In answer some of the questions in last week's comments section -- did Maelzel know the automaton was a trick? -- my guess is that he did, but I've no conclusive proof one way or the other. By 1806, he had built several of his own very impressive automata, so he surely knew the limits of technology at the time. Additionally, von Kempelen always made it a point to let the audience know that the chess-player was a trick, referring to it as a "trifle" and a "bagatelle". I have to think that poor Wolf felt rather bewildered when people kept taking it so seriously.

Von Kempelen did take the secret with him to his grave -- we don't even know the names of the directors he hired for either of the automaton's tours. It may seem odd that Karl wouldn't know the particulars of the trick, but from his perspective, the automaton must have been an awful nuisance. It dragged him all over Europe, and for he and Theresa, it would've been one boring apartment after another, never seeing the performances, never getting a chance to participate in the fun. It wouldn't be too far a stretch to imagine Karl never wanting anything to do with it.

***

This is, as you've probably guessed, the last page in Part One. If you'd like to find out what happened to the individual family members, you can check out the "von Kempelen Family Epilogue" in the new Web Extras section. For now, Clockwork Game will go on hiatus for an indefinite period. I'm still working diligently on the script, but I have no idea how long the redactions will take -- and even after I finish writing, I'll still have to build up a buffer of artwork before I can start again. That's also assuming that I can get the script to a place where I'm happy with it; as they say on Mythbusters, failure is always an option. I am hopeful, though.

When will I have an answer? I don't know. The best I can say is that I'll let you know as soon as I know. If you're still interested in following the story, I'd suggest either signing up for the mailing list or adding the RSS feed to your reader of choice. That way you'll get the news of the reboot as soon as it's available.

Thank you all so much for reading, and for responding -- your comments every week kept me going more than you know. Clockwork Game has been a wonderful experience for me, and I hope you've enjoyed it, too.

One bit of trivia in regards to the house itself -- the von Kempelens actually had at least two other residences in addition to the house in Pressburg. They rented a set of apartments in Vienna, which is where Wolf actually died; they also inherited a farm in Gomba-Hubice from Wolf's family, where Wolf spent most of his retirement. Rather than depict all three residences and ask readers to keep them straight, I squashed them all together and used the Pressburg house, with Wolf's primary workshop and study, to represent them all.

I'm also kind of squashing history -- Maelzel didn't actually become Court Mechanician until 1808 or 1809, but the effect's the same. Again, all for the storytelling.

I would have loved to give Anna one more scene, but then she would've had to compete with this performance, and Elizabeth Berridge is hard to top. So, Anthon it was.

I'm also finding out (too late) that the part about his pension being canceled may derive from spurious evidence, but I'm letting it stand for now. It may change in future editions.

I'll have more trivia on his death in a few pages, but for now, that's about all.

Von Kempelen certainly isn't taking any guff from this youngster, which is no surprise considering Maelzel was only a gleam in his parents' eyes the day that the automaton made its first appearance.

****

It's been a while since I posted any links to my fellow webcomickers, so this week you get two big announcements.

The first is that Jeremy Love's Bayou swept the heck out of The Glyph Awards, which it richly deserves. I cannot wait for the print version of this story. If you haven't checked this webcomic out yet, go do so as soon as you can. You're missing out, otherwise.

The second goes to fellow history nerd Carol "Klio" Burrell, who has just signed up to draw the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler's Kindred. I am so excited about this, I can hardly stand it. Octavia Butler's books are so amazing, and it's a relief to know that the artwork's in such capable hands. Till the book comes out, make sure to swing by Klio's ongoing webcomic, SPQR Blues -- there're four years worth of archives to keep you busy.

Hat tip to buddy Rich Watson for both stories. Congrats are also due to Rich on another successful year of Glyph Awards!

I've squashed history a bit, here: Count Cobenzl did offer von Kempelen a teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, but not until 1801; von Kempelen declined on grounds of ill health, so I didn't think it too presumptuous to advance his illness a bit. Just like the people who commented last week, I am also of the opinion that nothing short of physical impairment could've forced Wolf into retirement.

Also, I know I've got them shaking hands left-handed; it's less a mistake and more to imply that Wolf can't let go his cane easily.

And speaking of court politics, Wolf's snide remark is probably in reference to Francis' expansion of his spy network and censorship policies following the French Revolution. Funny how watching your aunt and uncle-in-law get their heads guillotined off by an unruly mob will make you suspicious and paranoid. Granted, Maria Theresa wasn't always a shining example of human kindness, but she was known for being more reform minded than her great-nephew.

On a more pleasant note, the von Kempelen family cleans up rather nicely, don't they? You'll notice that there's not a wedding ring on Theresa's hand quite yet; that'll be explained later. I'd really have loved to stick a grandkid or two in there to complete the adorable family portrait, but -- well, that'll be explained later, too.

Till then, I hope you all remember Count Cobenzl from the automaton's first game.

Seriously, though -- Joseph isn't just blowing sunshine, here -- von Kempelen's creations inspired many other inventions through both their form and function. The most famous, of course, are IBM's chess computers, but here are two lesser-known stories:

After the automaton's tour through London, a former clergyman named Edmund Cartwright wrote this account of a meeting with some fellow inventors:

...in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright's spinning machinery. One of the company observed, that as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable... I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking that there had lately been exhibited in London, an automaton figure, which played at chess. Now you will not assert, gentlemen, said I, that it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave, than one which shall make all the variety of moves which are required in that complicated game.

The following year, he defied the naysayers and patented the power loom.

**

About thirty years after von Kempelen's death, a British scientist named Charles Wheatstone (who also invented the concertina, but that's for another day) built a reconstruction of the speaking machine, making a few improvements along the way, and exhibited it in London.

Another twenty years after that, a young Scotsman named Alexander Graham Bell saw a demonstration of Wheatstone's machine while visiting London with his parents. Inspired by the machine's abilities, the teenager and his brother returned home and built their own version, complete with a maneuverable tongue. Though he never improved von Kempelen's design any further than his early experiments, he did go on to make a speaking machine of his own.

The speaking machine was also not Kempelen's first attempt to create an aid for persons with disabilities; ten years earlier he created a typewriter for a young blind composer, so that she could correspond more easily.

The thing I find most fascinating about von Kempelen -- and what drew me to tell his story -- is that he was a true gentleman scientist, and from all accounts that I've read, was genuinely devoted to bettering humanity with both his official work and his inventions. I can only imagine how much it must've burned him that the automaton was so much better received than his other, more worthwhile creations. He was also one of the last great Natural Philosophers, following in the footsteps of Newton and Leibniz, and succeeded by Goethe.

In fact, in the original draft of the script, this scene -- with its discussion of art and its relationship to science -- was supposed to take place between von Kempelen and Goethe. Goethe did, in fact, see the speaking machine demonstrated; he wrote to his patron that it "is not very loquacious, but it can pronounce certain childish words nicely." Unfortunately, further research turned up that Goethe never traveled to Vienna, let alone Pressburg, so it's much more likely that he was one of the thousands of anonymous viewers who filed past it during the 1783-84 tour. This meant that I had to dig up another character for the conversation. Hence, Joseph -- and the change was much for the better.

The model you see here is actually von Kempelen's third attempt at building a speech synthesizer. As Joseph mentions, the first wasn't much more than a bagpipe reed and a kitchen bellows, and the second was more like an organ, with an individual pipe and key for each phoneme. The third design was an attempt to more closely emulate the human mouth, nose and throat, and was one of the first machines to successfully do so.

However rude it may appear on first glance, this final design is incredibly clever; you can see how it works in this interactive flash site from the Kempelen Farkas Speech Research Laboratory in Budapest, created to help demonstrate their working reconstruction of the machine for an International Phonetics workshop. Seriously, if you have the time, go poke around in there -- it's pretty awesome. If you don't have the time, this page has some photos of their reconstruction, as well as this sound file where a person first says a phrase, and the speaking machine repeats it. The Institute of Media Archeology in Austria also has their own replica, and their site offers sound and video clips (and is on public display for only a few more days, looks like! Dang, I wish I could afford plane fare to Austria right now). Here's one more replica for good measure.

Von Kempelen usually made it pronounce words and short phrases in Latin, Italian, or French rather than German, because the machine had difficulty with harsh consonants. Despite twenty years of work and continual adjustments to improve its inflection and pitch control, its voice remained very crude (and rather creepy). Still, it was an amazing effort for one man, and von Kempelen's contributions to the field are still noted today.

Speech simulation has taken quite a different turn these days -- scientists have largely given up on replicating human speech through physical means because it's just too difficult. Instead, research facilities have turned to creating huge libraries of individual sounds in sentence context.

The original speaking machine still exists, and can be viewed by the public in the Musical Instruments section of the The Deutsches Museum in Munich.

More trivia on the speaking machine (yes! more! not done yet! not even close!) next week.

Joseph's character is another one I had to invent out of whole cloth. All I had to go on was his name; I could find no other information about him whatsoever. So now he's a nerdy amateur scientist with a thing for phonetics.

And speaking of nerdy nerdy stuff, here's some trivia for you: This image, which I linked to last week, is the frontispiece to Kempelen's book on speech mechanics. It's reproduced on several websites and in books as being a portrait of Kempelen himself, and each time I've seen it without the inscription, which reads "Ignatius A. Born -- Naturae amico et suo -- Auctor". Roughly translated, this means "Ignatius A. Born -- To nature's friend and his own -- Author."

It's a dedication, not an author portrait; von Kempelen is dedicating the book to his friend Ignác von Born, the metallurgist for whom the mineral Bornite is named. Von Born died the same year that the book was published, so it's probably a memorial. Besides, when you compare von Born's likeness to von Kempelen's self-portrait, the two didn't look all that much alike.

When designing my own view of von Kempelen, I tried to stick pretty close to the self-portrait, but I confess I was also swayed by this handsome, evocative bust by sculptor Béla S. Hegyi. There are a couple other sculptures of von Kempelen, one at the
Farkas Kempelen General School in Heves, and another by sculptor Marton László, fittingly displayed in the Várszínház (Castle Theatre) in Budapest. His image also appears on commemorative medals, postage stamps and coins. I'm pretty pleased with my own depiction of him, though the curve of his nose seems to have gotten a bit out of control on recent pages. I'll probably have to rein that in when I go back and do art redactions.

In other news, there's apparently a play involving Kempelen, Maelzel and the automaton going on right now in New York City, called The Mechanical. Looks pretty interesting, so if you're anywhere near the Theatre for the New City, go check it out and let me know what you think.

Panel 1: The Castle Theatre still stands today, and is currently the home of Budapest's National Dance Theatre. Also, by this time, von Kempelen had seen two of his own plays, The Magic Book (1767) and Perseus and Andromeda (1781) performed in Pressburg and Vienna, respectively.

Panel 2: Joseph II granted von Kempelen a privilege on his "steam and fire engines," which were used to drive mills and other machinery.

Panel 3: von Kempelen's book on the synthesis of human speech, published in both German and French, is considered his masterwork, and collects twenty-two years of his research into phonetics, speech formation, and the construction of his speaking machine -- more on that subject in a couple of weeks.

Panel 4: Hm. Anthon looks a bit sly in that last frame. I wonder what he's up to.

Lastly -- this page marks Clockwork Game's one-year anniversary. No foolin'! Thanks to everyone who's stuck around this long.

And there's Gyorgy again, last seen way back in September of our time, and eleven years ago in narrative time. I've always figured he was Anthon's bigger, stronger cousin.

Here's another minor deviation from history: the automaton was actually stored at Schönbrunn Palace, not at von Kempelen's home, but you'll see why I made that change in next week's page. All for the storytelling.

1) The automaton became so successful that von Kempelen had to move to larger exhibition space in London (actually, that's where Thicknesse saw it perform; I fudged history a bit here). There were several other stops on the tour between London and Leipzig as well, including Carlsruhe, Frankfurt and Gotha.

2) The Leipzig Trade Fair, or Leipziger Messe, still takes place today, as it has for nearly a thousand years. There are some really gorgeous old images of the city over at Wikimedia Commons, including this one, which I really wanted to use, but couldn't find a way to get both von Kempelen and Anthon into view and still show all that detail. Also, I think it'd be highly unlikely that they'd be exhibiting the automaton outdoors -- I could be wrong, I've got no concrete evidence, but my impression is that von Kempelen would've chosen an indoor venue.

3) The device in the second panel is von Kempelen's speaking machine, which he usually exhibited side-by-side with the automaton (Johann Jacob Ebert called them "the two most remarkable curiosities of the last Michaelmas Fair.") You can get a better look at it in last week's page, sitting next to him on the desk as he reads Thicknesse's pamphlet. This is actually his third and most successful attempt at building a speaking machine -- and we'll be seeing a lot more of it in the upcoming pages, and I'll supply more links and trivia then.

4) I just love Anthon's wistful expression in that third panel. He knows too well that the glamorous roadtrip is almost over -- when he gets back to Pressburg, the most exciting thing he has to look forward to is lining up the silverware at dinnertime.

5) Take a good look at our old friend; this is the last time we'll see the automaton outside of its packing crates until the next chapter. Shame that it goes to its temporary rest with its costume all shabby and worn out.

In light of the overwhelming response from my readers, I've decided to keep the Clockwork Game archives online and run the remainder of the first chapter of the book. As things go along, I'll add links and additional information to the footnotes and bibliography to help make up for what I consider gaps in my storytelling. After that -- I'm still not sure, but after some very positive reviews from people whose opinions I trust, and a lot more heavy thinking, I'm reconsidering my stance on permanently ending the book. Let's call it a hiatus for now; the end of the first chapter's a good stopping point. In any event, I need to pull back and do a lot more reading and researching, then re-evaluate the first half of the book to see if it's something I can fix to better match the much darker tone of the second half.

It's not that I don't want to discuss the ugly parts of history, or cover them over. Just the opposite, in fact: the problem I have with the script is that I'm don't show enough of the ugliness of the time. I've unintentionally left issues unaddressed -- important issues -- like the fact that Kempelen was in charge of resettling areas of the Banat taken back from the Ottomans, that 18th century Europeans appropriated Turkish culture for both its stylishness and mysteriousness, and that the Austrian Empire was still at war with the Ottoman Empire, all of which undoubtedly contributed to Kempelen's decision to dress the automaton as he did. Painting it as "just an automaton" -- not presenting enough information about the cultural baggage surrounding its design in favor of a light story focusing only on man versus machine -- now seems disingenuous to me. That's the "framing within historical context" I've been talking about. I'm not sure if I can get enough of that information into the first half of the book as it stands now, at least not without redrawing huge chunks of it. I'm also not well-versed on these topics yet -- not enough to make changes to the script until I've had the chance to better inform myself and become more confident in my understanding of the political and social pressures at play -- and to get to that point, I've got to put the book on hold.

I also want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time and effort to comment or send email, with both positive and negative feedback. I had no idea that Clockwork Game had so many passionate, caring, intelligent readers -- it's meant so much to hear all your responses. Creating a webcomic is a high-wire act, and it's humbling to discover there are so many people holding the net below me.

*********

In other news, I have decided to end Clockwork Game.

After a solid month of deliberation, I've decided that my original intent doesn't actually match the story I've created. The problems I'm seeing are not fixable with a few changes to dialogue or action; it's a deeper, more fundamental issue with the overall tone of the story. I've been too focused on the nerdy parts of the story I enjoy, and in doing so, I've failed to take some very critical aspects of the story into proper consideration.

I'm not ending the book because of anything anyone's said to me, or because of a need I feel to "keep everyone happy". "You can't keep everyone happy" is a sentiment best reserved for minor issues like the difference between using algebraic instead of descriptive chess notation, not major considerations like accurately framing racial stereotypes within a historical context.

In the last month, I have read dozens of devastatingly honest posts from Readers of Color who've been hurt by White authors who didn't take the full implications of their stories into account, posts so eloquent and brave that I cannot help but be moved by them to examine my own work and ensure that it's worthy of these same readers, authors in their own right who've risked so much to put their opinions out in public.

My passion for comics cuts two ways -- I fiercely love the comics I make, but I'm also unwilling to publish and sell a work that I'm not completely willing to stand behind. While I am disappointed that I won't be completing the project, in the long run, I think I'll be much more comfortable with this decision. I can only hope that my readers will agree.

My last remaining concerns regard the end of the first chapter, and the archives. I have another fifteen or so pages left to run, and I still haven't decided whether or not I'll be releasing them, or keeping them online as an archive. On one hand, if I'm not willing to publish the work, I don't really have a reason to keep it online. On the other, if I complete the first half of the story, properly footnote it, and add the texts that properly discuss the automaton's Orientalism, it could be a good resource to keep up for reference, especially given the dearth of online information on the topic. I'll probably give myself another week or so to make a final decision.

I realize that every work is flawed, and that as creators, we learn as we go. I want this to be a learning experience -- I just don't want this learning to come at someone else's expense.

(comments on this entry are unfortunately closed due to overwhelming spam.)