Pushkin Drawings by Junod



Junod Schematics

The drawings here are a selection among the hundreds of drawings François Junod made for the thousands of mechanical parts in his innovative clockwork automaton, Pushkin. This highly complex android writes 1458 different short haiku-like poems, their word selection based on the poetry of the famous Russian poet. There are several revolutionary ideas behind the mechanism, which is loosely based on the famous Jacquet Droz writing automaton in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, but enlarges on it. A stack of cams contain the information for the various words and combinations of words in the poems. The cams are raised and lowered by an "elevator" mechanism, which places them in position to be "read" by follower levers and linkages moving the right hand. In order for Pushkin to be able to write such a large variety of poems, word combinations are selected by the mechanism in a random, chance manner, controlled by cams and a pierced wheel device which aligns, at hazard, the words of each poem, so each poem is different from the last. Additional mechanisms make the automaton appear to breathe, and control a realistic eye movement.