The Duck appears again

[joeallonby]

> GuitarBot claims its ancestor not in the golem - which, after all, has
> decidedly human characteristics - but in the ingenious automated machines of
> the last three centuries.
> 
> In the mid-18th century, the Maillardet brothers created an astonishing
> writer-draftsman that could write poetry and do amazing drawings of ships and
> buildings. Around the same time, Jacques de Vaucanson created his famous
> defecating duck, which could eat, digest and all the rest. He also created a
> flute-playing android, which offered 12 tunes, perhaps an ancestor of the
> robot that recently conducted Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in Tokyo. While
> audiences may be titillated by the prospect of seeing such devices and their
> descendants do "human" things, Mr. Singer and Mr. Adamson have something else
> in mind. Mr. Adamson, in particular, is more concerned with technical issues
> and the ability of machines to do things that humans cannot accomplish.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/arts/music/30robo.html?th>