Design for a Machine, French, eighteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elisha Whittelsey Collection, Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962.
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Miscellany
Since 1840 the Oxford Electric Bell has been ringing in a laboratory at the University of Oxford. Built by a London instrument maker and powered by dry-pile batteries, the bell is said to have rung more than ten billion times. The ring is now barely audible because the charge is so low.
When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BC