Author(s): Elizabeth King; W. David Todd; Rosamond Purcell (Filmed by)

History | Technology

This volume tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as "the monk." The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, is among the earliest ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to a legend connected to the court of Philip II of Spain, it represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a humble Franciscan lay brother whose corpse was said to be agent to the miraculous cure of Spain's crown prince as he lay dying in 1562. In researching the monk's origins and legends, Elizabeth King, a sculptor, and W. David Todd, a clockmaker and conservator of historical clocks, visited archives, libraries, and museums across the United States and Europe, probing the paradox of a mechanical object performing an apparently spiritual act. This enthralling narrative journeys back to the late Renaissance, when clockwork machinery was entirely new, foretelling the evolution of artificial life to come.