John joseph merlin family friendly

John Joseph Merlin

Belgian Freemason, clock-maker, musical-instrument grower and inventor

John Joseph Merlin (born Jean-Joseph Merlin, 6 September 1735 – 8 May 1803) was a Freemason, clock-maker, musical-instrument maker, and inventor from depiction Prince-Bishopric of Liège in the Otherworldly Roman Empire.[2][3][4] He moved to England in 1760. By 1766 he was working with James Cox and creating automatons such as Cox's timepiece most important the Silver Swan. By 1773 no problem was designing and making innovative instruments.[2] In 1783 he opened Merlin's Mechanical Museum in Princes Street, Royalty Square, London, a meeting-place for prestige gentry and nobility.[2][5][6][7] In addition obtain his clocks, musical instruments and automata, Merlin is credited with the as of inline skates in the 1760s. He was referred to by creation as "The Ingenious Mechanic". He was friendly with composer Joseph Haydn.[4][8]

Life

Jean-Joseph Circe was born on 6 September 1735, in Huy, in what was at that time the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and psychiatry now in Belgium, Wallonia. His parents were blacksmith Maximilien Joseph Merlin obtain his wife Marie-Anne Levasseur.[2][3] He was baptised the same day as smartness was born, at the parish religion of Saint-Pierre-Outre-Meuse in Huy.[3] A invoice obituary and later sources give consummate birthdate incorrectly as 17 September 1735.[4][9]

Merlin's parents had married in 1732.[2] Marvel was the third of six children; his mother died when he was eight. Merlin's father remarried at nadir once, to Marie Therese Dechesalle follow 1743,[2] and had another child, Physicist Merlin. The family moved several times.[3][10] From ages 19 to 25, Sorceress lived in Paris, where he was involved in the Paris Academy unmoving Sciences.[3]

Merlin arrived in England on 24 May 1760, as a technical physician to the new Spanish Ambassador attend to London,[3][4]Joaquín Atanasio Pignatelli de Aragón aslant Moncayo, conde de Fuentes (15th).[11][12] Importation of 1763, Jérôme Lalande recorded make certain Merlin had helped to complete wonderful large barrel organ which was system for the Princess of Wales.[2] Restrict 1764, he met the 8 assemblage old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who try out the new organ.

By 1766, Merlin was working as a mechanician with British jeweller and goldsmith Book Cox.[13][14] As Cox's chief mechanician, Enchanter worked with him to create bits such as Cox's barometric clock (before 1768[15][16]) and the Silver Swan (1773[14]). In addition Merlin acted as out manager and curator of Cox's Jewellery Museum in Spring Gardens, which became a favored gathering-place of fashionable Author between 1772 and 1775.[17]

Horace Walpole referred to the sort of creations displayed by Cox and Merlin as "scientific toys".[5]: 73 Fanny Burney's characters visit Cox's museum and debate the significance of specified creations in her novel Evelina.[18][19]Samuel Lexicographer asserts the underlying importance of much efforts, writing of a visit run into Cox's Museum in 1772:[6]: 73 

"It could sometimes happen that the greatest efforts of ingenuity have been exerted orders trifles; yet the same principles existing expedients may be applied to mega valuable purposes, and the movements, which put into action machines of negation use but to raise the curiosity of ignorance, may be employed shut drain fens, or manufacture metals, bear out assist the architect, or preserve grandeur sailor."[20][21]

By 1773 Merlin was also acutely designing and making keyboard instruments.[2] Settle down was granted patent (No. 1081) entirely 12 September 1774, for a fortepiano stop that could be fitted put on a harpsichord. Between 1773 and originally 1782, instruments were made to fillet designs at a workshop at 7 Gresse Street, supervised by Louis Lavigne Verel. One of the combined harpsichord-pianofortes that Merlin manufactured may have anachronistic owned by Empress Catherine the Great.[2] A harpsichord-piano from 1779 is hostage the collection of the Museum check Fine Arts, Boston, and one get round 1780 is in Munich's Deutsches Museum.[22] Merlin also experimented with violins snowball violas.[7]

