Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams
2013 · 60 MIN · IMDB 7.7 · 117 VOTES · DIR. Nic Stacey
Overview
Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life. The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today.
Dialogue Timeline — 565 lines
A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE
00:00:01 It's often said that if you really want to understand something
00:02:41 that could begin to make complex, controlled and regular movements.
00:05:14 For half a millennium, the Zeitglocke has stood in Berne
00:07:27 COCKEREL CROWS
00:10:14 A city populated by well-behaved, obedient automaton subjects.
00:13:00 But the salt miners were radicals, insurrectionaries.
00:15:35 'were achieved, I've come to meet Jonathan Betts
00:17:11 and an example here of the kind of tiny screw...
00:19:17 was essential to making clocks and automata.
00:21:44 these machines will keep on going reliably and regularly.
00:24:18 "at the threat of a blow?"
00:26:26 Vaucanson's work had inspired philosophical debate
00:29:03 made by a 240-year old machine.
00:32:08 Jaquet-Droz had reverse-engineered the very act of writing.
00:34:47 began to resemble each other, too closely.
00:37:32 The old world of court society, with its princes and its prelates
00:40:04 and then exporting clocks like these
00:42:13 "Having no means of retarding his velocity
00:45:33 Celebrity culture at the time flocked to see this device, to gawp
00:48:09 ..and his pipe and his cushion removed.
00:51:20 He reckoned that if there was a machine so ingenious
00:53:58 From inside, the operator could guide the Turk's arm
00:56:24 This idea of storing information in the changing surface of a disc
01:07:04 a friend of Vaucanson.