At the end of the 19th century an ingenious scientist named Algernon Conroy (1841-1899) was one of the biggest names in science. He was very well-read in the works of the classical scientists and was fascinated by the scientific advances of his own age. He worked with the group who were responsible for developing and improving Babbage's amazing Analytic Engine, which Conroy himself called "the greatest invention of all time." He also corresponded with inventors like Edison and Tesla, and always encouraged them to move "onward, ever onward! And don't look back!" He worked on the "land-ships" of Count Hollenhammer and the airships of Emmanuel Fredericks. It is often said that he was fascinated with the less mainstream sciences of men like Frankenstein and Nemo, but in reality his knowledge of their works went little beyond what he read in the papers and publications of the day.
After several decades of living at the forefront of science and participating in numerous breakthroughs and inventions, Dr. Conroy began to worry that he hadn't yet invented anything that could be considered entirely his own. He decided to create something that would secure his position in history, and settled on the most ambitious goal he could devise. Inspired by his work on Babbage's Analytic Engine and his research into Etienne-Jules Marey's amazing photographs of the workings of the human body, and encouraged by advances in science and physiology, he decided to build an artificial person. In order to celebrate the advances of the 19th century, he resolved to finish his invention before the new century began.
Years passed as he painstakingly built his creation, using tiny clockwork devices attached to a central steam engine. Powerful pistons worked the limbs as pneumatics and hydraulics imitated human motions and actions. The end of the century approached, but rather than be discouraged he was inspired by the ever more impressive advances in technology and its acceptance and integration into everyday life. He was confident also as he tested out his creation and saw it move its great mechanical arms and legs so similarly to how a person would. He even built small Analytic Engines into the hands and feet of his creation to allow them to compute fine movements, a feat that he was immensely proud of.
What was proving to be a problem was the artificial brain. The body itself had been complete for years but Dr. Conroy was still far from finishing the brain when despair finally started to catch up to him. He retained his belief that the Analytic Engine could duplicate the thought processes of a person, but he was forced to conclude that it would take far too long to build one and program it properly.
Just when he was about to give up hope, inspiration struck. So far he had merely attempted to duplicate the effects of human anatomy through mechanical means, but what if he could actually copy the anatomy itself? If he could somehow construct a way to duplicate the brain's fine machinations and translate them into an Analytic Machine, he'd have a perfect replica of the human brain.
The next few months were full of frenzied activity as Conroy built a fantastic machine that would take apart a human brain while simultaneously building an artificial brain. This new machine used an amazing system of electric, magnetic, and optical systems to go slowly through the brain tissue while transferring this information through a complex set of gears and machines to a machine that would painstakingly recreate the motions of the disassembling machine in reverse on an Analytic Engine, thus building a copy of the brain.
Early experiments were promising and several amazing computing devices were built from brains preserved for scientific study, but none of them could be activated to start controlling the body Conroy had made. Finally, the end of the century was a few weeks away and Dr. Conroy knew what he had to do. He needed to disassemble a fresh, living brain for use in his Automatic Man. He was horrified at the thought of capturing someone for his experiments, and he quickly abandoned any plans of finding condemned criminals to place into his machine. In the end he was left with only one option: to use his own brain to create the artificial one for his creation.
With the final preperations for the automatic transfer of the new artificial brain into the Automatic Man and the activation of the machine complete, Dr. Algernon Conroy completed his greatest achievment and ended his life on the final night of 1899. His fantastic machine slowly came to life after the newly formed Analytic Engine brain had been placed into it and a new Algernon Conroy looked around his old workplace through his optic-electric receptors. It slowly, gingerly walked around the room, its strange brain surprised and delighted at how light its limbs felt. The transfer machine was so exact that the doctor's very memories and personality had gone into the new brain, and thus it was the doctor who was soon running and jumping through the building, rejoicing in the youthful feeling of his artificial body.
His joy was reciprocated by his friends and fellow scientists who were delighted in the new Algernon Conroy. None of them treated him as a copy or a fake, but considered the new machine to be a continuation of Conroy's previous self. Thus Dr. Algernon Conroy went to his own funeral and inherited all his own property.
All good things must come to an end, however, and in a few short months the body began to break down, Conroy being as unable to fix the problems that were occuring as a surgeon is unable to operate on himself. His friends tried bravely to keep the machine together, but soon enough it ceased functioning.
