From the time of Hero I have found nothing worth recording for nearly a thousand years, until the time of Charlemagne, to which monarch was presented by the Kalif Haroun al Raschid a most elaborate water clock. In front of the dial, and corresponding to the hours, were twelve little doors, and the time was shown by these doors opening one after another, each releasing a little brass ball which fell upon a small bell; after all the hours had struck, that is, at noon, another door opened, twelve little knights rode out, and, after careering round the dial, they closed the doors and retired. The eminent mechanician Gerbert who occupied the papal chair in A.D. 1000, reigning under the name of Silvester II., is said to have constructed a speaking head of brass, and was in consequence arrested for practising magic, and Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century, spent, according to his own account, thirty years in the construction of an automaton of clay which not only spoke but walked and answered questions and solved problems submitted to it. It is recorded that his pupil, the celebrated St. Thomas Aquinas was so horrified when he saw and heard this figure that (believing it to be the work of his Satanic Majesty), he broke it into pieces, when Albertus cried aloud: “Sic periit opus triginta annorum.” I deeply regret this mischievous act of St. Thomas Aquinas, because it renders it impossible for me to show it to the Brethren and our guests this evening. Roger Bacon also is said to have made a similar automaton. Records of speaking androides or talking heads reach us from very early times. At Lesbos there was a head of Orpheus which delivered oracles and predicted to Cyrus his violent death, and we have it on the authority of Philostratus that the head was so celebrated for its oracular utterances, among both the Greeks and the Persians that even Apollo became jealous of its fame. Then again the mighty Odin had among his mystical possessions a speaking head, believed to be that of Minos, which Odin preserved by encasing it in solid gold. He is said to have consulted it on all occasions, and its utterances were regarded as oracles. Mention might here be made of the colossal figure of Amunoph III. on the plain of Thebes, and which is commonly known as the “vocal Memnon,” of which a photograph is now before you; it is the more eastern of the two Colossi, and, when the first rays of the morning sun fell on it, it emitted a sound which has been described as similar to that of the snapping of a harp string, but it has been silent since the time of Severus. It is a seated figure nearly sixty feet in height, and is in no sense an automaton, but I mention it here because it was believed to utter sentences which the ancient priests of Egypt alone, for the very best of reasons, knew how to interpret.