The Collection
Real machines from the 1700s and 1800s that sound made up, each with a short film, a full article and its sources.
Exhibits
Is there a man inside?
The chess machine that fooled Europe and America for 84 years, and the person hidden in the box.
How the Turk worked
Doors, candles, magnets and a sliding seat: the trick, part by part, from the records.
Can a machine originate anything?
Ada Lovelace said no. A century later, Alan Turing answered her.
Mail through tubes
London's underground railway for parcels, pushed by air. Passengers tried it too.
A train with no engine
Brunel's railway ran on air pressure, until its leather seals gave out.
They weren't against machines
What the Luddites actually wanted, and who the machines served.
The Nautilus
Verne's submarine and why the Victorians loved a machine nobody could see into.
The machine that drew pictures
Maillardet's automaton wrote poems and drew ships, long before computers.
The creature's question
Frankenstein, and what a maker owes the thing it makes.
9 exhibits