
NJ: Markus Wiener, 1995), Ch. 1, "The Historical
Chain," pp. 11-36 ...

"Since the time of Pliny, Prometheus had been ascribed
the ability to work with nature's hardest and most
valuable materials--metals and precious gems ...." (p.
21)

>From Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso:
Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during
the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: U of Cal P, 1998),
Ch. 5, "Robert-Houdin and the Vogue of the Automaton
Builders," pp. 160-210 ...

   "The transcendent moment in the life of the
mechanician Jacques Vaucanson (1709–1782) came in 1738
when he amazed the savants and the curious of Paris
with a display of his three mechanical marvels, the
Flûteur (Flute Player), the Canard (Duck), and the
Tambourinaire (Drummer)...." (p. 162)

   "Vaucanson’s automata struck a major chord with the
public. After he had exhibited them in a rented hall
in the Hötel de Longueville, one long block south of
the Café de la Régence, and perhaps at the annual
Saint-Germain Fair on the Left Bank, he took them on a
tour of France and Italy. A few years later, in 1743,
he sold them to some entrepreneurs from Lyon, who
toured with them for nearly a decade, showing them
throughout Europe. Admission was always charged at
these exhibitions and the automata appear to have
brought in considerable revenue.
   "They also brought recognition to Vaucanson from
the scientific community.  The Académie Royale des
Sciences sent an official delegation to the exhibition
hall and following the delegation’s report voted to
award him a certificate of commendation. The Académie
was not only a prestigious group of scientists but
also a quasi-governmental body. Its coveted
commendations frequently led to an official position
or pension, as happened in Vaucanson’s case. To crown
his success, King Louis XV also saw and admired his
masterpieces.
   "Thus, in 1740 Vaucanson was appointed inspector
general of silk works, the silk industry being a
logical place for him to put his mechanical talents to
good use. Even though textile production in the
eighteenth century was still labor-intensive,
differences in technology already contributed
significantly to differences in quality and
efficiency, and because of its inferior machinery the
French silk industry had fallen behind its English and
Piedmontese rivals. Vaucanson spent the next forty
years striving valiantly, but for the most part
vainly, to help it catch up. He fulfilled his early
promise of genius, inventing the first automatic loom
(later perfected by Jacquard), the first automatic
mechanism for weaving patterns, a new type of silk
reeler and a new silk thrower (two machines involved
in spinning silk thread), and a new calender (a kind
of mangle to smooth finished cloth). But he lacked an
attendant power of persuasion, and for a while the
only thing he succeeded in conveying to either masters
or workers in the French silk industry was that his
machines threatened their livelihoods. The radically
conservative canuts of Lyon, the industry’s capital,
chased him out of their city in 1744 and probably
would have killed him if they had been able to catch
him. On the whole, the attempt he made to reform the
silk industry proceeded very slowly and remained
incomplete.
   "But Vaucanson's fame and fortune survived the
vicissitudes of his career as inspector general. 
Voltaire praised him in his long poem Discours en vers
sur l'homme (Discourse in Verse on Man, 1738):

   Tandis que, d'une main stérilement vantée,
   Le hardi Vaucanson, rival de Prométhée,
   Semblait, de la nature imitant les ressorts,
   Prendre le feu des cieux pour animer les corps. 

   With a hand on which all praise falls sterile,
   Vaucanson the bold, Prometheus' rival,
   Took, while imitating nature's projects,
   Heaven's fire to animate cold objects.

"La Mettrie also compared him to Prometheus in his
landmark of materialist philosophy, L'Homme machine
(Man a Machine, 1748).  The Académie Royale des
Sciences inducted him into its ranks in 1746 and
frequently called upon him to pass judgment on the
inventions of others. Jean-François Marmontel asked
him to construct a mechanical asp for his play
Cléopâtre (1750). The play was not a success, but the
automaton was: Its hiss prompted a member of the
audience to remark approvingly, 'I agree with the
asp.'
   "The marquis de Condorcet's official eulogy of
Vauncanson to the Academie predicts that his name
'will be famous for a long time.'" (pp. 164-5)

   "In his ascent, Vaucanson never got entirely beyond
the reach of the three automata he had constructed in
his twenties.  Condorcet's prediction that his name
'will be famous for a long time' concluded: 'among the
vulgar, for the ingenious productions that were his
youthful amusements; among the nelightened, for the
useful works that were his lifelong occupation.'  And
a friend, whose letter to the editor the Journal de
Paris published as an obituary notice of Vaucanson,
complained on behalf of his memory: 'I was surprised
to read, Messieurs, in a periodical dated 23 November,
the starnge and laconic eulogy of the late M. de
Vaucanson.  The editor had reduced it to this: 'He
immortalized himself through his automata.'  When one
knows nothing else about a man so famous, one should
limit oneself to giving the date of his death, and
pass over the rest in silence.'" (p. 166)

http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ucpress/metzner.xml?part=7&display=standard&style=generic.css

http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ucpress/metzner.xml

For Voltaire ...

http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/09/09disc06.htm

http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/09/09disc06.htm#Note_87

http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/09/04disc01.htm

For La Mettrie ...

"... s'il a fallu plus d'art à Vaucanson pour faire
son flûteur que pour son canard, il eût dû en employer
encore davantage pour faire un parleur: machine qui ne
peut plus être regardée comme impossible, surtout
entre les mains d'un nouveau Prométhée."

http://www.unil.ch/fra/HistLitt/Cours/XVIII-XIX/LaMettrie.htm

And cf., of course ...

http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/index.html

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgibin/toccer?id=SheFran&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&part=0

http://www.georgetown.edu/irvinemj/english016/franken/franken.htm

Thanks to John Bailey for the Metzner reference ...

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/6914.html

And to the U of California Press for making it
available online and saving me some typing (though I
shelled out nonetheless for a used hard copy) ...

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