Chapter 1
The mechanical dreamers
Chapter 2
The birth of symbolic thought
Chapter 3
The illusion of empathy
Chapter 4
The competitive spark
Ch 1 · The mechanical dreamers
007skaty The famous Parisian clockwork duck boasted four hundred moving wing parts but used hidden dyed breadcrumbs to fake digestion.
Quiz
In which year did Jacques de Vaucanson present his famous 'Digesting Duck' automaton in Paris?
Quiz
What did Jacques de Vaucanson's mechanical duck actually excrete instead of digested food in 1738?
007skaty The legendary automaton defeated Napoleon Bonaparte decades before real computers could play chess.
Quiz
Which of these historical figures was defeated in chess by the Mechanical Turk hoax?
Fun Fact
Vaucanson's rubber tubes: While building his famous digesting duck in 1738, French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson invented the world's first flexible rubber tube to simulate the duck's intestines.
BETA
007skaty Weave numbers into art to discover how early thinkers saw the creative potential of computers.
Quiz
What did Ada Lovelace famously predict the Analytical Engine could compose if given the right rules?
Quiz
Whose proposed mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine, did Ada Lovelace write her groundbreaking notes for?
Glossary
algorithm (noun)
A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations. Ada Lovelace wrote the first such sequence in 1843 for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.
A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations. Ada Lovelace wrote the first such sequence in 1843 for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.
007skaty Erewhon Machine Evolution
They are evolving! They are evolving! Smash the steam engines down!
Quiz
In which 1872 novel did Samuel Butler warn that machines would evolve consciousness and rule humans?
Quiz
Whose scientific theories heavily influenced Samuel Butler's ideas about machine evolution in 1872?
007skaty The Writer, a 6,000-part mechanical boy, used cam wheels to write messages and convinced mesmerized onlookers it had human intent.
Quiz
Which mechanical component in 'The Writer' functioned like a programmable memory disk to determine the letters written?