John Joseph Merlin

Life

Jean-Joseph Merlin was born on 6 September 1735, in Huy, in what was then the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and is now in Belgium, Wallonia. His parents were blacksmith Maximilien Joseph Merlin and his wife Marie-Anne Levasseur. A broadsheet obituary and later sources give his birthdate incorrectly as 17 September 1735.

Merlin's parents had married in 1732. From ages 19 to 25, Merlin lived in Paris, where he was involved in the Paris Academy of Sciences. As of 1763, Jérôme Lalande recorded that Merlin had helped to complete a large barrel organ which was built for the Princess of Wales. As Cox's chief mechanician, Merlin worked with him to create pieces such as Cox's barometric clock (before 1768 ) and the Silver Swan (1773

Horace Walpole referred to the sort of creations displayed by Cox and Merlin as "scientific toys". Samuel Johnson asserts the underlying importance of such efforts, writing of a visit to Cox's Museum in 1772:

By 1773, Merlin was also actively designing and making keyboard instruments. Merlin also experimented with violins and violas. and around 1774 Johann Christian Fischer was painted by Gainsborough standing next to one of Merlin's pianos. Thomas Gainsborough painted Merlin himself in 1781, holding a pocket beam balance which he had invented.

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

"He is a great favourite in our house...He is very diverting also in conversation. There is a singular simplicity in his manners. He speaks his opinion upon all subjects and about all persons with the most undisguised freedom. He does not, though a foreigner, want words; but he arranges and pronounces them very comically. He is humbly grateful for all civilities that are shown him; but is warmly and honestly resentful for the least slight." He took advantage of balls and masquerades to promote himself, appearing in public in odd costumes and showing off his inventions. The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser of 4 March 1778 declared "Mr. Merlin, the mechanic" to be the most striking Character of the 900 people attending a masquerade ball at the Pantheon.

Around 1785, Merlin unsuccessfully proposed the construction of an elaborate "Necromantic Cave", in which he would take on the persona of Ambrosius Merlin to entertain visitors with musical instruments and mechanical automata, alternating darkness and light in ways that may have related to aesthetic ideas of the Sublime. In November 1787, Merlin either moved or expanded to 11 Princes Street. Merlin also created a wide variety of mechanical clocks. One of the most notable was Cox's timepiece, which was powered by changes in atmospheric pressure. Another of Merlin's timepieces is the Merlin Band Clock.

Merlin also developed musical instruments. A pianoforte with a six-octave span, which 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 a barrel-organ/harpsichord which played nineteen tunes. a prosthetic device for "a person born with stumps only", One of Merlin's automatons, a dancer with an automated bird, was bought at the auction by Charles Babbage for 35 pounds. He had seen it as a child at Merlin's Mechanical Museum.