thumb|upright=1.3|Three of Vaucanson's automata: [[Vaucanson Flute Player|the Flute Player, the Digesting Duck and the Tambourine Player]]

The , or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson and unveiled on 30 May 1764 in France. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces were "produced" from a second, so that no actual digestion took place—Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed.

Voltaire wrote in 1769 that "Without the voice of le Maure and Vaucanson's duck, you would have nothing to remind you of the glory of France."

The duck is thought to have been destroyed in a fire at a private museum in 1879.

Vaucanson described the duck's interior as containing a small "chemical laboratory" capable of breaking down the grain. Vaucanson and his duck are referred to in Lawrence Norfolk's 1991 novel Lempriere's Dictionary, as well as a brief mention in Frank Herbert's Destination: Void. The Duck is featured in Lavie Tidhar's The Bookman, in the Egyptian Hall, alongside the Turk. The duck is also a key element to Max Byrd's mystery novel The Paris Deadline.

In 2002, Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye introduced the world to his "Cloaca Machine", a mechanical art work that actually digests food and turns it into excrement, fulfilling Vaucanson's wish for a working digestive automation. Many iterations of the Cloaca Machine have since been produced; the latest iteration sits vertically, mimicking the human digestive system. The excrement produced by the machine is vacuum-sealed in Cloaca-branded bags and sold to art collectors and dealers; every series of excrements produced has sold out.

See also

  • Gastrobot, modern digestion-fuelled robots
  • Reductionism

References

Sources

  • Wood, Gaby (2003). Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. London: Faber.

Further reading

  • Heudin, Jean-Claude (2008). Les créatures artificielles: des automates aux mondes virtuels. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob.
  • Riskin, Jessica. "The defecating duck, or, the ambiguous origins of artificial life" , Critical Inquiry 29, no. 4 (2003): 599–633.
  • Canard Digérateur de Vaucanson - Vaucanson's Digesting Duck
  • Living Dolls: A Magical History Of The Quest For Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood Guardian Unlimited Books, Extracts, Saturday 16 February 2002
  • "A Zenith" by Sara Roberts
  • I'm Afraid I Can't Do That by Simon Norfolk, an article discussing the Digesting Duck's impact on the philosophical definition of life.
  • BBC film featuring the modern automata of David Secrett in 1979