How Is Maillardet's Automaton Still Wowing Us After 200 Years?
08 May 2026

How Is Maillardet's Automaton Still Wowing Us After 200 Years?

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Around the year 1800, Swiss clockmaker Henri Maillardet created a mechanical doll that moves like a person as it produces drawings and poems with a pen on paper -- it's programmed for seven in total, without having any electrical parts. Learn how it and other automata work in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/maillardets-automaton.htm

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