William Sommerwerck wrote in message
...
You've got it easy. I watched a recent BBC4 doc on the automata makers
of
the 1700s and 1800s. The one that played a standard flute, with full
fingering and embouchure. Then the animated whole town with was it 700
separate movements sequenced by an addressable, ie not sequentially
stepped,
complex stacked multicam system like a very complex Strowger mechanism.

Some of this is shown in the film "Hugo".

I used to have a packet of drawings made by an automaton in the Franklin
Institute. It was on display churning them out, and used a Parker T-ball
Jotter.




I think the addressable "strowger" was used in the writing automata scribe,
now I think about it.
Give it some ink for its quill pen and it wrote perfect cursive script on
paper. Change the "program" and the text changed, each cam was for a
separate letter formation