Existing comment:
Inventions That Paved the Way
"If we choose to call the performer [The Chess Player] a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind."
-- Edgar Allan Poe, 1836
The innovations displayed in the collections and on the tables of Renaissance and Baroque Europe evolved into life-size humanoid automata built at the end of the eighteenth century. As they became increasingly complex, these machines earned a new name: androids. Early androids surprised courtly audiences with their seemingly perfect simulations of human movement and thought. Considered the forerunners of the modern computer, the cutting-edge technologies that produced these mysterious effects would soon be harnessed in the Industrial Revolution, generating great shifts in the way we live and work.
The positive connotations associated with technological progress in the Renaissance endured through the centuries to inflect the present day. While scientific instruments and automata no longer carry the same prestige, their spiritual successors -- the high-end cars, handheld artificial intelligence, and luxury electronics dreamed up by today's scientists, artisans, and engineers -- command a level of respect that keeps alive a drive toward creativity and innovation. |