{"id":1776,"date":"2011-01-02T02:27:06","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T08:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2011-01-02T02:27:06","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T08:27:06","slug":"a-most-amazing-swan-and-a-wondrous-peacock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=1776","title":{"rendered":"A most amazing swan, and a wondrous peacock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve read <em>The Clockwork Three<\/em>, then you know that automatons play a role in the story.\u00a0 Almost every automaton mentioned in the book was an automaton that actually existed at one point, or at least, was said to have existed.\u00a0 I find automatons really fascinating.\u00a0 So I thought it might be cool to point you to some automatons from long ago that still exist, and still run.\u00a0 Like clockwork should.<\/p>\n<p>The first was sent to me recently by a young reader named Wren (thanks, Wren!) and features the &#8220;Silver Swan,&#8221; which is currently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk\/about\/collections\/the-silver-swan\/history\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">displayed at the Bowes Museum in England<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/k1raHbc4_GQ?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>The second comes from my cousin, Janna.\u00a0 It features the &#8220;The Peacock Clock,&#8221; currently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hermitagemuseum.org\/html_En\/12\/2006\/hm12_1_22.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">housed at the Hermitage in Russia<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 The video is unfortunately in Russian, but it&#8217;s still really cool to see the level of detail and artistry in these creations.<\/p>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/-q0FAYE0_1Y?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>I believe both of these were created by the same man, James Cox, in the latter half of the 18th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve read The Clockwork Three, then you know that automatons play a role in the story.\u00a0 Almost every automaton mentioned in the book was an automaton that actually existed at one point, or at least, was said to have existed.\u00a0 I find automatons really fascinating.\u00a0 So I thought it might be cool to point [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-sE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1788,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/1788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}