At this time his work attracted the attention of Lord Keith, Governor of Neuchâtel, then a province of Prussia, who induced the young inventor to visit the court of Ferdinand VI. of Spain, providing the necessary introductions. Pierre Jacquet-Droz remained for some time in Madrid and made a clock of most complicated pattern. This was a perpetual calendar. For hands, he utilized artificial sunbeams, shooting out from the sun's face which formed the dial, to denote the hours, days, etc. With the money received from the Spanish monarch he returned to Switzerland to find that his son, Henri-Louis, had inherited his remarkable inventive gifts. He sent his boy to Nancy to study music, drawing, mechanics, and physics. During his son's absence in all probability he produced the first of the marvellous automata which made the Jacquet-Drozes famous the modern world over, namely, the writing figure. With the return of Henri-Louis Jacquet-Droz from college commenced what may be termed the golden age of mechanics in Switzerland. Associated with father and son were the former's pupils or apprentices, Jean-Frédéric Leschot, Jean-David Maillardet, and Jean Pierre Droz, a blood relation who afterward became director of the mint at Paris and a mechanician of rare talent. Jean Pierre Droz is credited with having invented a machine for cutting, stamping, and embossing medals on the face and on the edges at one insertion. [Illustration: Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Born 1747, died 1824. Portrait published by Société des Arts de Genève. Presented to the author by Mons. Blind (Magicus) of Geneva.] The output of this shop and its staff of gifted workers included the first Swiss music box, the singing birds which sprang from watches and jewel caskets, the drawing figure which was an improvement on the writing figure, the spinet player, and the grotto with its many automatic animals of diminutive size but exquisite workmanship. Years were spent in perfecting the various automata, and none of them have been equalled or even approached by later mechanicians and inventors. Henri-Louis Jacquet-Droz was conceded to be the superior of his father, Pierre Jacquet-Droz. In a German encyclopædia which I found at the King's Library, Munich, it is stated that when Vaucanson, celebrated as the inventor of "The Flute Player," "The Mechanical Duck," "The Talking Machine," etc., saw the work of the younger Droz, he cried loudly, "Why, that boy commences where I left off!" According to the brochure issued by the Society of History and Archæology, Canton of Neuchâtel, and an article contributed by Dr. Alfred Gradenwits to _The Scientific American_ of June 22d, 1907, the writing and drawing figures are made and operated as follows: [Illustration: The Jacquet-Droz writing automaton. From the brochure issued by the Society of History and Archæology, Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.]