1738: The Duck French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a number of autonomous robots in his time, but The Duck is one of his more revered works. The mechanical duck had over 400 different parts, which isn't too surprising considering what it could do.

The object in question is Vaucanson’s ingenious duck – “a clever soulless creature which would be made to flap its wings, drink water, digest grain, and defecate ...” Henry is searching out a clockmaker and becomes involved with a mysterious German ...

And then he found the duck. The duck that was actually invented in the 18th century by de Vaucanson, and that Carey took – as in their own ways both Hawthorne and Pynchon had done before him – and reimagined in fictional terms. As Lucy Daniel pointed ...