What do you think?
Rate this book
Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life
During the eighteenth century, the inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck that seemingly could digest and excrete its food. A few decades later, Europeans fell in love with “the Turk,” a celebrated chess-playing machine built in 1769. Thomas Edison was obsessed for years with making a talking mechanical doll, one of his few failures as an inventor. In our own time, scientists at MIT are trying to build a robot with emotions of its own.
What lies behind our age-old pursuit to create mechanical life? What does this pursuit tell us about human nature? In Edison’s Eve Gaby Wood traces the history of robotics, from its most brilliant inventions to its most ingenious hoaxes. Joining lively anecdote with literary, cultural, and philosophical insights, Wood offers a captivating and learned work of science and history.
What lies behind our age-old pursuit to create mechanical life? What does this pursuit tell us about human nature? In Edison’s Eve Gaby Wood traces the history of robotics, from its most brilliant inventions to its most ingenious hoaxes. Joining lively anecdote with literary, cultural, and philosophical insights, Wood offers a captivating and learned work of science and history.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
22 people are currently reading
631 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
August 8, 2017
The individual chapters are pretty much across-the-board fascinating, and the author's name is "Gaby", which is great, and as long as I'm poking around for more goodwill to offer toward this thing, I'll also say the cover design is beautiful ("Wait," you ask, "better than Lives of the Monster Dogs?" A: YES.), but the parts are easily greater than the whole, which would not normally be a problem, except the author (whose name, recall, is "Gaby"! and she sort of looks like Natalie from Sports Night: I can admit this much) feels the responsibility to constantly bring up what I take to be an eleventh hour attempt at a thesis tying the whole thing together. Which thesis is something like "an investigation into the point when the recognizably human and the recognizably unhuman intersect, and we look up from what we were doing and sitting to our left is Freud and sitting to our right is Masahiro Mori, and we're all, Forget this, I'm getting off the train."
Of course: without this thesis, the book would seem just as mismashish, and of course: I totally get the draw of adding a connective throughline to it all, but its sole effect is to bring up avenues unexplored by the author ("Gaby") and make the already tenuous grip some of the chapters have on it more slipperier (while I am far richer for having learned about the Doll Family, if the subtitle is "A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life" then why am I reading about the Doll Family?). And so: as this thesis is brought up so often and at such incongruent moments, I am forced to deduct ONE POINT FIVE STARS for the psychic toll it cost me and then ROUND DOWN because Natalie and Jeremy on Sports Night broke up (note: I am a Jeremy type). Thusly forewarned, you might enjoy this book more than I did and be more forgiving when you read it and want to give this book a greater number of stars. I am powerless to stop you, as I already got off the train.
Of course: without this thesis, the book would seem just as mismashish, and of course: I totally get the draw of adding a connective throughline to it all, but its sole effect is to bring up avenues unexplored by the author ("Gaby") and make the already tenuous grip some of the chapters have on it more slipperier (while I am far richer for having learned about the Doll Family, if the subtitle is "A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life" then why am I reading about the Doll Family?). And so: as this thesis is brought up so often and at such incongruent moments, I am forced to deduct ONE POINT FIVE STARS for the psychic toll it cost me and then ROUND DOWN because Natalie and Jeremy on Sports Night broke up (note: I am a Jeremy type). Thusly forewarned, you might enjoy this book more than I did and be more forgiving when you read it and want to give this book a greater number of stars. I am powerless to stop you, as I already got off the train.
June 11, 2021
This was meant for a general audience. Wood certainly plays fast and loose with what constitutes "mechanical life". If you've done some homework on Vaucanson's automata, the Turk (mechanical life? what?), etc, your time is better spent elsewhere than slogging through this. There are some stories that I didn't already know, but most of what Wood adds is florid philosophical elaborations.
No, I couldn't persevere to the chapter on the family of dancing midgets.
No, I couldn't persevere to the chapter on the family of dancing midgets.
July 16, 2013
While this book started as an interesting history of automata, it then wandered a bit from the expected path. The author started to interject speculation as to the inventors' hidden agenda of somehow learning more about humanity through their creations. The ideas seemed pasted onto the history, the author's own opinion, rather than being any kind of factual goal of the inventor.
And really, all I could keep thinking the entire time I read about the inventors making the ideal woman or seeing the humanity in their inventions was a simple joke. I think this is all that was really going on in the heads of the inventors (aside from the desire to be rich, of course):
An engineer is walking down the street when he sees a talking frog. He picks it up.
"Hi," the frog says, "I'm actually a princess. If you kiss me, I'll turn into a real woman and love you forever."
The engineer smiles and puts the talking frog in his pocket.
Later, the frog is making noise, so the engineer pulls it out again.
"Didn't you hear me?" the frog asks. "I'm actually a princess. If you kiss me, I'll turn into a real woman and love you forever."
Again, the engineer puts the frog back in his pocket.
Later, the frog starts making all kinds of noise. The engineer pulls it out one more time.
"What's wrong with you? Don't you want to have a real woman love you forever?"
"A woman, even a princess, is nice and all," the engineer says, "but a talking frog is cool!"
And that, my friends, is all the insight you need on why the inventors created the automata. They could. It was cool. The end.
And really, all I could keep thinking the entire time I read about the inventors making the ideal woman or seeing the humanity in their inventions was a simple joke. I think this is all that was really going on in the heads of the inventors (aside from the desire to be rich, of course):
An engineer is walking down the street when he sees a talking frog. He picks it up.
