Mechanical doll, “The Wonderful Creeping Baby”: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

With the turn of a key, this doll appears to crawl along a flat surface. Inside the doll’s body is a spring-driven brass mechanical movement that actuates the arms and legs in imitation of crawling. But the doll actually rolls along on two concealed wheels.

Its date and place of manufacture are not known with certainty. The doll was based on two patents: No. 112,550 granted 14 March 1871 to Robert J. Clay of New York, N.Y.; and No. 118,435 granted 29 August 1871 to Clay’s associate George Pemberton Clarke. Clay’s firm, the Automatic Toy Company, was founded about 1870 and purchased by Edward Ives in 1874. With his brother-in-law Cornelius Blakeslee, Ives established a business for making clockwork toys in Bridgeport, Conn., that operated from 1872 to 1932.

The patent model for Clarke’s invention is also in the Smithsonian collections (catalog number 1984.0923.01).

This mechanical toy is part of a fascinating continuum of figures built to imitate human life. This long Western tradition stretches from ancient Greece through the mechanical automatons of the Enlightenment, through wind-up toys to contemporary robots and other machines with artificial intelligence.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: ca 1900
• Object Name: automaton
• Object Name: doll
• Physical Description: metal (doll material)
• Physical Description: muslin (doll material)
• Physical Description: wax (doll material)
• Physical Description: pine (box material)
• Measurements: automaton: 11 in; 27.94 cm
• ID Number: 2011.0204.01a
• accession number: 2011.0204
• catalog number: 2011.0204.01a
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.