The Canard Digérateur, also known as the Digesting Duck, was a mechanical device shaped like a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson. It was shown publicly on May 30, 1764, in France. The duck seemed to eat grains of food and then break them down and pass waste. However, it did not actually digest the food. Instead, the grains were collected in one container, and waste that had been stored earlier was released from another container. Vaucanson hoped that one day a machine could truly digest food like a living creature.

In 1769, Voltaire wrote, "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 believed to have been destroyed in a fire at a private museum in 1879.

Operation

The automaton was the size of a living duck and was covered in gold-plated copper. It could quack, move water with its beak, drink water, and take food from its operator's hand. It swallowed the food and produced what looked like digested food.

Vaucanson described the duck's inside as having a small "chemical laboratory" that could break down grain. In 1844, the stage magician and automaton builder Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin examined the duck and discovered that Vaucanson had created a fake mechanism. The duck's excreta were made of pre-prepared breadcrumb pellets dyed green. Robert-Houdin called this "a piece of artifice I would happily have incorporated in a conjuring trick."

Modern influence

A copy of Vaucanson's mechanical duck, made by Frédéric Vidoni, was displayed in the Grenoble Automata Museum, which is no longer open. Another copy was created privately by David Secrett, an artist known for making mechanical figures of archers.

The duck is mentioned in a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne called "The Artist of the Beautiful." It is also discussed in a novel by John Twelve Hawks titled "Spark." In Thomas Pynchon's novel "Mason & Dixon," the duck becomes self-aware and follows a chef who left Paris across the United States. The duck is mentioned in Peter Carey's book "The Chemistry of Tears." Vaucanson and his duck are also written about in Lawrence Norfolk's 1991 novel "Lempriere's Dictionary," and briefly in Frank Herbert's book "Destination: Void." The duck appears in Lavie Tidhar's novel "The Bookman," where it is shown in the Egyptian Hall next to the Turk. The duck is also an important part of Max Byrd's mystery novel "The Paris Deadline."

In 2002, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye created a machine called the "Cloaca Machine," which digests food and produces waste, completing Vaucanson's dream of a working digestive system. Many versions of the Cloaca Machine have been made, with the most recent one standing upright to resemble the human digestive system. The waste created by the machine is sealed in bags with the Cloaca logo and sold to art collectors. Every set of waste produced has been sold out.