Not so long ago, a short video of a truly uncanny dulcimer-playing wind-up automaton made for Marie Antoinette in 1784 appeared online. The queen was no stranger to extravagance, we know, but why this machine, this wonderful human-like machine, which must have taxed the greatest artisans and mechanics of her time? What was its appeal? We asked Minsoo Kang, author of the newly published Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination. Watch the video below, and then scroll down for Minsoo Kang’s response. ----- This video shows a demonstration of a beautiful dulcimer-playing automaton that was made by Peter Kintzing and David Roentgen in 1784, which was presented to Queen Marie Antoinette in the following year and purchased by her for the French Academy of Sciences. The object was not a simple doll with a musical device inside it, but a fully articulate construct that actually played a miniature dulcimer by striking its metal strings with tiny hammers. The wondrous automaton was one of many such intricately and exquisitely designed machines that mimicked living creatures during what I have designated as the period of the European “automaton craze” which began in 1738-39 with the appearance of works of Vaucanson and ended at the closing of the century with the performances of the chess-playing Turk of Wolfgang von Kempelen, which was a false automaton. My book Sublime Dreams of Living Machines: The Automaton in the European Imagination looks at how intellectuals have utilized the self-moving, life-imitating machine...