Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams (TV Movie 2013)

Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams: Directed by Nic Stacey. With Simon Schaffer, Ilan Goodman, Laura Heath, Jonathan Betts. Excellent one hour documentary narrated by Professor Simon Schaffer which explores the fascinating and rarely told story of automata, those intricate clockwork devices built hundreds of years ago with the intent to mimic and recreate life. Of particular interest are Jaquet-Droz’s ‘The Writer’ (1774) and Merlin’s ‘The Silver Swan’ (1773) which beautifully illustrate the degree of technical mechanical sophistication achieved by artisans over 240 years ago. There is also a funny aside: the record Prof. Schaffer places on the turntable at the end (columbia LX466, 1935 impression) is the Beethoven String Sonata Opus 132 and not the Symphony 7 so BBC used any old record and overlaid the sound track.

“Shows various marvelous automatons from early 1800u0026#39;s brilliant craftsmanship from forgotten times. Each part had to be handcrafted and this programs shows how much effort goes into making an actual moving robot.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSwap-able mechanical memory that allows a mechanical robot to switch performance and output for drawing a dog and writing custom messages.”