Vaucanson Flute Player

Vaucanson made a detailed presentation to them in his memoir of April 30, 1738, and the Academy returned a laudatory report signed by the perpetual secretary Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, with approval for printing by Henri Pitot: The Academy, having heard the reading of a Memoir by Mr. Vaucanson containing the description of a wooden statue, copied from Coysevox's marble faun, playing the transverse flute, upon which it performs twelve different tunes with a precision that has deserved the attention of the public, and of which a large part of the Academy has been witness, judged that this machine was extremely ingenious, that the author must have employed simple and new means, both to give the fingers of this figure the necessary movements and to modify the air entering the flute, by increasing or decreasing the speed according to the different tones, by varying the arrangement of the lips, and by moving a valve that performs the function of the tongue; finally, by imitating through art everything that man is obliged to do, and that furthermore, Mr. Vaucanson's Memoir had all the clarity and precision that this machine is capable of, which proves the intelligence of the author and his great knowledge in the various parts of mechanics.

[6][7] Rented for a year to three Lyon merchants, including a certain Pierre Dumoulin, master glover-perfumer, the automatons were exhibited in London in 1742, then purchased in Vaucanson at the end of the lease.

Dumoulin made them travel to the Netherlands, France, notably Strasbourg in 1746, and Germany, where, due to lack of money, their journey was interrupted in 1755 at a pawnbroker in Nuremberg.

[alpha 2] After thirty years of abandonment in Nuremberg, the automatons passed into the hands of several owners and repair mechanics, but it seems that, unlike the Duck, the Flutor and the Drummer never worked again.

Gottfried Christoph Beireis, professor of medicine in Helmstedt and collector of curiosities, after purchasing the automata in 1784, called on Johann Georg Bischoff Jr. to restore them, and declared himself satisfied with the result;[9] nevertheless, to modernize the flautist's repertoire, he had the cylinder replaced with a mechanical musical instrument performing one of his favorite tunes, taken from Carl Heinrich Graun's opera Brittanico, which he had previously heard on a musical clock.