(check out the videos of the doll in action, still works after all
these years)
from fogonazos:
The writing automaton
In the eighteenth century, 200 years before little ASIMO started to
walk or to climb stairs, the great Jaquet-Droz built an automaton
which could scrawl any sentence on a piece of paper and had a
chilling repertory of human-like movements. Read the story an then
check it out at the videos:
Completed by 1772, 'The Writer' was the most perfect and complex
automaton built by swiss clockmaker Jacquet-Droz. His astonishing
mechanism was presented in every court in Europe and fascinated the
world's most important people: the kings and emperors of China, India
and Japan.
http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2007/01/writing-automaton.html