davidbuckley.net
home  >  History Making robots  >  Help wanted 1 February 2010

Help wanted in identifying robots


from Daniel C. Dennett's Home Page http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/dennettd/dennettd.htm [Mar08]
REWARD for information! I found it in an antique shop in Paris. It was made in France in the 1950s, so I have named it Tati, in honor of Jacques Tati (whose classic film Mon Oncle captures the same era with the same ingenious and humorous use of technology). I do not know who made Tati, or why, and would be pleased to receive any substantiated information about its provenance.

Further information was received on 12 March 2008 by email -
One correspondent has told me that Tati (my name for it, of course, not the name its creator chose, certainly) was commissioned by Prince Louis de Broglie, the Belgian physicist and Nobel laureate, for his granddaughter in Paris. She fell on hard times and sold it to an antique dealer. Could be, but my efforts to confirm the story have not yet born fruit.
Best wishes,
Daniel Dennett

 

Although this photo has been associated with the Phony Pony the machine has eight legs and is nothing like the Phony Pony.
Even though it bears a superficial resemblance to the Iron-Mule test bed it is not of that lineage either. The mechanism here is worked by cranks rather than the cams of the Iron-Mule.


home  top