ANDROIDES, in Illechanics, from ayq a man, and Eid`og form ; a machine resembling the human figure, and so contrived as to imitate certain motions or actions of the living man. It is considered as the most perfect or difficult of the automata or self moving engines : because the motions of the human body are more complicated than those of any other living creature. Hence the construction of an •ndroides, in such a manner as to imitate any of these motions with exactness, is justly considered as one of the highest efforts of mechanical skill. (See AUTOMATON.) Among the ancients, Dxdalus was famed for con structing machines that imitated the motions of the hu man body. Certain statues of his, it is said, had the power of moving about, and would run away unless forcibly detained. Aristotle speaks of these in his treatise De ?nima, (1. i. c. 3.) and affirms, that the ef fect was produced by concealed quicksilver. This, how ever, could not be the case, unless the automata moved on a descending plane, like the Chinese toy called a tumbling mandarine, which by means of mercury in cluded in the cavity of its body, is made to tumble down a series of steps like a stair.
Friar Bacon, and Albertus Magnus both exercised their ingenuity in the construction of androides, which appeared so wonderful to the ignorant multitude, as to draw upon their inventors the dangerous imputation of being addicted to magic. Bacon constructed a brazen figure, capable, it is said, of speaking; and Albertus Magnus formed an artificial man, in the construction of which he spent thirty years of his life. This, we are told, was broken to pieces by Aquinas, who came to see it, purposely that he might boast how in one mi nute he had rendered fruitless the labour of so many years.
It is now very common to see androides exhibited for money, which are capable of imitating various actions of the human body, such as writing, drawing, playing on musical instruments, &c. The writing androides con sists of a machine resembling the human figure, placed at a table, with a pen or pencil in its hand, and paper before it. The spectator is desired to dictate any word at pleasure, which is instantly written by the androides in a fair and legible hand. All this appears very won derful, but nothing is more easily accomplished ; for the androides is placed near the partition of a room, be hind which an assistant is stationed, within hearing of all that passes. It is this assistant that directs the hand of the androides, by machinery, which passes from its body, beneath the floor, into the next apartment. Nor need this machinery be very complicated ; nothing more is necessary than the common pantograph or joint ed parallelogram, with proportional arms, so contrived that whatever motions are communicated to one of the arms, the same will be traced by the other, or any par ticular scale that may be required, (See PANTOGRAPH.)
Even a simple heterodromous lever, with an universal joint, will suffice. We may presume that the figures which draw pictures are constructed on similar princi ples, only that they have within them the model from which they copy, as well as the spring or weight by which they arc put in motion. A celebrated machine of this kind, constructed by the younger M. Droz, of the Chaux de Fonds, is thus described by Mr Thomas Collinson, in a letter to Dr Hutton, published in that gentleman's mathematical dictionary. "Permit me to speak of ano ther automaton of Droz's, which several years since he exhibited in England ; and which, from my personal acquaintance, I had a commodious opportunity of par ticularly examining. It was a figure of a man, I think the size of life. It held in its hand a metal style, a card of Dutch vellum being laid under it : a spring was touched, which released the internal clock-work from its stop, when the figure immediately began to draw. Mr Droz happening once to be sent for in a great hurry to wait upon some considerable personage at the west end of the town, left me in possession of the keys which opened the recesses of all his machinery. He opened the drawing-master himself, wound it up, explained its leading parts, and taught me how to make it obey my requirings as it had obeyed his own : Mr Droz then went away. After the first card was finished, the figure rested. I put a second, and so on to five separate cards, all different subjects : but five or six was the extent of its delineating powers. The first card contained, I may truly say, elegant portraits and likenesses of the king and queen, facing each other : and it was curious to observe with what precision the figure lifted up his pen cil in the transition of it from one point of the draught to another, without making the least slur whatever : for instance, in passing from the forehead to the eye, nose, and chin, or from the waving curls of the hair to the ear, Scc." One of the most celebrated modern constructors of androides was M. Vaucanson of the ?cademie royal des Sciences. In 1738 he exhibited at Paris a machine ca pable of playing several airs on the German flute, of which he in the same year communicated an exact des cription and explanation to the academy, containing much curious information respecting the theory as well as the practice of that musical instrument.