Back Ànec amb aparell digestiu Catalan Pato con aparato digestivo Spanish Canard de Vaucanson French Anatra digeritrice Italian
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The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson and unveiled on 30 May 1764 in France. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces were "produced" from a second, so that no actual digestion took place—Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed.
Voltaire wrote in 1769 that "Without the voice of le Maure and Vaucanson's duck, you would have nothing to remind you of the glory of France."[1]
The duck is thought to have been destroyed in a fire at a museum in 1879.[2][3]
- ^ Voltaire (1819). Plancher, P. (ed.). Œuvres complètes de Voltaire [Complete Works of Voltaire] (in French). Vol. 32: Correspondance générale. Rue Hautefeuille, Paris: Mme. Jeunehomme. p. 491.
... sans la voix de la le Maure, & le canard de Vaucanson, vous n'auriez rien qui fit ressouvenir de la gloire de la France.
- ^ Wood (2003). "In 1882, someone wrote a letter to a German newspaper claiming they had seen the duck in a private museum in Krakow during the summer of 1879. But within days the museum had burnt down".
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