Jacques VaucansonIn science, Jacques Vaucanson (1709-1782) was a French inventor noted for his 1737 flute player automaton and 1738 tambourine player and digesting duck automatons.

Automatons
The following is the frontispiece to Vaucanson's The Mechanism of the Flute Player Automaton presented to the French Royal Academy of Science:

Vaucanson automatons

French physician-philosopher Julien la Mettrie’s 1748 The Human Machine, which was inspired by seeing Vaucanson’s automatons, outlined a philosophical discussion on the human machine theory that specifically rejected Cartesian dualism. [1]

References
1. Emden, Christian and Midgley, David R. (2005). Science, Technology, and the German Cultural Imagination (pg. 43). Peter Lang.

External links
● Jacques de Vaucanson – Wikipedia.

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