The Automatic Man was kept by some of Conroy's closest friends for years, passed on to their families upon their deaths. Thus the amazing creation was consigned to attics and basements for decades, its delicate mechanical components gathering dust and rusting over.
Almost a hundred years after the death of Dr. Algernon Conroy, the Automatic Man was discovered by the Smithsonian Institution, which decided to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the machine's creation by restoring it and displaying it in time for the new milennium. For months the Smithsonian's experts worked on the machine, repairing and cleaning the numerous components piece by piece. Finally all was ready and the Automatic Man's engine was started up again for the first time in nearly a century. Thus, on September 12th, 1999, the mechanical Algernon Conroy stood up shakily and observed casually to the astonished lead scientist, "I thank you, my good man, for restoring me. Could you be so kind as to inform me of what year we are currently in?"
Since that day Conroy has lived what he considers the most amazing life imaginable. He sees the 21st century as a time of the realization of all of mankind's dreams. He is fascinated by modern technology and has learned to live in our day and age, though he still occasionally misses the Victorian sensibility of 19th century England. He can also be rather absentminded, since there is a limited amount of space within his artificial brain and he prefers to fill it with scientific information instead of such unimportant things as peoples' names and where he left his house keys. He spends a lot of time in laboratories and libraries, once again at the forefront of a dozen different sciences.
Despite his enthusiasm for modern technology, however, Conroy is constantly aghast at how dissolute modern society has become. For a Victorian gentleman scientist, the average person today is living in an age of wonder, with all the knowledge of the world accessible from any computer, and still content to waste away in front of a television, even more ignorant than the average person from Conroy's own time. Even more disturbing to Conroy is the prevalence of crime and violence in the world. With all the knowledge of the ages, we have become one of the most ignorant people in history. He believes that true progress and the realization of mankind's potential cannot be finally accomplished until we have learned to live in peace with our fellow man. He is therefore often seen using the amazing strength of his mechanical body to promote peace by stopping those who would threaten the world through their own ignorance and greed.
The Automatic Man is human-shaped, but it is not built exactly along the lines of a human. The whole thing stands about six and a half feet tall. Its head is a steel oval squashed into the vague shape of a human head. The surface of the face is only broken by two eye-slits cut into the face and a mouth where a system based on Wolfgang von Kempelen's speaking machine communicates in an aristocratic Victorian English accent. The upper arms and thighs are relatively thin and each composed of a steel beam support with exposed pistons next to it. The forearms and calves are thickened, however, by the lesser Analytic Engines housed therein for fine movement. Large hands and feet give him added stability when walking and a better grip on the things the machine holds. The torso is also larger than an ordinary human's, as it contains a steam engine. Over his shoudlers two exhaust ports constantly belch smoke from this engine. The whole machine is a mixture of black, grey and brown metal, with exposed clockwork in some parts of the arms, legs, necks and torso. Oil stains and rust spots make the Automatic Man look almost as old as it is. The machine is accompanied by the chorus of ticking, whirring, ratcheting, clanking, grinding, chugging, hissing and wheezing of its many systems.
An amazing machine in its own time, Dr. Algernon Conroy's Automatic Man continues to be one of the most amazing systems in the world a century later. And he wouldn't have it any other way.
Origins: If you think that the Automatic Man sounds like Government Property, you're right. He was conceived when I was trying to think of what certain characters of mine would be like in a Steampunk world. The original Steampunk GP was very much like the original: a government-made robot made from a dead soldier's brain. Unlike the original GP, this one would actually use the brain from the soldier since I couldn't think of any other way to make a Victorian robot think. The idea was abandoned until daydreaming about City of Heroes made me want to think of something original that nobody else would have thought up. As it turns out, however, clockwork creatures are already one of the villains in City of Heroes. Still, I liked the idea so I wrote it up.
By the way, I made up Count Hollenhammer and Emmanuel Fredericks as inventors of traditional steampunk vehicles such as steam-driven tanks and strange, elaborate airships. Nemo and Frankenstein are obviously made up, and Babbage never built his Analytical Engine, which really was an early computer. Everything else isbased on real Victorian science. And just for fun, I thought I'd add that many scientists of the time, including Edison, dreamed of making perfect replicas of humans (and a few even claimed to have done so.) Wouldn't it be cool if one of them had succeeded?