It was his intention at the time to follow a course of religious studies, but he regained his interest in mechanical devices after meeting the surgeon Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, from whom he would learn the details of anatomy.

This new knowledge allowed him to develop his first mechanical devices that mimicked biological vital functions such as circulation, respiration, and digestion.

[6] In 1737, Vaucanson built The Flute Player, a life-size figure of a shepherd that played the tabor and the pipe and had a repertoire of twelve songs.

In particular its inability to sufficiently move the lips resulted in the necessity of increasing the wind pressure for the upper octaves.

Although such frauds were sometimes controversial, they were common enough because such scientific demonstrations needed to entertain the wealthy and powerful to attract their patronage.

Vaucanson is credited as having invented the world's first flexible rubber tube while in the process of building the duck's intestines.

[3] In 1741 de Vaucanson was appointed by Cardinal Fleury, chief minister of Louis XV, as inspector of the manufacture of silk in France.

In 1745, he created the world's first completely automated loom,[10] drawing on the work of Basile Bouchon and Jean Falcon.

Vaucanson was trying to automate the French textile industry with punch cards – a technology that, as refined by Joseph-Marie Jacquard more than a half-century later, would revolutionize weaving and, in the twentieth century, would be used to input data into computers and store information in binary form.

[15][16] These were of copper rather than steel, so far easier to turn on a lathe, which may account for Vaucanson's omission from such works as Derry & Williams,[17] who place this invention around 1768.

Lycee Vaucanson in Grenoble is named in his honor, and trains students for careers in engineering and technical fields.