Interesting automated model ship from 1585.

What does the automation do?  Were there clock hands originally on it somewhere?  Do the figures move?  Did it sound bell at times?

Apologies if the writing in the last picture on the plaque is to small, all the information I know is on there. I will type it out here as it answers most of those:

Automaton in the form of a ship, about 1585-

This spectacular machine. in the form of a medieval galleon, was intended to announce banquets at court. The entertainment began with music from a miniature organ inside the hull. drumming and a procession. Afterwards, the ship would travel across the table. When it stopped, as a grand finale, the front cannon would automatically fire, lighting a fuse that would fire the other guns.

By Hans Schlottheim, Augsburg. Germany

Also the clock hands are at the base of the main mast and the figures did not look like they would move.

Hello :

    Remember this though . Many of the royals everywhere were absolutely fascinated by the things done for the Royalty of France over the years . Maybe , the King ( or Queen ) decided they wanted something like that and whoever did it got a nice reward in turn . Who knows ?

I think automatons are incredibly fascinating.

Neat!  I have always maintained that model ships are the oldest genre of modeling, and historic models like this strengthen my assertion.

I suppose there's room for argument about just what the word "model" means. (Is a miniature carving of a human being, or an animal, a model?) In the sense that a model is a miniature reproduction of an object, though, I think Don's right. I can't think of any that are older than the boat models of the ancient Egyptians. Maybe somebody's aware of an older model of a building or something, but I'm not. Maybe in China?

Interesting subject for contemplation.

Even for accurate scale representations, there were the bone prisoner models and the Admiralty models, Eighteenth and Nineteenth century models.  Airplanes and Cars came along later. I suppose folks may have made models of cannons, but never saw a picture of an old artillery model.

That would be an interesting subject to build a model of!

I'm a bit of a trivia geek.

Most replicated model of a ship?

The Battleship in "Monopoly".

Over 200 million sets sold.

I love trivia GMorrison - that's a great piece to keep under my hat!

For aircraft models, I wonder how many of those paper P-40s and Zeros were sent out as premiums from Cheerios?  I'll be a super bunch (they were paper/card models- just print them on a piece of card stock).