15:58, Wednesday 19 Jan., 2011
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Gorgeous mechanism: Japanese tea-serving automaton from the 19th century (photo).
The Digesting Duck was created in France in 1739. It would eat and defecate grain.
Around 450 BC, the ancient Greek island of Rhodes was so well known for its robots that the poet Pindar wrote of it:
The animated figures stand
Adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or
move their marble feet.