"Hi," the frog says, "I'm actually a princess. If you kiss me, I'll turn into a real woman and love you forever."
The engineer smiles and puts the talking frog in his pocket.
Later, the frog is making noise, so the engineer pulls it out again.
"Didn't you hear me?" the frog asks. "I'm actually a princess. If you kiss me, I'll turn into a real woman and love you forever."
Again, the engineer puts the frog back in his pocket.
Later, the frog starts making all kinds of noise. The engineer pulls it out one more time.
"What's wrong with you? Don't you want to have a real woman love you forever?"
"A woman, even a princess, is nice and all," the engineer says, "but a talking frog is cool!"
And that, my friends, is all the insight you need on why the inventors created the automata. They could. It was cool. The end.
February 17, 2012
This was a GoodReads recommendation. I've found some fine books that way, but this sure wasn't one of them.
The author seems unable to think for herself. Everything has to be cast in terms of what an approved Male Cultural Authority Figure says, even, God help us, Freud.
The inclusion of a chapter about a family of performing midgets in a book about automata struck me as tasteless and irrelevant.
I had already read about most of the automata discussed here and learned nothing new about them.
How this book got all the awards escapes me, except that as a hard core reader who loves history and biography and reads a ton of it I've had to conclude that the awards are given to the most turgid, academic, and intellectually pretentious books published each year.
Very dissappointing as I would love to learn more about the automata, especially about how they actually worked and about how the people who invented them thought about them.
The author seems unable to think for herself. Everything has to be cast in terms of what an approved Male Cultural Authority Figure says, even, God help us, Freud.
The inclusion of a chapter about a family of performing midgets in a book about automata struck me as tasteless and irrelevant.
I had already read about most of the automata discussed here and learned nothing new about them.
How this book got all the awards escapes me, except that as a hard core reader who loves history and biography and reads a ton of it I've had to conclude that the awards are given to the most turgid, academic, and intellectually pretentious books published each year.
Very dissappointing as I would love to learn more about the automata, especially about how they actually worked and about how the people who invented them thought about them.
January 13, 2012
I read this book during my research on my Masters thesis on the body and technology in early silent film, and found it not only a rich resource, but also a massively entertaining and engrossing read, particularly the sections on the 18th and 19th century automatons. It sparked my interest in that area, and led me to read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, whose author coincidentally says Wood's book inspired him to write Hugo. Her research is indeed inspiring, I can't recommend it enough for those interested in 18th and 19th century clockwork, machinery and technology.
June 6, 2013
A. Very. Slow. Read. After reading the epilogue in "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" I noticed that Edison's Eve was mentioned. Most importantly, the section in Edison's Eve that referenced George Melies. I happened to have Edison's Eve in my personal library so I read it.
Wood is a fine researcher. I felt that this book was a research project. It was informative and concise, yes, but I had a hard time staying interested. I appreciated her efforts of creating a timeline of Vaucanson's inventions. I mean who wouldn't want to know what happened to history's only defecating robot duck?!?!I love how Napoleon wanted Vaucanson's duck but was denied. Later the duck was offered to him and he rejected it in Napoleon fashion. Talk to the hand.
The last chapter about the doll family should have never been included in this book. When I got to the point about how Harry Earles is in a movie called "The Unholy Three" I started wondering what has this got to do with the quest for mechanical life as the title indicates. Wood continues to tell how Earles stars in another film called "Freaks" then he and his siblings star in the "Wizard of Oz". Wood then describes how she kind of stalked his sister to learn more about her subject. But what is the subject at this point in the book? Mechanical life or midgets?
I'm also baffled about why the Title says "A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life." There is no magic in Edison's inventions. I suppose the magic comes from the machines leaving people in awe of such anthropomorphic automatons. Don't know. Don't care. The word "Magical" in the title is misleading.
Observations, Notes, Fav quotes, etc:
p.19: "Why was some clockwork tolerated when this was not? What was dangerous then was not the element of mechanism, but the element of man in the construction. To liken a man to a machine is unacceptable.
P. 31: "Men are mortal. Clocks are not. Vaucanson aged even as he constructed his ageless creations."
p. 168. Edison made the first film version of Frankenstein.
p.169: The fun thing about living it modern times is learning about stuff on Youtube. Thanks to Youtube I viewed how zoetropes, praxinoscopes, and phenakistoscopes work. I also got to see a video of Vaucanson's child automatons from the 1700s.
p.212: "“All Children talk to their toys; the toys become actors in the great drama of life, reduced in size by the camera obscura of their young minds." I loved the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and I love him even more after finding out he wrote an essay about the philosophy of toys.
p.219: While the eighteenth century sought to enlighten the masses with science and ideas, the technological inventions of the nineteenth century became a rowdier sort of people's spectacle. The marvelous became anarchic.
Horology-the study of time
Wood is a fine researcher. I felt that this book was a research project. It was informative and concise, yes, but I had a hard time staying interested. I appreciated her efforts of creating a timeline of Vaucanson's inventions. I mean who wouldn't want to know what happened to history's only defecating robot duck?!?!I love how Napoleon wanted Vaucanson's duck but was denied. Later the duck was offered to him and he rejected it in Napoleon fashion. Talk to the hand.
