A seventeenth-century mechanical man Mechanical clocks represented the pinnacle of technological achievement of the seventeenth century, comparable to computers today. For amusement, clock-like mechanisms were used to operate robotic, humanoid figures, as illustrated here. Such mechanical men helped to inspire, in Descartes and Hobbes, the idea that actual human beings might also operate by mechanical means, not requiring a nonmaterial spirit to move them.

Smithsonian Institution