Mary Shelley saw an exhibit of them, and they influence her infamous novel, Frankenstein. Plato alludes to another distant relative, the shadow puppet in The Republic, “The Allegory of the Cave.” Charlemagne allegedly had a talking head, and a medieval statue of Venus inspired a movie starring Vann White in the 80s! Even Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have created them for the entertainment of the wealthy dukes who served as his patrons. The Dictionary of Antiquities discusses them and related mechanical figures, including string puppets animated by humans. When the wind blew through them, it sounded as if they statues were talking. The earliest mention of them describes gigantic statues in Ancient Egypt that were hollow, with tubes inserted into them. Yet, automatons’ history is even older than that. Wired magazine frequently writes about them, and artificial intelligence, in general, is a hot ticket today. Automatons even have Facebook pages devoted to them. There are all kinds of horror films and novels about them, and dolls, for that matter. Haddock’s Andorides was published about an exhibition of automatons, the fascination with this fusion of doll and machinery has never stopped. The news was recently abuzz with an incredible story Saudi Arabia made an android, or robot, a citizen.
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