In 1902 George Méliès produced his film Le Voyage dans la Lune, which introduced the famous image of the face of the full moon hit in the eye by an explorers' rocket. With one eye shut and the tongue sticking out, this automaton bears a strong similarity to the image from the film and recalls French fascination with the moon at the end of the 19th Century.

A pioneer of early cinema, Méliès made his own camera from a Robert Paul projector after the Lumière brothers reputedly refused to sell him their Cinématographe in 1896. He was one of the first commercially successful film-makers and important for the way he introduced the concept of cinema as public entertainment. His early films formed part of music hall performances, which also included magic and automata as stage props. One of his early theatrical personae was Mephisto (immortalised in La Manoir du Diable) - perhaps the inspiration for Lambert's Mephistopheles automaton. Another famous act with a counterpoint in the world of automata was Les Farces de la Lune (at the Theatre Robert Houdin) in 1891, Méliès' interpretation of a favourite image, the girl reclining on the tip of a crescent moon.

Houdin himself was renowned for combining magic, horology and automata, and Méliès' association with Houdin gives us a clue to his own fascination with the subject. La Voyage dans la Lune cost its maker around 10,000F - a large sum in the early days of cinema - principally due to the cost of the machinery and the cardboard and cloth used to create the scenery. Méliès frequently used automata in both his stage performances and film, and it seems likely that the striking images he produced inspired the French automata makers to an equal degree.

See front cover.