Von Kempelen’s creations inspired many other inventions through both their form and function. The most famous, of course, are IBM’s chess computers, but here are two lesser-known stories:
After the automaton’s tour through London, a former clergyman named Edmund Cartwright wrote this account of a meeting with some fellow inventors:
…in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright’s spinning machinery. One of the company observed, that as soon as Arkwright’s patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable… I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking that there had lately been exhibited in London, an automaton figure, which played at chess. Now you will not assert, gentlemen, said I, that it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave, than one which shall make all the variety of moves which are required in that complicated game.
The following year, he defied the naysayers and patented the power loom.
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About thirty years after von Kempelen’s death, a British scientist named Charles Wheatstone (who also invented the concertina, but that’s for another day) built a reconstruction of the speaking machine, making a few improvements along the way, and exhibited it in London.
Another twenty years after that, a young Scotsman named Alexander Graham Bell saw a demonstration of Wheatstone’s machine while visiting London with his parents. Inspired by the machine’s abilities, the teenaged Bell and his brother returned home and built their own version, complete with a maneuverable tongue. Though he never improved von Kempelen’s design any further than his early experiments, he did go on to make a speaking machine of his own.