more mechanical wonders

This musical automaton is much loved and over the last century has become the icon of The Bowes Museum. It was one of the many purchases that the Bowes’ made from Parisian jeweller M. Briquet, with John paying £200 for it in 1872. John and Joséphine first saw the swan at the 1867 Paris International Exhibition where jeweller Harry Emanuel exhibited it.
The Silver Swan dates from 1773 and was first recorded in 1774 as a crowd puller in the Mechanical Museum of James Cox, a London showman and dealer. The swan is life-size and is controlled by three separate clockwork mechanisms. It is still in working order, though it is operated only once or twice a day because of its age.
The internal mechanism is by John Joseph Merlin, a famous inventor of the time. When set in motion, the swan appears to preen itself, then bends its neck and takes a fish from the water. In reality the fish is concealed in the swan’s beak.
The American novelist Mark Twain also saw the Silver Swan at the Paris exhibition in 1867 and described it in his book The Innocents Abroad:
‘I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes…’
Joséphine, whose father was a clock-maker, seems to have had a fondness for automata. Whilst the Silver Swan is the best known, there are a number of others including mechanical toys, music boxes and watches with automaton movements. Examples include an early seventeenth century lion clock made in Germany, whose eyes swivel, and a mechanical gold mouse, circa 1810, probably to be Swiss.
The Silver Swan continues to play at The Bowes Museum everyday at 2pm and 3pm.

By the way, more related issues from our past can be seen here and here