A U T 



151 



A U T 



Automa- 

 ton. 



Auteniqu* AUTENIQUA, a district of Africa, situated to 

 the east of the Cape of Good Hope, and inhabit- 

 ed partly by Dutch colonists. Vaillant considers 

 it as the most beautiful country in the world. The 

 Dutch planters rear cattle, make butter, collect ho- 

 ney, and cut do=.vn timber, for the supply of the 

 Cape. A more particular account of this district 

 may be seen in Vaillant's Travels, (j) 



AUTHENTIC Chords, in Music, are such com- 



4th 4th 

 mon chords as have the 4th uppermost, as III or 3d 



3d III 

 See Common Chord. (() 



AUTHENTIC Melodies, in Music, are such 

 whose principal notes lie between the key-note and 

 its octave. See Dr Callcot's Grammar, Art. 184. ; 

 and Plagal Melodies. ($) 



AUTOGRAPH, from t/-n>s and y{<p to write, 

 is the original handwriting of any person, (j) 



AUTOLYCUS, a Greek mathematician, wasborn 

 at Pitanea, in iEolia, now the Lipari Isles, and flour- 

 ished about the year 336 before Christ. He was 

 mathematical preceptor to Arcesilaus, the disciple of 

 Theophrastus ; and it appears from a passage of Sim- 

 plicius, that he proposed some hypotheses for explain- 

 ing the motions of the stars, and was the author of 

 some additions to the theories of Eudoxus. In his 

 two works, entitled De Ortu et occasu Siderunt, and 

 He Sphcera Mobili, the doctrine of the sphere, and 

 various phenomena connected with the rising and set- 

 ting of the stars, are rigorously demonstrated by the 

 theory of spherics. See Diogen. Laert. lib. iv. 

 p. 29. Simplicius De Ccelo, lib. ii. com. 46. Fa- 

 bric. Bibl. Grcec. torn. ii. p. 89. Montucla, Hist. 

 Math. torn. i. p. 210. (0) 



AUTOMATON, a self-moving machine, or ma- 

 chine so constructed, that, by means of internal springs 

 and weights, it may move a considerable time as if en- 

 dowed with life. ( From ccvrts ipse, and ftxifuti excitor. ) 

 According to this definition, clocks and watches, as 

 well as mechanical imitations of living animals, are 

 automata. 



We are told, that so long ago as 400 years before 

 Christ, Archytas of Tarentum, a Pythagorean phi- 

 losopher, made a wooden pigeon that could fly. The 

 story is related by Anlus Gellius, who quotes it from 

 Favorinus ; but neither have enabled us to understand 

 how the effect was produced. Favorinus says, if it fell 

 it could not raise itself again : and Aulus Gellius adds, 

 that it flew by mechanical means, being suspended by 

 balancing, and animated by a secretly inclosed aura of 

 spirit. Ita erat scilicet libramentis suspensum et aurd 

 spiritiis inclu.su atque occulta consitum, &c. (Nodes 

 Attica:, lib. 10. c. 12.) Several authors have related, 

 particularly Kircher, Porta, Gassendi, Lana, and 

 Bishop Wilkins, that the famous John Muller of 

 Nuremberg, commonly called Regiomontanus, con- 

 structed a self-moving wooden eagle, which flew forth 

 from the city of Nuremberg aloft in the air, met the 

 Emperor Maximilian a good way off coming towards 

 it ; and, having saluted him, returned again, waiting 

 on him to the city gates. This story has much the 

 air of a romance, and more especially as some of 

 the authorities, instead of the Emperor Maximilian, 

 call it the Emperor Charles V. his grandson, who 



was born 64 years after the death of Muller. The Automa- 

 same philosopher is also said to have made an iron ton- 

 fly, which, at a feast to which he had invited his fa- v ^~~" 

 miliar friends, flew forth from his hand, and, taking 

 a round, returned thither again to the great astonish- 

 ment of the beholders. This, if it was really per- 

 formed, was probably nothing more than a magneti- 

 cal trick. 



M. Vaucanson, so celebrated for the construction 

 of the mechanical flute-player, and mechanical pipe 

 and tabor player, of which a description has been 

 given under the article Androides, also invented a 

 machine capable of imitating all the natural motions 

 of a duck. In external form this machine exactly 

 resembled its prototype : its wings were anatomically 

 exact in every part ; and every bone in the real duck 

 had its representative in the autumaton. Not a cavity, 

 a curvature, or an apophysis, but was exactly imita- 

 ted : the humerus, the cubitus, and the radius, all had 

 their proper movements. Besides this, the artificial 

 duck imitated every natural motion of a real one. It 

 swallowed its food with avidity, exhibited those quick 

 motions of the head and throat which are peculiar to 

 the living animal, and muddled the water which it 

 drank with its bill exactly like the natural duck. It 

 was capable of producing the sound of quacking ; 

 and what was perhaps most surprising of all, the food 

 which it swallowed was evacuated in a digested state. 

 M. Vaucanson, indeed, did not pretend to imitate the 

 process of real digestion ; but the food evacuated by 

 his artificial duck was in a state very different from 

 that in which it was swallowed ; and this alteration 

 was produced not upon the principles of mechanical 

 trituration, but of chemical solution. M. Montucla, 

 speaking of the machines of Vaucanson, says, that the 

 first time he saw them, he immediately discovered 

 some of the artifices employed in the construction of 

 the two musical Androides ; but he confesses that the 

 artificial duck entirely baffled his penetration. 



Towards the end of the 17th century, Father 

 Truchet,ofthe Royal Academy of Sciences, construct- 

 ed, for the amusement of Louis XIV., an automaton 

 consisting of a kind of moving pictures, which was 

 considered as a master-piece in mechanics. One of 

 these pictures, which the monarch called his little 

 opera, represented an opera in five acts, and changed 

 the decorations at the commencement of each. The 

 actors performed their parts in pantomime. This 

 moving picture was only 16^ inches in breadth, 13 

 inches 4 lines in height, and 1 inch 3 lines in thick- 

 ness, for the play of the machinery. The representa- 

 tion could be stopped at pleasure, and made to re- 

 commence at the same place by the operation of a 

 catch. The account of this piece of mechanism may 

 be found in the eulogy on E. Truchet in the Mem. 

 of the Acad, of Sciences for 1729.. 



A still more extraordinary piece of mechanism is 

 that described by M. Camus, who says he construct- 

 ed it for the amusement of Louis XIV. when a child. 

 It consisted of a small coach drawn by two horses, in 

 which was the figure of a lady, with a footman and 

 page behind. According to the account given by 

 M. Camus himself, this coach being placed at the 

 extremity of ,1 table of a determinate size, the coach- 

 man smacked his whip, and the horses immediately 

 6 



