This toy was available for purshase in France in 1950 by the French Hatchette toy company. It was invented by Jacques Maurice Robert Leblic and the French patent 998,830 was granted on 26 September 1951. The bumper-bar at either end operates a reversing switch for the drive motor. When a lamp is…
This is a place marker under the Cybernetic Animals category. See other posts.
Wiener's/Wiesner's/Singleton's 'Moth' - why so many names attached? (extract from below) Wiener wanted the theories put to a practical test. In the late 1940s he teamed up with Dr. J. Wiesner, then in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and later to become the president of MIT, to build a demonstration-machine…
Place marker. E. C. Tolman, Discrimination vs. learning and the schematic sowbug, Psychol. Rev., 48, 1941, 367-382.
François Dussaud is more famous for inventions around the phonograph and cinema. A Swiss inventor, born in Geneva (b. 1870 - d. 1953) later lived in France. His patents are filed under the name of Charles François Dussaud. Note: The article below is from the French magazine Sciences & Vie…
This is what everyone's been waiting for - new and more detailed information on "Philidog" by Henri Piraux (sometimes Henry Piraux, of Philips France). One of the articles to be presented tells us that the dog has gone through a bit of an evolution. Unfortunately I've been unable to get a…
I found a single reference to a French Electric Dog that "will jump out of its kennel when a whistle sounds". The rest of the brief article talks about Miessner's "Electric Dog". Ingenious Mechanism - Le Grand Reporter, 30 Dec 1921 p2 The electric dog which will follow a lantern in the…
Originally published in the Electrical Experimenter (issue unknown but probably late 1916). This version from the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette 24th Dec 1916 p12 It is probably more a 'electric dog' than a creature built to exhibit phototropic behaviour and the like. Although it has a selenium cell, it is for…
A lot has already been published already about Seleno, try these links: http://www.davidbuckley.net/DB/HistoryMakers/HM-ElectricDog1912.htm and my Addendum. Here are some pics and excerpts showing different aspects of the "Electric Dog". Technical articles on the Electric Dog appeared in Scientific American Supplement No. 2267 p376-7 June 14, 1919 written by Benjamin Franklin Miessner, in…
I have only come across two time-lapse photographs with both ELMER and ELSIE. One has to be careful in interpreting time-lapse photographs as there are possibly different events happening at different times, off picture interference, and possibly different start times of each tortoise. An important observation highlighted by Owen Holland…