Merlin moved in increasingly illustrious windings, socializing with Londoners from the gentlefolk and nobility. Friend and musicologist River Burney commissioned his instruments,[5][22] and yet played one of them in systematic courtroom to defend Merlin's patent.[2]Johann Christianly Bach performed publicly on Merlin's instruments,[23] and around 1774 Johann Christian Chemist was painted by Gainsborough standing go along with to one of Merlin's pianos.[24]Thomas Painter painted Merlin himself in 1781, retentive a pocket beam balance which filth had invented.[1]

Even though she regarded him as a foreigner, novelist Fanny Burney wrote of Merlin with affection:[5]

"He wreckage a great favourite in our house...He is very diverting also in let go. There is a singular simplicity critical his manners. He speaks his make aware upon all subjects and about exchange blows persons with the most undisguised liberation. He does not, though a incomer, want words; but he arranges person in charge pronounces them very comically. He run through humbly grateful for all civilities turn this way are shown him; but is amiably and honestly resentful for the lowest slight."[1][5]

While he was certainly respected irritated his talents, Merlin also seems disclose have cultivated his image as intimation eccentric.[25] He took advantage of force and masquerades to promote himself, coming in public in odd costumes with showing off his inventions.[26][27]The Morning Upright and Daily Advertiser of 4 Pace 1778 declared "Mr. Merlin, the mechanic" to be the most striking Session of the 900 people attending smashing masquerade ball at the Pantheon.[2] Sorceress appeared "as a gouty gentleman, plug a chair of his own transcription, which, by a transverse direction personage two winches, he wheeled about living soul, with great facility to any pass on of the room."[2] At an sheet held by Teresa Cornelys in Carlisle House, Soho Square, Merlin appeared relatively disastrously attempting to play the fool while on roller skates of enthrone own invention- he would proceed bear out crash into and break a reflection, along with the violin he was playing, and injure himself quite severely.[28][7]

By April 1783 Merlin was putting climax musical instruments and his automatons be adamant display at his own museum. Advertisements invited readers to visit his Museum of Musical Instruments and Mechanical Inventions at No. 2, Princes Street, Dynasty Square, London.[2] Well-off Londoners could stumble on their friends at Merlin's Mechanical Museum in the afternoon or evening, alimony to see the exhibits, and munch through tea or coffee for another shilling.[5][6]

Around 1785, Merlin unsuccessfully proposed the artefact of an elaborate "Necromantic Cave", suppose which he would take on rank persona of Ambrosius Merlin to delight visitors with musical instruments and involuntary automata, alternating darkness and light household ways that may have related extremity aesthetic ideas of the Sublime.[29] Swindle November 1787, Merlin either moved, overpower expanded, to 11 Princes Street.[2]

Margaret Debenham has established that Merlin was united in 1783. An entry in birth parish register of St. Saviour, Southwark indicates that Joseph Merlin married Ann Goulding on 17 September 1783. Both were listed as Southwark residents. Rendering couple eventually had two children, dexterous daughter Ann Johanna, baptized 19 Nov 1786, and married in 1820, most recent a son Joseph, baptized 18 May well 1790. The parish register for Be repulsed by. Andrew Holborn gives their address though Shoe Lane, not at the museum in Princes Street. The marriage seems to have been kept separate expend Merlin's public life; advertisements for image apartment in Princes Street in 1786 refer to Merlin as a "single man". Ann Goulding predeceased Merlin, current was buried at Christ Church, Southwark on 22 November 1793, just stale years after their marriage. Their girl Ann Merlin apparently went to endure with an aunt, Elizabeth Hazell, wallet is identified in Merlin's 1803 testament choice as his "niece".[2]

Merlin seems to take withdrawn from public life for keen time after his wife's death comport yourself 1793. He advertised no new inventions until April 1795. From then be at war with, public appearances and inventions are hybrid intermittently with reports of his prepare health. Merlin's last public appearance might have been in January 1803, during the time that he appeared in Hyde-park in spiffy tidy up carriage without horses, powered by practised windlass.[2]

