Get smart curated videos delivered to your inbox.   SUBSCRIBE
The Kid Should See This

An Automaton of Marie Antoinette, The Dulcimer Player

Watch more with these video collections:

From the 2012 exhibition Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, take a closer look at a unique piece of automata: David Roentgen’s Automaton of Queen Marie Antoinette, The Dulcimer Player (La Joueuse de Tympanon).

David Roentgen (1743–1807) took his royal patron by surprise when he delivered this beautiful automaton to King Louis XVI for his queen, Marie Antoinette, in 1784. The cabinetry for this piece is very much a neoclassical masterwork, and the mechanism behind it is truly extraordinary: the figure strikes the strings in perfect rhythm with two small metal hammers held in her hands, which move with great precision.

From the same exhibit at The Met: Extravagant furniture with secret panels, doors, and drawers.

There’s more automata on this site, including The Writer, automata by Pierre Jaquet-Droz and Mechanical singing bird box automata of the 1700s.

Plus: How does a music box work?

This Webby award-winning video collection exists to help teachers, librarians, and families spark kid wonder and curiosity. TKSST features smarter, more meaningful content than what's usually served up by YouTube's algorithms, and amplifies the creators who make that content.

Curated, kid-friendly, independently-published. Support this mission by becoming a sustaining member today.

🌈 Watch these videos next...

Walking mechanical woman and man

Rion Nakaya

The Writer, a drawing machine automaton by Pierre Jaquet-Droz

Rion Nakaya

The Silver Swan, an 18th century automaton at the Bowes Museum

Rion Nakaya

The playful wonderland behind great inventions

Rion Nakaya

The Peacock Clock at The State Hermitage Museum

Rion Nakaya

The Müpa Budapest Sound Machine, the world’s largest music box

Rion Nakaya

The Jules Verne-Themed Sanderson Orrery

Rion Nakaya

Tantalus Mackerel and a School of Fish automata

Rion Nakaya