When I was a child, we used to go every December to Wellington to see the windows at Kircaldy and Stains, the big department store, where each window contained a different animated scene, which we had to follow in order, as they told a story. It was a different story each year, and to me as a child, they were beautiful, exciting, and an important part of Christmas. More recently, I took my grandchildren to see the same windows in the same shop. (My children did not grow up in Wellingon.)

The department store closed in 2016 after 152 years, but some of the automata live on at the Wellington Museum.

I’ve had simpler automata as toys. A monkey that played a drum when wound up. A ballerina that danced when a jewelery case was opened. Automata have always fascinated me.

Perhaps that’s why I have made the hero of the book I’ve just sent to beta the creator of clockwork automata. They were a sensation when they first appeared in the 17th century, and remained popular with wealthy collected and intrigued patrons throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And, as I’ve just indicated, into the 20th, though from the Victorian age on, they tended to be powered rather than clockwork.

The history of mechanical figures goes back into legend and through various accounts of the last 2,500 years. Stories of moving statues, mechanical men, and automated birds who sang pop up in accounts from Ancient Greece and Biblical Judea, Persian and China, the Ottoman Empire, and other places. But we are concerned with Europe in the 18th and 19th century, where they were a sensation with wealthy collectors and influential patrons. Many even went on tour. The History of the Automaton Mechanical Miracles describes three by Pierre Jaquet-Drois, built between 1768 and 1774:

Each figure is 28 inches tall and performs a range of realistic actions. The draughtsman draws four different pictures, including a portrait of Vaucanson’s royal patron, Louis XV. The musician plays upon an organ, while the writer — made of more than 6,000 separate components — can be programmed to pen any message of 40 characters or fewer, making him in the eyes of many the true progenitor of the modern computerised android.

The three automata toured Europe for many decades, advertising the firm that built them, which prospered.

France remained a centre for automata building, moving to powered automata in the second half of the 19th century. Germany and Switzerland also had their great makers.

Clocktower automata like the one in my book are also know as glockenspiel, though the name refers to the instrument that makes the sound rather that the figures. As my hero says, it is made of bells or small pieces of metal struck be hammers. Not the one in Stratford in New Zealand, which is a town not far from where I’m writing this blog post. The town website says:

Since 1999, the clock tower has been entertaining passersby with a short Shakespearean performance four times a day.

Following the striking of the tower bells at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., carved figures of Romeo and Juliet emerge from doors within the tower. As they do so, a recording begins of some of the most famous lines from the Balcony Scene, backed by some suitably Elizabethan music. Six different figures emerge in total (three of Romeo and three of Juliet) during the five-minute mechanized performance, with the last set standing hand in hand. The music plays throughout, with various lines from the play.

The music, along with the lines from the play, is piped out from a modern(ish) sound system. It is not played using a traditional carillon system of bells as found in more authentic towers of this type.