The last chapter about the doll family should have never been included in this book. When I got to the point about how Harry Earles is in a movie called "The Unholy Three" I started wondering what has this got to do with the quest for mechanical life as the title indicates. Wood continues to tell how Earles stars in another film called "Freaks" then he and his siblings star in the "Wizard of Oz". Wood then describes how she kind of stalked his sister to learn more about her subject. But what is the subject at this point in the book? Mechanical life or midgets?
I'm also baffled about why the Title says "A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life." There is no magic in Edison's inventions. I suppose the magic comes from the machines leaving people in awe of such anthropomorphic automatons. Don't know. Don't care. The word "Magical" in the title is misleading.
Observations, Notes, Fav quotes, etc:
p.19: "Why was some clockwork tolerated when this was not? What was dangerous then was not the element of mechanism, but the element of man in the construction. To liken a man to a machine is unacceptable.
P. 31: "Men are mortal. Clocks are not. Vaucanson aged even as he constructed his ageless creations."
p. 168. Edison made the first film version of Frankenstein.
p.169: The fun thing about living it modern times is learning about stuff on Youtube. Thanks to Youtube I viewed how zoetropes, praxinoscopes, and phenakistoscopes work. I also got to see a video of Vaucanson's child automatons from the 1700s.
p.212: "“All Children talk to their toys; the toys become actors in the great drama of life, reduced in size by the camera obscura of their young minds." I loved the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and I love him even more after finding out he wrote an essay about the philosophy of toys.
p.219: While the eighteenth century sought to enlighten the masses with science and ideas, the technological inventions of the nineteenth century became a rowdier sort of people's spectacle. The marvelous became anarchic.
Horology-the study of time
April 22, 2020
(2.5 stars/rounding up)
This book, subtitled "A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life," is largely but not entirely about automata, and also about the experience of the uncanny—often as it relates to the distinction between humans and robots or humans and dolls. The five chapters proceed chronologically from Jacques de Vaucanson (born in 1709) to the four siblings who performed as the Doll Family (the last of whom died in 2004), with chapters on Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess player (built in 1789), Edison's talking doll (which he worked on in the late 1800s) and Georges Méliès's films (from the late 1800s and early 1900s) in between.
I liked learning more about things I'd heard of but hadn't read about in depth, like Vaucanson's mechanical duck or Kempelen's chess player, and it was neat to read about their creators and the larger context in which these objects were made, and also to read about what happened to these objects after their creators' lifetimes. I was more interested in the straight-up historical sections, less interested in things like a psychoanalytic interpretation of the game of chess, and Wood's style sometimes struck me as overly sensationalistic, like when she makes much of a letter one of Edison's employees sent saying he would have a Parisian doll-maker send some doll bodies to "experiment with": "Sinister overtones impose themselves on the practical matters detailed in these letters," Wood writes, and goes on to ask "what kind of 'experiment'" the letter-writer had in mind (145)—though it's pretty clear the experiment was about whether the phonographs Edison wanted to use for his talking dolls could be fitted into the normal papier-mâché bodies made by European doll-makers. The chapter on Edison was interesting overall though, particularly the descriptions of Edison's 1887 laboratory, which is now "a museum, a frozen piece of industrial life, all wheels and pulleys and vices and clocks" (107). (Meanwhile, you can hear Edison's doll online: yikes. Less alarming: The Man with the Rubber Head, which was probably my favorite of the Méliès pieces I watched as a result of this book.) The chapter on the Doll family felt a little out of place, but it was interesting too, and I'm generally happy to read about circus history and Coney Island (that chapter has a great description of Luna Park in it).
This book, subtitled "A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life," is largely but not entirely about automata, and also about the experience of the uncanny—often as it relates to the distinction between humans and robots or humans and dolls. The five chapters proceed chronologically from Jacques de Vaucanson (born in 1709) to the four siblings who performed as the Doll Family (the last of whom died in 2004), with chapters on Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess player (built in 1789), Edison's talking doll (which he worked on in the late 1800s) and Georges Méliès's films (from the late 1800s and early 1900s) in between.
I liked learning more about things I'd heard of but hadn't read about in depth, like Vaucanson's mechanical duck or Kempelen's chess player, and it was neat to read about their creators and the larger context in which these objects were made, and also to read about what happened to these objects after their creators' lifetimes. I was more interested in the straight-up historical sections, less interested in things like a psychoanalytic interpretation of the game of chess, and Wood's style sometimes struck me as overly sensationalistic, like when she makes much of a letter one of Edison's employees sent saying he would have a Parisian doll-maker send some doll bodies to "experiment with": "Sinister overtones impose themselves on the practical matters detailed in these letters," Wood writes, and goes on to ask "what kind of 'experiment'" the letter-writer had in mind (145)—though it's pretty clear the experiment was about whether the phonographs Edison wanted to use for his talking dolls could be fitted into the normal papier-mâché bodies made by European doll-makers. The chapter on Edison was interesting overall though, particularly the descriptions of Edison's 1887 laboratory, which is now "a museum, a frozen piece of industrial life, all wheels and pulleys and vices and clocks" (107). (Meanwhile, you can hear Edison's doll online: yikes. Less alarming: The Man with the Rubber Head, which was probably my favorite of the Méliès pieces I watched as a result of this book.) The chapter on the Doll family felt a little out of place, but it was interesting too, and I'm generally happy to read about circus history and Coney Island (that chapter has a great description of Luna Park in it).
