Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 09:53:30 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Issue #2

On Sunday I went to the local museum of History and Art.  I specifically
went on Sunday bacuse at this museum they have 200 year old automatons
which they only opperate on the first Sunday of each month, which last
Sunday was.  As an added bonus, Sunday was the beginning of a two week
"visit your museum" campaign thingy, and since it was the first day, the
museum (and apparently all museum here and in most of France) was free.

Okay, so we'll start with the art gallery.  It was not very big and in
reality had nothing particularly spectacular and nothing that really
caught my eye.  But then again, what would one expect of a city of 35000
even if it is the capital of a canton (a canton is like a province, there
are 13 of them, this one, also named Neuchatel (like New York state and
city) is a less populated one).  The one odd thing about this gallery is
that their display rooms had no particular theme (in most of them at
least).  For instance, one room had paintings from 1992 in an abstract
style and others from 1729 depicting one of those huge war like scenes.
It was kinda neat to not get bored by rooms and rooms of the same things
(as anyone who has been through many of Europe's galleries is familiar
with) but it was still weird.

The history museum had a rather small collection of the standard things -
coins back to the Romans, glass things back to the Romans, various war
implements and suits of armour, table ware from the 17 and 18 hundreds and
various local specifics (like the desks out of a very early classroom
here).  In addition to these, they also had 3 automatons (the Jacques-Droz
automatons) built in the 1770's.  They are basically windup clockwork
things.  When I saw them, I realized I had seen pictures of them before
(perhaps in the history section of computer textbooks ??).  There is the
writer, the artist and the musician.  All three were intentionally made
small, as this made them even more impressive.  The Musician, is a woman,
about the size of a 7 or 8 year old girl that plays the clavichord (sp?).
The writer and the artist are about the size of 2 or 3 year old children.
The artist draws with a charcoal (quite impressively I might add) and the
writer uses a quill pen, and writes (after appropriately dipping his pen).  

To me, the most interesting was the writer, who was designed to be able to
easily change the message.  The basics of his machinary consist of:  120
small disks, 3 of which are required for each "letter" (one disk controls
his left/right, one his forward/back and the third his up/down) thus
giving him a "vocabulary" of 40 characters, which, if desired, could be
changed, for instance, to japanese characters, but in general these 40
sets remain fixed; 1 large disk, onto which are bolted pieces which
indicate which of the 40 characters is to be written.  In addittion to the
40 characters, he also has a "dip my pen" subroutine and a "start a new
line" subroutine.  So, by simply putting the correct pieces on the big
disk, he can be made to write various messages with "new lines" and "ink
dips" intersperced appropriatly (they had samples from many shows over the
centuries).  The message he wrote for us had a small n for Neuchatel
because apparently, a capital N was not presently in his set of 40
characters.  It is quite impressive to see it opperate (they show his
inards while he is writing).  In addition to the writing, hs does some
head movements and other things.

As a side note, the artist and the musician can have their "data"
disks/spools changed, but they were not designed to have it done
regularly.  They were, however impressive in their own right.  The
artist's drawings, although only business card sized, were very impresive
with shading and everything.  The musician, although she hit a few wrong
notes, was also neat.  She actually played the instument (ie, during the
performance, the operator tips her away from the keyboard and although her
fingers still move, the music stops because she is not playing the notes:
conversly, you can actually play the instrument instead of her).  The most
impressive thing about the musician is her other motions.  She actually
"breathes" while she plays and moves her head and eyes.  She also
poilitely bows in both directi when she is finished.

I took some pictures, but they won't show the motion, and in fact, because
I had not taken my flash, may not show anything.  They had postcard
photos, but I saw none of the insides.  If I ever find a scanner I'll
start posting some photos on a web page somewhere to go along with these
info-mercials.

This is Aaron Sanderson, signing off from Neucahtel.