Prompted by a talk on the conjuror Robert-Houdin, Cooke read this paper to the London dining club Ye Sette of Odd Volumes. He ranges over the mechanical marvels of history, from ancient moving statues to the writing and drawing figures of the Jaquet-Droz workshop, singing birds shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the automata of his own day.
A short, charming piece of Victorian curiosity for anyone drawn to clockwork figures and the early history of robots. Download the free EPUB.