August 17, 2012
I've tagged this as science, but it's only science-ish. Anyway, I really, really enjoyed this book. I thought it was fascinating. I also found it extraordinary that, in a book where I expected to know absolutely nothing about the subject matter, I found I did! In the first chapter Wood talks a little about La Mettrie's 'Man a Machine', and I had to read that for one of my modules last year. There were another two writings mentioned early on that I read in the same class. Then, last night when I was about 50 pages from the end, I stopped reading for a while and watched Mark Gatiss' A History of Horror episode 1. In the part of the program on the film 'Freaks', I was sure I recognised one of the dwarves, and going back to the book today, I discovered that it was because there's a picture of him in this book, and the last chapter is all about the Doll family who were performers in the early 20th century. It talks about Freaks and other Hollywood horror movies, which is exactly what I'd been learning about last night! And it kept mentioning Freud's 'The Uncanny', and only last month I listened to a radio programme about that very topic. Haha!
March 22, 2012
In the 1980s there was an awful television sitcom called ‘Small Wonder’ about a family with a mechanical daughter. The father, an inventor, built her himself. She was named Vicky (for V.I.C.I. – “Voice Input Child Identicant”). She spoke with a flat affect and wore the same ugly red and white dress every day.
Like I say, it was a terrible show. It was also an oddly fascinating introduction to the idea of humanoid automata and the practical and philosophical issues they raise. Descartes was said to have built a mechanical daughter too.
Though Wood’s book drags a bit, I loved the early chapters dealing with 18th-century androids. I had read a bit elsewhere about Jacques de Vaucanson (his flute playing automaton, his mechanical duck, and his royal commission to build a human automaton that pumped blood) and was rewarded here with more. The story of Von Kempelen’s chess-playing Turk is equally fascinating.
Like I say, it was a terrible show. It was also an oddly fascinating introduction to the idea of humanoid automata and the practical and philosophical issues they raise. Descartes was said to have built a mechanical daughter too.
Though Wood’s book drags a bit, I loved the early chapters dealing with 18th-century androids. I had read a bit elsewhere about Jacques de Vaucanson (his flute playing automaton, his mechanical duck, and his royal commission to build a human automaton that pumped blood) and was rewarded here with more. The story of Von Kempelen’s chess-playing Turk is equally fascinating.
March 5, 2013
The book references the novel 'The Future Eve' (1886) by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. A quote from Future Eve goes: "If our gods and our hopes are now all scientific, then is there any reason why our love should not be scientific as well?" This quote appears on the screen in the beginning of the cyberpunk anime film 'Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.'
This is a necessary book if you want to understand the connections between cyberpunk, gothic fiction, and the production of modern automata. This is where I first learned of the concept of 'the uncanny.'
It is an awesome book simply because of how it connects all these various things. Also the book's cover with the mechanical hand all opened-up is very apt.
This is a necessary book if you want to understand the connections between cyberpunk, gothic fiction, and the production of modern automata. This is where I first learned of the concept of 'the uncanny.'
It is an awesome book simply because of how it connects all these various things. Also the book's cover with the mechanical hand all opened-up is very apt.
November 9, 2024
Vaucanson's automata sound interesting, and it's really too bad that they've been lost to history. I already knew the story of Kempelen's Chess Player, but it's an interesting one and I didn't mind having more information on it. Although not a real automaton, Wood is more interested in how people reacted to the illusion of an automaton during the 18th Century.
There is some good stuff here. Unfortunately, Wood gets derailed by side-tangents, going off into long digressions on things like: chess and the "madness" it supposedly induces (what?), fanfiction written about Edison while he was still alive (weird, but at least it included a fictional automaton), and then we go off track entirely with the history of the motion picture and, finally, an entire chapter devoted to a dancing troupe of little persons.
The chapter on the Doll Family - who performed as part of the Ringling Brothers Circus in the 1930s - is odd for many reasons. It's hard to see how it fits into a book on "mechanical life," and Wood's insistence on using a derogatory term for little persons throughout is especially irritating. The gist of the chapter seems to be that audiences were so ignorant, they thought the performers must be mechanical or "miniaturized by some unfathomable scientific process." (p. 214) I don't doubt that the little people faced a lot of stigma and abuse, but this seems like a stretch to include them in a book about automatons.
Also, Wood writes this utterly baffling line: "Unlike normal-sized people, whose bone-ends in their early twenties, m****s can suddenly shoot up at any age." (p. 227) ??? I'm not a doctor, but I've never heard of individuals with dwarfism "shaking it off" in later life.
Edison's Eve is a really mixed bag, but it's been on my TBR since I read Hugo Cabret in 2012, and I'm glad to finally cross it off. The early chapters, on Vaucanson's automata were genuinely interesting and I wouldn't be opposed to picking up a better book specifically on Vaucanson, or one of the other makers of early automata.
There is some good stuff here. Unfortunately, Wood gets derailed by side-tangents, going off into long digressions on things like: chess and the "madness" it supposedly induces (what?), fanfiction written about Edison while he was still alive (weird, but at least it included a fictional automaton), and then we go off track entirely with the history of the motion picture and, finally, an entire chapter devoted to a dancing troupe of little persons.
