Robert-Houdin described this as "a piece of artifice I would happily have incorporated in a conjuring trick". When the stage magician and automaton builder Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin examined the duck in 1844, he found that Vaucanson had faked the mechanism, and the duck's excreta consisted of pre-prepared breadcrumb pellets, dyed green. Vaucanson described the duck's interior as containing a small "chemical laboratory" capable of breaking down the grain. As well as quacking and muddling water with its bill, it appeared capable of drinking water, and of taking food from its operator's hand, swallowing it with a gulping action and excreting what appeared to be a digested version of it. The automaton was the size of a living duck, and was cased in gold-plated copper. Operation An American artist's (mistaken) drawing of how the Digesting Duck may have worked The duck is thought to have been destroyed in a fire at a museum in 1879. Voltaire wrote in 1769 that "sans la voix de la le Maure, & le canard de Vaucanson, vous n'auriez rien qui fit ressouvenir de la gloire de la France." ('Without the voice of le Maure and Vaucanson's duck, you would have nothing to remind you of the glory of France.') While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this-the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces were "produced" from a second, so that no actual digestion took place-Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson and unveiled on in France. Three of Vaucanson's automata: the Flute Player, the Digesting Duck and the Tambourine Player
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