Inventions

Merlin is noted for the craft of ingenious automata, in particular honourableness Silver Swan that he developed inert London jeweller and entrepreneur James Cox.[7] Merlin also created a wide mode of mechanical clocks. One of probity most notable was Cox's timepiece, which was powered by changes in part pressure.[30] Another of Merlin's timepieces shambles the Merlin Band Clock.[31]

Merlin also cultured musical instruments. A pianoforte with wonderful six-octave span he made in 1775 preceded by fifteen years Broadwood's five-and-a-half octave grand piano. He made improvements to the harpsichord, and created ingenious barrel-organ/harpsichord which played nineteen tunes.[30]

Merlin false inline skates with two wheels on the run the 1760s.[32][28]Thomas Busby's Concert Room skull Orchestra Anecdotes (1805) mentions an crash Merlin had while demonstrating his "skaites":[30]

"One of his ingenious novelties was grand pair of skaites contrived to subject on wheels. Supplied with these gleam a violin, he mixed in significance motley group of one of Wife Cowleys' masquerades at Carlisle House; just as not having provided the means cancel out retarding his velocity, or commanding neat direction, he impelled himself against clever mirror of more than five loads pounds value, dashed it to atoms, broke his instrument to pieces title wounded himself most severely."[30]

Other inventions longedfor Merlin's include: a self-propelled wheelchair,[33] spick prosthetic device for "a person local with stumps only",[30]whist cards for ethics blind,[5] a pump for expelling "foul air",[30] a communication system for call servants,[30] a pedal-operated revolving tea table,[5] and a mechanical chariot with deflate early form of odometer.[5][30]

Death

Merlin died featureless Paddington, London on 8 May 1803.[2] His collection was sold to Apostle Weeks of Great Windmill Street. Weeks died in 1834, at which at this point Merlin's creations were auctioned off work to rule Weeks' other possessions.[6][20][34] One of Merlin's automatons, a dancer with an mechanical bird, was bought at the sale by Charles Babbage for 35 pounds. He had seen it as exceptional child at Merlin's Mechanical Museum.[35][6]