The chapter on the Doll Family - who performed as part of the Ringling Brothers Circus in the 1930s - is odd for many reasons. It's hard to see how it fits into a book on "mechanical life," and Wood's insistence on using a derogatory term for little persons throughout is especially irritating. The gist of the chapter seems to be that audiences were so ignorant, they thought the performers must be mechanical or "miniaturized by some unfathomable scientific process." (p. 214) I don't doubt that the little people faced a lot of stigma and abuse, but this seems like a stretch to include them in a book about automatons.
Also, Wood writes this utterly baffling line: "Unlike normal-sized people, whose bone-ends in their early twenties, m****s can suddenly shoot up at any age." (p. 227) ??? I'm not a doctor, but I've never heard of individuals with dwarfism "shaking it off" in later life.
Edison's Eve is a really mixed bag, but it's been on my TBR since I read Hugo Cabret in 2012, and I'm glad to finally cross it off. The early chapters, on Vaucanson's automata were genuinely interesting and I wouldn't be opposed to picking up a better book specifically on Vaucanson, or one of the other makers of early automata.
September 12, 2020
An interesting read, it was fun to learn about the different inventions. I'm glad to have learned about the Doll family but am not sure how to feel about there inclusion in the book, seems a bit in poor taste but maybe not I just can't decide on that one, it's just not black and white to me but maybe that was the point? It is a bit hard to decipher just what the point was she seemed to have many plates spinning at once, is it about feminism, man playing God, Tesla is an awful person, exploiting people who are different is bad, people are afraid of what they don't understand( those are just a few)? I have to admit I felt like she needed a bit more focus as I found the book scattered and hard to follow at times and it could have been much shorter. So in conclusion I'm not sure it's not a bad read but I'm not sure I'd necessarily recommend it if that makes any sense, it's just okay. Honestly I'm waffling between 2 and 3 stars but I think I have to give it 3 for the effort and research she clearly put in.
March 28, 2021
I initially thought this book would be focused on “A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life”. That is, depicting the evolution of automata throughout the ages.
However, the book takes you on a somewhat winding path that started out with automata of Vaucanson and Edison’s talking dolls, then moved on to moving pictures and midgets..
I also felt much of the book is superfluous with minor conversations and happenings that did not contribute to the overarching narrative. It could have been a better read by a more focused prose on each topic. For example, the last conservation between the writer and Tiny Doll—in my humble opinion— went nowhere.
I appreciated learning about the different inventions and the author’s personal take on human beings’ obsession with immortality and perfection. But I just wished that the author stayed more on point, and drove some of these concepts home hard, instead of somewhat weak arguments.
However, the book takes you on a somewhat winding path that started out with automata of Vaucanson and Edison’s talking dolls, then moved on to moving pictures and midgets..
I also felt much of the book is superfluous with minor conversations and happenings that did not contribute to the overarching narrative. It could have been a better read by a more focused prose on each topic. For example, the last conservation between the writer and Tiny Doll—in my humble opinion— went nowhere.
I appreciated learning about the different inventions and the author’s personal take on human beings’ obsession with immortality and perfection. But I just wished that the author stayed more on point, and drove some of these concepts home hard, instead of somewhat weak arguments.
October 1, 2025
picked this up because the author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret cited it as one of his sources of inspiration and it was really fascinating until (and during ONLY because of how much i love that book) the account of Georges Méliès, which is also in fact where it really loses the plot. each chapter after the first strays further and further from talking about actual automata and more about illusion, which is also really cool but not what i thought i signed up for. there’s also an undercurrent of man-becoming-machine-becoming-man which is also cool but again not what i thought i signed up for, and then tell me why the whole last chapter is about The Doll Family?
April 21, 2018
I read this after finishing The Turk by Tom Standish, so some of this was a rehash of the other book (which I liked much more.) The essays in this book were mostly interesting, although I thought it was a stretch to include voice recording, motion pictures, and a family of midgets as examples of mechanical life. I think I might have enjoyed this book more had I not just read The Turk, which I highly recommend.
April 23, 2022
A fascinating study. I bought and read this book several years ago, but reread it just recently and remembered how much I enjoyed it. Captivatingly written, the pace flows along even in quite complicated language and technical terms and is riveting all the way through. I'm not usually one for non-fiction, but this is a must-read! :)
June 11, 2017
An informative and entertaining treatise on a subject I previously new nothing about: The science of, and cultural fascination with, automatons in the 18th and 19th centuries. A potentially dry topic deftly handled by Ms. Woods.
January 13, 2021
Fascinating and very well written and also bizarre in that only 3 of the 5 chapters are actually about what the book says it's about; with the best will in the world, you would have to say that movies and short people are in no way robots.
January 2, 2022
This book was neither what I was hoping for (a history of automata) nor what the cover claims it is ("a magical history of the quest for mechanical life"), so if you're looking for either of those things, leave this one on the shelf.
November 3, 2023
Interesting to begin with - giving a nice background into animatronics (I had not realised this was such an old field). However, towards the end, it derailed into an odd discussion of dwarves. I would have preferred a shorter latter section.
March 27, 2020
Interesting book, but quite boring at times.
October 6, 2021
Fascinating dive into the obscure history of automata; a bit slow-going in places.
November 25, 2017
Love reading about automata and the weird ways these were so popular. Wood reviews many automata that have been covered elsewhere to better effect. His research and surmises about Edison was unexpected - Edison seemed obsessed with giving "life" to a mechanical doll.
