Good stimulus for steampunk or fantasy stories.

Originally shared by The Public Domain Review

One of the many designs for hydraulic automata created by the first-century-AD engineer Hero of Alexandria. Many involved elaborate networks of siphons that activated various actions as the water passed through them, especially figures of birds drinking, fluttering, and chirping. Read more in our latest essay “Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence” by Jessica Riskin — http://bit.ly/1W9hZTR