From the dawn of European civilization to the twentieth century, the automaton--better known today as the robot--has captured the Western imagination and provided a vital lens into the nature of ...

The Swiss watchmaker Jaquet Droz specializes in what it calls “the art of mechanical astonishment.” To witness its new Signing Machine in action is to understand exactly how appropriate that ...

The word automat is the Latinization of the Greek word αὐτόματον, which means acting of one’s own will. It is more often used to describe moving machines, especially those made to resemble human or ...

According to one of our most infamous and widely experienced automated features, the searching masses are divided—or being divided, maybe—over just what it is that automation is doing. Still, if you ...

What kind of a book do we have in “Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend”? It includes an account of the 16th-century Spanish prince Don Carlos falling down a flight of ...