May 15, 2021
Overall an interesting account of mechanical toys and the promethean dream of (re)creating life in an android form. Some chapters were more satisfying than others, but as a whole, I still would recommend it.
* * * * *
"Die Suche nach mechanischem Leben" heißt der Untertitel dieses Sachbuchs, in dem die Journalistin Gaby Wood einem sehr speziellen Thema nachgeht: Seit Jahrhunderten versuchen wir, mit den uns gegebenen Mitteln den Menschen nachzubauen, teils um uns selbst zu verstehen, teils um uns zu einem Erschaffer aufzuschwingen. In Edison's Eve stellt die Autorin Automaten seit dem 18. Jahrhundert vor, die menschliche (und tierische) Fähigkeiten nachahmten und so ihre Zeitgenossen in Erstaunen versetzten.
Ich bin wirklich zwigespalten, was dieses Sachbuch angeht. Einerseits fasziniert mich das Thema sehr, sowohl die Automaten als auch die Philosophien dahinter. Andererseits hatte das Buch leider einige Schwächen.
In jedem Kapitel geht es um einen anderen Erfinder. Dabei wird relativ weit im biografischen Werdegang ausgeholt, aber den jeweiligen Automaten auch viel Raum gewährt. Die Verbindung von Erfindung und Philosophie ging mir oft nicht weit genug; oft bleibt es bei Andeutungen und einzelnen Sätzen. Ein weiteres grundsätzliches Problem mit der Darstellung in Buchform ist, dass die Funktionsweise der Erfindungen durch Beschreibungen verständlich gemacht werden muss. Selbst ein Schaubild wäre schwierig gewesen, da es ja um bewegliche Objekte geht. An der Stelle wünscht man sich fast einen Film.
Die Highlights
Zwei Kapitel haben mir besonders gefallen: In einem geht es um einen der wohl bekanntesten Automaten, den Schachtürken.
Dieser stellte sich zwar nach einigen Jahrzehnten als Fälschung heraus, da er von einem Menschen im Inneren gelenkt wurde, aber seine unheimliche Fähigkeit, eine explizit menschliche Tätigkeit, das Schachspielen, nachzuahmen, hat viele Zeitgenossen zu Theorien angestachelt, wie das sein könne. Es bestand der kollektive Wunsch, dass es sich um einen echten Automaten handele, dass das Wunderding wie magisch Schachmeister und Könige besiegte. In dem Kapitel kam also auch der Wunsch nach dem Magischen, nach der unerklärlich zum Leben erweckten Mechanik, zum Ausdruck.
Das andere Kapitel drehte sich um Georges Méliès, dem Erfinder des Films als narratives Medium. Zwar ist auch das schon Grenzterrain des Themas, aber auch hier geht es um das Erschaffen von Leben, nur eben auf der Leinwand. Natürlich hat Méliès (im Gegensatz zu den Brüdern Lumière) Film vor allem für das Magische, nicht Reale verwendet, aber viele seiner Tricks beziehen sich auf Möglichkeiten des menschlichen Körpers: In seinen Filmen verselbständigen sich Köpfe, Menschen verschwinden in einer Rauchwolke oder schrumpfen und Statuen erwachen zum Leben. Insofern war dieses Kapitel nachvollziehbar, aber vor allem als Méliès-Fan habe ich mich darüber gefreut.
Kein glorreiches Finale
Was mich andererseits wirklich etwas enttäuscht hat, ist das letzte Kapitel: Anstatt den logischen Schritt zu modernen Forschungen rund um künstliche Intelligenz zu gehen, macht Gaby Woods etwas komplett anderes und schwer nachvollziehbares: Das letzte Kapitel gilt den Dolls, einer Familie von Kleinwüchsigen, die in den USA durch Shows und Filmrollen (unter anderem in Freaks) zu Bekanntheit gelangten. Während die Objektifizierung von Zwergwüchsigen und ihre Fetischisierung als lebende Puppen noch am Rande zum Thema passt, war mir das Kapitel eher weit hergeholt und uninteressant im Kontext dieses Buches.
So bleiben die im Vorwort angesprochenen Visionen in Blade Runner und realeren modernen Beschäftigungen mit künstlichem Leben und künstlicher Intelligenz in diesem Buch leider unkommentiert.
* * * * *
"Die Suche nach mechanischem Leben" heißt der Untertitel dieses Sachbuchs, in dem die Journalistin Gaby Wood einem sehr speziellen Thema nachgeht: Seit Jahrhunderten versuchen wir, mit den uns gegebenen Mitteln den Menschen nachzubauen, teils um uns selbst zu verstehen, teils um uns zu einem Erschaffer aufzuschwingen. In Edison's Eve stellt die Autorin Automaten seit dem 18. Jahrhundert vor, die menschliche (und tierische) Fähigkeiten nachahmten und so ihre Zeitgenossen in Erstaunen versetzten.
Ich bin wirklich zwigespalten, was dieses Sachbuch angeht. Einerseits fasziniert mich das Thema sehr, sowohl die Automaten als auch die Philosophien dahinter. Andererseits hatte das Buch leider einige Schwächen.
