It’s fitting that the European renaissance of automata, or kinetic sculptures designed to mimic human movement, began with a clockmaker—like their timekeeping counterparts, automata operate on cue, ...

For a moment, suspend your worldview and adopt Descartes’s mechanistic interpretation that living beings are essentially complex machines: a collection of inherently unrelated parts that move and ...

Early modern automata : an abridged history -- Ever more variations on theme at the court of Rudolf II -- The gifts that keep on giving -- A figure of speech -- Hapsburg-Ottoman diplomatic machinery - ...