Maillardet's automaton, also known as the Draughtsman-Writer, Maelzel's Juvenile Artist, and Juvenile Artist, is a machine created in London around the year 1800 by a Swiss inventor named Henri Maillardet. It is now part of the collection at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Acquisition

In November 1928, the Franklin Institute received parts of a brass machine. The machine had come from the descendants of John Penn Brock, a family that knew it once could write and draw pictures. The machine had been damaged in a fire, and its repair required a lot of work. The Brock family believed the machine was made in France by an inventor named Maelzel. The original writing tool, either a quill or a brush, was replaced with a stylographic fountain pen. After being repaired, the automaton created detailed drawings and poems. Around the edge of the final poem, the automaton wrote, "Ecrit par L'Automate de Maillardet," which means "Written by the automaton of Maillardet."

In 2007, restorer and paper expert Andrew Baron spent about 70 hours repairing the Maillardet automaton to make it work again.

Travel exhibitions

In the early 1800s, Maillardet displayed this automaton and other automata he created in England and other parts of Europe, including Saint Petersburg, Russia. Here is a list of some known places where the Maillardet's automaton was shown. The automaton was often called the Juvenile Artist during these exhibitions.

Museum collections

The Maillardet's automaton was a special feature in the Amazing Machine permanent exhibit at The Franklin Institute. This exhibit shows more than 24 rarely seen machines, with parts like gears, cams, pulleys, and linkages clearly visible to help visitors understand how they work. The Maillardet's automaton was once on display regularly but was only operated by staff a few times each year for public demonstrations. These demonstrations showed all seven drawings the automaton could create, as seen here.

Today, the Maillardet's automaton is displayed in the Hamilton Collections Gallery, another permanent exhibit at The Franklin Institute. This gallery features other early examples of technological inventions.

The images created by the Maillardet's automaton are kept in the collections of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The museum holds machines from before computers existed. For the Maillardet's automaton, the museum explains that its cams function like computer read-only memory (ROM) to store data that can be used later. The automaton stores motion data needed to write a poem on paper. It is considered the largest cam-based memory system of its time. The automaton's ability to store seven images was calculated to hold 299,040 points of information, which is about 300 kilobits or a quarter of a kilobyte.

The Massachusetts Historical Society has a drawing made in 1835 by an automaton. This drawing, which shows Cupid, is part of the Minot family's collection of papers and artwork. The drawing is untitled, and the writing on it says it was made by Maelzel's automaton, known at the time as the Maelzel's Juvenile Artist. It is believed that at least one member of the Minot family saw the Juvenile Artist create the drawing during an exhibition in Boston on April 29, 1835. The Massachusetts Historical Society thinks the Juvenile Artist might actually be the Maillardet's automaton. One possibility is that Maelzel bought the automaton in the 1830s. At the time, his machines were called Maelzel's. After Maelzel died, the automaton may have been sold in Philadelphia to pay his debts. The new owner then named it after Maelzel.