Paging Steampunk: This is Marie-Antoinette’s Dulcimer-Playing Andriod

And if you’re not simply blown away by the mechanical fact that somebody put this together in 1785, we invite you to be fascinated by the fact that the automaton is, in fact, actually playing the dulcimer with its hammers, not miming the playing while another mechanism; or by the idea that there was a time when our definition of “science” and “art” had much more overlap than they do now; or by the idea that the figure may have been made with some of Marie-Antoinette’s actual hair.

(via How to be a Retronaut.)