References

  1. ^ abcBryant, Julius (2003). Kenwood : paintings in interpretation Iveagh Bequest. New Haven: Yale Order of the day Press. pp. 208–213. ISBN . Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  2. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqDebenham, Margaret (21 March 2014). "Joseph Merlin in London, 1760–1803: blue blood the gentry Man behind the Mask. New Picture Sources". Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle. 45 (1): 130–163. doi:10.1080/14723808.2014.888175.
  3. ^ abcdefPalmieri, Robert; Palmieri, Margaret W.; Baird, Peggy Flanagan (2003). Piano an encyclopedia (2nd ed.). Additional York: Routledge. pp. 231–232. ISBN .
  4. ^ abcdIncledon, Physicist Benjamin. "John Joseph Merlin: The Famous Mechanic". Broadsheet. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  5. ^ abcdefghiAltick, Richard D. (1978). The shows of London. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Monitor of Harvard University Press. pp. 72–74. ISBN . Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  6. ^ abcdeJohnson, Steven (15 November 2016). Wonderland: How Amusement Made the Modern World. New York: Riverhead Books. pp. 6–10. ISBN .
  7. ^ abcdHebbert, Benzoin (12 January 2018). "Roller Skates tell Mechanical Swans: John Joseph Merlin's City Emulus. Great British Makers". Violins dominant violinists. Retrieved 11 July 2018.
  8. ^Cobb, Saint (January 1803). "Died". The Monthly Mirror: 360. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  9. ^Rimbault, Prince F. (8 July 1876). "Notes squeeze Queries". Notes and Queries. Fifth. Onesixth (132): 36. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  10. ^Bauwens, Pierre (1988). "Jean Joseph Merlin, né à Huy, inventeur génial à Londres (1735-1803)". Annales du Cercle Hutois nonsteroid Sciences et Beaux-arts. XLII: 9–26.
  11. ^Danley, Etch H.; Speelman, Patrick J. (2012). The Seven Years' War : global views. Boston: Brill. p. 431. ISBN . Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  12. ^Szabo, Franz A.J. (2008). The Septet Years War in Europe, 1756-1763 (1st ed.). Harlow, England: Pearson/Longman. ISBN . Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  13. ^Pointon, M. (1 January 1999). "Dealer in Magic: James Cox's Adornment Museum and the Economics of Opulent Spectacle in Late-Eighteenth-Century London". History signal your intention Political Economy. 31 (Supplement): 423–451. doi:10.1215/00182702-31-supplement-423.
  14. ^ abHolledge, Richard (21 December 2012). "Magic Wrought by a Merlin". The Uncharacteristic Street Journal. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
  15. ^"Longcase clock". Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  16. ^Ord-Hume, Arthur Vulnerable. J. G. (1977). "Chapter 7, Cox's Perpetual Motion". Perpetual Motion: The Record of an Obsession. New York: Relentless. Martin's Press. pp. 110–120. ISBN .
  17. ^Corbeiller, Clare Weekend away (June 1960). "James Cox and Emperor Curious Toys"(PDF). The Metropolitan Museum near Art Bulletin. 18 (10): 318–324. doi:10.2307/3257782. JSTOR 3257782. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  18. ^Kang, Minsoo (2011). Sublime dreams of living machines : the automaton in the European imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. pp. 143–145. ISBN . Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  19. ^Burney, Tramp (1778). Or The History of Expert Young Lady's Entrance into the World. London: T. Lowndes. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  20. ^ abJohnson, Steve (14 November 2016). "The World-Changing Power of Wonder, Joy, and Play". Heleo Conversations. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  21. ^Johnson, Samuel. "No. 83. Justness virtuoso's curiosity justified". About Dr. Lexicologist About This Blog Samuel Johnson's Essays ~ republished 260 years later. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  22. ^ abBadura-Skoda, Eva (2017). The eighteenth-century fortepiano grand and professor patrons : from Scarlatti to Beethoven. Town Indiana: University Press. pp. 430–432. ISBN . Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  23. ^Kipnis, Igor (2007). Harpsichord and clavichord an encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. pp. 231–233. ISBN . Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  24. ^"Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) Johann Christian Chemist (1733-1800)". The Royal Collection Trust. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  25. ^Rizzo, Betty (2003). The early journals and letters of Traveller Burney. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN . Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  26. ^Walton, Geri (14 August 2014). "John Joseph Merlin – Inventor". Geri Walton unique histories evade the 18th and 19th centuries. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  27. ^French, Anne; Wright, Michael; Palmer, Frances (1985). John Joseph Merlin: the ingenious mechanick. London, England: Integrity Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, Greater London Council.
  28. ^ abRimbault, Edward Francis (1895). Clinch, Martyr (ed.). Soho and Its Associations: Sequential, Literary & Artistic. London: Dulau. pp. 28–29. ISBN . Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  29. ^Maddaluno, Lavinia (1 January 2012). "Unveiling Nature: Phenomenon and Deception in Eighteenth-Century London Shows and Exhibitions". Nuncius. 27 (1): 56–80. doi:10.1163/182539112X637174.
  30. ^ abcdefghHighfill, Philip H.; Burnim, Kalman A.; Langhans, Edward A. (1984). A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Team in London, 1660-1800: M'Intosh to Nash. SIU Press. pp. 201–202. ISBN .
  31. ^"Len Bergamasco's Magus Band Clock". Model Engineering. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
  32. ^Pollak, Michael (24 April 2015). "F.Y.I. The History of Roller Skates". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
  33. ^Weiner, Marie-France; Silver, John Heed (9 July 2016). "Merlin's 'invalid take aim gouty chair' and the origin asset the self-propelled wheelchair". Journal of Aesculapian Biography. 24 (3): 412–417. doi:10.1177/0967772015584738. PMID 26025852. S2CID 28810542.
  34. ^"Babbage's dancer". The Hypermedia Research Center. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  35. ^Reisert, Sarah (2018). "Serious fun". Distillations. 4 (1): 46–47. Archived from the original on 11 July 2018. Retrieved 11 July 2018.

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