Androids of Neuchatel
By Claus Kucher
Hi Jody!
Promised report of Viennese MEMUSI'95-meeting is yet delayed - reason is I have to meet Wilhelm Heidenhofer first (maybe I am able to include a soon coming report / translation from magazine "TRARA"), second is I got no answer for prefered format pictures (now I have about 40 MB of scanned images), Robbie told me about his ability to display monochrome TIFF-files on his Mac, but what about the _other_ members of this group, and third of all, shortage of time. Seems to be the computer and networks of my clients have plenty of problems, what a suprise after _big_ slickness during times of holiday.
Tonight I viewed a very nice short story about "Androids of Neuchatel" from TV-magazine of "Neue Zuericher Zeitung". Short report showed 3 moving, music playing, writing and painting "puppets", both 220 years old (German) "Die Musikerin" -(please correct my bad French) "La Musisienne", "Der Zeichner" - "Le Designateur" and 224 years old "Der Schreiber" / "La Crivaign".
First shown in the year 1774 in Switzerland/La-Chaux-de-Fonds they were created by Swiss watch-maker and fine-mechanician Pierre Jacquet Droz and his sons. "Der Schreiber" took three years of building time, and consists of 6000 parts, housed in the body.
"Die Musikerin" is playing similar to a pianist on a keyboard, moving their hands driven by three drives and capable of playing 5 compositions (music is controlled via spiked cylinders and made by organs). When the music comes to an end, while "Der Zeichner" has drawn some stroked portraits, "Der Schreiber" writes at last on his paper: "We are tired now!".
Described figures can be seen at the permanent exhibition of "Museum fuer Kunst und Geschichte" in Neuchatel/Switzerland.
Report was created 1994 by editor Christian Dettwiler from "Neue Zuericher Zeitung", Zurich/Switzerland.
*****
Maybe of interest (found at 3w-pages of imall.com - seems to be a place you can place ads for free - see also attachment "imall.htm" in hypertext markup language)
> ANTIQUE AUTOMATED MUSIC/INSTRUMENTS WANTED ... ID number (A-7833aaa.html)
> Wanted: All types of player pianos, rolls for player pianos, disc
> players & discs.
> Individual instruments & collections wanted.
> We also can arrange for restoration or brokerage of musical antiques.
> We also make a market in rolls and discs for antique music.
> Please stay in touch. We buy and have contacts worldwide.
> Market Makers 816-531-8888, Kansas City, Mo USA
> mailto:Antqtrdr@ix.netcom.com
Greetings!
Claus
[
[ Editor's note:
[ I decoded the enclosed document, which is a World Wide Web HTML
[ (Hypertext Markup Language) document. These documents contain
[ mixed text and control information but are printable. However the file
[ was over 40k bytes and is probably uninteresting to most of our readers,
[ as it is an index to the Internet Mall Want Ads, not the Want Ads themselves.
[ You can access Internet Mall at:
[
[ http://www.imall.com
[
[ If anyone specifically wants the file as sent by Claus, they can write to me at:
[
[ rollreq@foxtail.com
[
[ Jody
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(Message sent Wed 20 Sep 1995, 00:35:48 GMT, from time zone GMT+0200.) |
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