In jedem Kapitel geht es um einen anderen Erfinder. Dabei wird relativ weit im biografischen Werdegang ausgeholt, aber den jeweiligen Automaten auch viel Raum gewährt. Die Verbindung von Erfindung und Philosophie ging mir oft nicht weit genug; oft bleibt es bei Andeutungen und einzelnen Sätzen. Ein weiteres grundsätzliches Problem mit der Darstellung in Buchform ist, dass die Funktionsweise der Erfindungen durch Beschreibungen verständlich gemacht werden muss. Selbst ein Schaubild wäre schwierig gewesen, da es ja um bewegliche Objekte geht. An der Stelle wünscht man sich fast einen Film.
Die Highlights
Zwei Kapitel haben mir besonders gefallen: In einem geht es um einen der wohl bekanntesten Automaten, den Schachtürken.
Dieser stellte sich zwar nach einigen Jahrzehnten als Fälschung heraus, da er von einem Menschen im Inneren gelenkt wurde, aber seine unheimliche Fähigkeit, eine explizit menschliche Tätigkeit, das Schachspielen, nachzuahmen, hat viele Zeitgenossen zu Theorien angestachelt, wie das sein könne. Es bestand der kollektive Wunsch, dass es sich um einen echten Automaten handele, dass das Wunderding wie magisch Schachmeister und Könige besiegte. In dem Kapitel kam also auch der Wunsch nach dem Magischen, nach der unerklärlich zum Leben erweckten Mechanik, zum Ausdruck.
Das andere Kapitel drehte sich um Georges Méliès, dem Erfinder des Films als narratives Medium. Zwar ist auch das schon Grenzterrain des Themas, aber auch hier geht es um das Erschaffen von Leben, nur eben auf der Leinwand. Natürlich hat Méliès (im Gegensatz zu den Brüdern Lumière) Film vor allem für das Magische, nicht Reale verwendet, aber viele seiner Tricks beziehen sich auf Möglichkeiten des menschlichen Körpers: In seinen Filmen verselbständigen sich Köpfe, Menschen verschwinden in einer Rauchwolke oder schrumpfen und Statuen erwachen zum Leben. Insofern war dieses Kapitel nachvollziehbar, aber vor allem als Méliès-Fan habe ich mich darüber gefreut.
Kein glorreiches Finale
Was mich andererseits wirklich etwas enttäuscht hat, ist das letzte Kapitel: Anstatt den logischen Schritt zu modernen Forschungen rund um künstliche Intelligenz zu gehen, macht Gaby Woods etwas komplett anderes und schwer nachvollziehbares: Das letzte Kapitel gilt den Dolls, einer Familie von Kleinwüchsigen, die in den USA durch Shows und Filmrollen (unter anderem in Freaks) zu Bekanntheit gelangten. Während die Objektifizierung von Zwergwüchsigen und ihre Fetischisierung als lebende Puppen noch am Rande zum Thema passt, war mir das Kapitel eher weit hergeholt und uninteressant im Kontext dieses Buches.
So bleiben die im Vorwort angesprochenen Visionen in Blade Runner und realeren modernen Beschäftigungen mit künstlichem Leben und künstlicher Intelligenz in diesem Buch leider unkommentiert.
February 18, 2022
Contrary to the synopsis on the back cover, there was very little cultural analysis. I stopped reading about halfway through the book when I got bored of the tedious account of how some automaton came to be and how it got passed down from one owner to another.
April 6, 2015
Gaby Wood's book seemed to have been the perfect tome for me: for years I've been entranced by its major topics - Jacques de Vaucanson's writing automata and digesting duck and Wolfgang von Kempelen's 'The Turk' chess playing robot. I suppose like any young boy, clockwork, robots and artificial humans had become an abiding interest.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't live up to its title. It's portraiture, not history. And it's certainly not as rigorous as I'd have liked.
Part of the problem is that Wood deviates from the strict mimicry of life into some areas better covered elsewhere. Doubtless, the films of Georges Méliès and the development of moving pictures are essential in the study of representation of the human form, and that the stories of midgets in circus entertainment and Hollywood are crucial to how individuals are othered by observation. But it seems disingenuous to yoke midgets and screen representation to the idea of describing 'mechanical life', no matter how interesting the observations.
There's some interesting observations about the nature of the uncanny in these chapters - but the assemblage seems too loose to be meaningful. A coherent theory isn't developed, and while I'm left wanting to learn more about Méliès or Coney Island say, the chapters figure a little like a sell for an unwritten biography rather than the cover's promised magical history.
Admittedly, the book is now over twelve years old and so the details of recent robot developments are understandably not covered. But it's a bit of a cop-out to pass off a couple of chapters about individuals as an examination of mechanical life. The subject of artificial intelligence isn't really examined, and short of bookended instances of the author visiting modern laboratories (and a couple of pictures at the halfway point) there's nothing modern discussed after the release of Tod Browning's Freaks.
I enjoyed reading the chapters in isolation - they're entertaining, though not really scientific, despite lengthy bibliographies - but they don't hang together. My enjoyment probably came from delight at being able to read a little more about things which entranced me as a child rather than the book itself, which is a shame.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't live up to its title. It's portraiture, not history. And it's certainly not as rigorous as I'd have liked.
Part of the problem is that Wood deviates from the strict mimicry of life into some areas better covered elsewhere. Doubtless, the films of Georges Méliès and the development of moving pictures are essential in the study of representation of the human form, and that the stories of midgets in circus entertainment and Hollywood are crucial to how individuals are othered by observation. But it seems disingenuous to yoke midgets and screen representation to the idea of describing 'mechanical life', no matter how interesting the observations.
