In early 1746 the parfumier and glovemaker Pierre Dumoulin left his native Lyon and headed north towards Germany, on his way to foreign lands to exhibit three remarkable objects constructed by the ...

Annotated plans for the (de)construction of Peter Carey's The Chemistry of Tears (including various figures, captions, gears, and essential diagrams): Fig. 1. Canard Digérateur, 1738. It's fitting ...

Peter Carey's new novel is a fairy tale of sorts, a fable about a duck that turns into a swan. The duck is based on an actual historical curiosity: the 18th-century French inventor Jacques de ...

There really was an 18th-century French scientist named Jacques de Vaucanson. And he really did make a mechanical duck that really did more or less what ducks do. "And I thought: 'That is Man!'" says ...