(_Robert Houdin’s Improvement._)
Mr. Panky introduces to the audience his young friend, a puppet, arrayed
as the secretary to royalty, in an exquisite court dress of the time of
Louis XV., and removes him from a sideboard to his table set in front of
the audience, that they may see no deception is possible.
The mannikin has a little table before him, on which his hands rest, but
can be lifted up.
Mr. Panky furnishes him with paper and a pencil, and begs the audience
to suggest a subject for the exercise of his artistic skill.
The ladies’ voice is for a rose or a bird. The secretary moves his eyes,
bows, and at once sets to tracing before him an excellent picture of the
objects voted for.
He also writes down answers to questions, tells the time to a second,
the age of the inquirer, and all without the least vestige or sound of
hidden mechanism.
At the end, Mr. Panky takes the figure up bodily from his little chair,
and pops him into a hat, whence he mysteriously vanished.
_Explanation._—A pantograph is required, and upon that a preliminary
description is given.
Four rules are mounted as a square, so as to move freely on the nails D,
E, F, G; when the instrument is fastened on a table at the point C, and
a pin at B traces the lines of a picture, the pencil placed at A
duplicates the marks double that size. By shifting the slide attached to
the fixed point C and the slide carrying the pencil along their
respective arms, the proportion will be varied.
[Illustration: Fig. 155.]
A fixed arm from F to G would conduce to the steadiness and reliability
of the apparatus.
However, it suffices for Mr. Hanky Panky’s experiment.
The puppet seems to be completely isolated from any underhand
management, because it can be detached from its seat and the table; but
a real communication exists between its right arm and that of a
confederate in the room beneath.
When the automaton is in his seat, the needle A B is thrust up through
the floor, carpet, and table, E F, to enter the cylinder, C D, concealed
in the chair at the part of the pantograph B.
Then the part A B, hidden in the room below, forms one with the part C
D, within the figure, and the two united become the end of the
pantograph.
_Performance._—All the drawing done by the assistant unseen must be
repeated at the point K. Now, the pantograph being within the body of
the automaton, and setting its arm in motion, it seems as if it was
drawing of its own volition.
[Illustration: Fig. 156.]
_Observation._—The needle A B, and the cylinder C D, when in junction,
form a kind of lever with its fulcrum in the room below, and,
consequently, all the movements given to the point B are first repeated
in miniature at B of the pantograph in reverse, and then large at A.
[Illustration]