There's some interesting observations about the nature of the uncanny in these chapters - but the assemblage seems too loose to be meaningful. A coherent theory isn't developed, and while I'm left wanting to learn more about Méliès or Coney Island say, the chapters figure a little like a sell for an unwritten biography rather than the cover's promised magical history.
Admittedly, the book is now over twelve years old and so the details of recent robot developments are understandably not covered. But it's a bit of a cop-out to pass off a couple of chapters about individuals as an examination of mechanical life. The subject of artificial intelligence isn't really examined, and short of bookended instances of the author visiting modern laboratories (and a couple of pictures at the halfway point) there's nothing modern discussed after the release of Tod Browning's Freaks.
I enjoyed reading the chapters in isolation - they're entertaining, though not really scientific, despite lengthy bibliographies - but they don't hang together. My enjoyment probably came from delight at being able to read a little more about things which entranced me as a child rather than the book itself, which is a shame.
September 18, 2012
Wood's previous book was a cultural history of dwarfs; this one is a cultural history of 18th- and 19th-century robots. A modern-day assembly line welding robot or a Mars rover has a microprocessor, the output of which is decoded, amplified and fed to electromechanical actuators. A mid-18th-century automatic flute player or draftsman, however, was wholly mechanical. When I read about these automata, I wanted to know how they worked; this book is the wrong place to look for this information. If, however, you are interested in how the existence of these automata influenced the philosophy of materialism during the Age of Englightenment, it is the right place. There is also much material on Wolfgang von Kempelen's Mechanical Turk; Edgar Allan Poe knew that it was a hoax, but compared it to Charles Babbage's Difference Engine: if a machine can compute navigational tables, surely another machine could play chess, if only it had conditional branching! In fact, in the next century Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo did construct an electromechanical automaton that played a certain chess endgame; unfortunately, his name is not even in the index. Another chapter is about Thomas Edison's attempt to manufacture a speaking doll with a phonograph inside, which can hardly be called a robot; the book then veers off into the story of Georges Méliès, a pioneer of cinema, and a family of dwarfs, who supposedly were considered not-quite-human, like robots.
It was this book that inspired Brian Selznick's children's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, where Méliès is a major character and a mechanical robot plays an important role. It is, however, disheartening to read a book on the history of technology where the author gives no indication of understanding the technology in question. Perhaps the ability to write such books is what a liberal arts education gives one.
It was this book that inspired Brian Selznick's children's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, where Méliès is a major character and a mechanical robot plays an important role. It is, however, disheartening to read a book on the history of technology where the author gives no indication of understanding the technology in question. Perhaps the ability to write such books is what a liberal arts education gives one.
June 7, 2008
[Published as Living Dolls in the UK]
This is really five essays on incidents in the relationship between being human that are each entertaining in themselves but are not strung together with any over-arching narrative or meaningful theory. Vaucanson's mechanical shitting duck, Kempelen's fraudulent Turkish chess player, Edison's investment in doll manufacturing, Melies' experimental film-making and the adventures of the Doll family (small people) in the American entertainment industry provide interesting, well written but ultimately journalistic pieces with odd bits of 'cultural studies' obfuscation to make it look like a more important book. Marina Warner, it ain't. But the stories are good and not often told and Gaby Wood does have the ability to make the protagonists come to life. I hope she writes more such books without the unnecessary and admittedly small bits of theory - ot does the theory bit properly next time with a bit more sustained thought.
This is really five essays on incidents in the relationship between being human that are each entertaining in themselves but are not strung together with any over-arching narrative or meaningful theory. Vaucanson's mechanical shitting duck, Kempelen's fraudulent Turkish chess player, Edison's investment in doll manufacturing, Melies' experimental film-making and the adventures of the Doll family (small people) in the American entertainment industry provide interesting, well written but ultimately journalistic pieces with odd bits of 'cultural studies' obfuscation to make it look like a more important book. Marina Warner, it ain't. But the stories are good and not often told and Gaby Wood does have the ability to make the protagonists come to life. I hope she writes more such books without the unnecessary and admittedly small bits of theory - ot does the theory bit properly next time with a bit more sustained thought.
July 29, 2010
A very interesting book about automata and artificial life, their inventor/creators, and the idea of what it means to be human. I was especially fascinated by the backlash that the inventors dealt with when their creations became "too human" and made observers uncomfortable. Gaby Wood loses a bit of her focus and stretches the main idea of the book in the chapter about the undersized circus performers the Doll Family,but in general I found her writing style to be entertaining and informative.
A must read for those who are fans of Thomas Edison screwing up and robot ducks that shit.
A must read for those who are fans of Thomas Edison screwing up and robot ducks that shit.
September 26, 2014
Somehow I forgot to put this book up. Most of the material on automata I was already familiar with, but the section about Edison's talking dolls was pretty interesting. It was also kind of cool to see someone else drawing connections between automata and the idea of the uncanny. The section on early filmmaking and its ties to magic were also fun. I guess if I hadn't had a lot of the same material in my book I would have learned a lot more from this.
The last section about a particular family of little people who were entertainers seemed really out of place.
The last section about a particular family of little people who were entertainers seemed really out of place.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews