A WONDERFUL ANDROID.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 5997, 5 February 1881, Page 7

A WONDERFUL ANDROID.

The London Times supplies the following curious facts respecting a remarkable automaton figure exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, and constructed by Mr. J. X. Maskelyne :— " Psycho, who has just ceased to appear on the stage of the Egyptian Hall, is no ordinary automaton. He is something more than a piece of mechanism cleverly imitating the movements of a living creature. A great secret lies locked up in the wooden case to which we suppose the figure has now been consigned, for our advertising columns, in announcing his farewell, contained the statement of Messrs Maskelyne and Cooke that a reward of £2000 for a true imitation of the android and his feats of apparent intelligence has remained open to challenge for two years, vet has never been claimed, the inference being that the secret influence by which the automaton operates has never been discovered or that no subtle inventer who may possibly have lighted upon the general principle has succeeded in making it work in the same way. Now, such an ordeal, submitted to public examination thousands of times during more than four years, immeasurably surpasses that which Kempelen's renowned chess-player, Vauconson's flute-player, or any other mechanical mystery or the kind bad to go through. The mystery of Psycho's isolation and yet prompt obedience to some external control, and this in a multitude of complicated effects, has baffled not only hundreds of thousands of ordinary intellect, and common acquaintances with the dexterities of wizards, but also the instructed powers of observation of professors of natural science familiar with the most intricate and delicate experimental apparatus ; and, indeed, it does not appear that Physco is, like most other inventions of the class, a secret known among the conjuring profession. It is even said that the operator wlio directs the movements of Psycho does not understand the details of the working parts, and could not instruct any other person to make another Psycho. We believe that this is the only one of Mr. Maskelyne's inventions in which the principle was suggested by another inventor. The remarkable peculiarity in this principle, which, we are informed, was certainly never before employed in working apparatus, is that it can be manipulated in such a variety of ways that whatever theory of Psycho's action may be advanced, the automaton can be exhibited in such a manner as to show the theory is e ;-yoneous."