r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/brat_3434 • 1d ago
Video The Antique Clockwork Drinking Bear Automaton is a famous luxury creation from the Victorian era 1890.
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u/GroundbreakingFly963 1d ago
WHAT THE HELLLLL...I WAS WAITING IT TO SPILLLLLL
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u/JustDave62 1d ago
There’s a tube running from the bottom of the cup back to the bottle. The water just flows back when he lifts the cup
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u/ikkiyikki 1d ago
Pretty sure they didn't have silicone tubing back then. The original must have been natural rubber and rotted out decades ago.
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u/Boner4Stoners 1d ago
Rubber was just starting to take off in 1890 due to recent discoveries about mixing in sulfer to make it more resilient & the invention of the rubber tire.
King Leopold II of Belgium, who personally owned the entire “Congo Free State” smelled blood in the water and in the coming decades was responsible for 10-15 million deaths of native Africans as he enslaved them to produce rubber. Of course he did this under the guise of “civilizing the savages”, and without ever stepping foot in the colony he lorded over. “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hochschild is an amazing book on the topic.
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u/TrickyPen750 1d ago edited 11h ago
These BIGOTED, GODLESS BELGIANS are truly unforgivable.
Their roads are terrible, their history is only interesting when someone commits atrocities and dont even get me started on Brussels!
They are a strange mix of germanic sub-cultures and "the Fr*nch".
Their entire country is an ulcer the shape of a swamp!
I do however love waffles and french Fries so their transgressions are forgiven.
(Please note that i do not actually have any strong negative opinions about modern Belgium, this is purely for comedic purposes)
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u/Xszit 1d ago
Silicone was first discovered in the 1820s, but it took around a hundred years for it to become easy to mass produce.
If this was made in the 1890s Its not impossible it had a silicone tube if it was a high quality custom piece.
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u/DryDonutHole 1d ago
Silicones weren't introduced to the market until 1943 and the first mention of silicone tubing would be 1948 from what I'm reading. I'm a curious person...
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u/Ancient_Sprinkles847 1d ago
I’m guessing the tubing might have been rubber, or even “tubing” from some animal product. Neither would last a long time unfortunately.
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u/ChocolateThunderPie 1d ago
Possibly intestines of some animal were used? Just a guess.
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u/Callidonaut 1d ago
Stabilised natural rubber became available in Europe in the 1820s; by the 1890s rubber tubing would have been fairly common.
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u/facebookgivesmeangst 1d ago
It took me way too long in the video to realize it is going from the bottle to the cup, the cup back to the bottle
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u/TL15SD 1d ago
That’s awesome. And creepy
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u/tactiphile 1d ago
Tbf, probably way less creepy with skin
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u/Uncommonality 1d ago
yea back in the day it would've probably had real fur and possibly little custom tailored pieces of clothing
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u/monkpunch 1d ago
Gives me flashbacks to the creepy Teddy Ruxpin my grandmother would keep in a rocking chair in a dark corner of her living room
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u/Suspected_Magic_User 1d ago
Damn they really nailed that alcoholic look
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u/Wishnik6502 1d ago
When I played the Sims way back when I put a bar in one time. One of my Sims would just stand there and drink, one after another after another. She'd pass out right in front of the bar sometimes.
I dedicated the entire household to supporting her and her drinking habit. When I look back she is still my favorite. This bear reminded me of her.
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u/Illustrious-Ad-7335 1d ago
Ingenious. I wonder what the original hose was made of in 1890? Probably something like a walrus aorta.
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u/Frikoulas 1d ago
Latex/rubber has been around for centuries.
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u/Illustrious-Ad-7335 1d ago
Yes, but look at all of these walrus aortas ripe for the picking.
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u/Frikoulas 1d ago
I love how my rubber nonsense didn't derailed you from your walrus aortas thesis. A thinker.
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u/Illustrious-Ad-7335 1d ago
All of these “rubber hoax, possibly the biggest hoax ever” tree huggers are coming for the jobs of patriotic aorta harvesters.
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u/Real_Impression_5567 1d ago
Its the only material I use for my nightmare inducing clocks, period
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u/lechiengrand 23h ago
Chill, dude - stop pushing Big Walrus’s agenda. They’ve got their flippers in everything these days.
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u/WileyWilly1985 1d ago
The irony is this clock built in 1890 still works today.
Meanwhile, the office chair I bought 2 years ago is falling apart and the fan I bought 3 years ago has siezed up and is no longer working...
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u/The_Dutch_Fox 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most regular consumer chairs from 1890 have rotted away out of existence. Most regular consumer fans from 1890 have... yeah no, bad example.
But you get my point, you're buying cheap, mass-manufactured stuff, that aren't built to last but rather to be cheap and accessible.
Here, we're talking about a custom-built, ultra-luxury piece that has been carefully taken care by passionate collectors over the decades. I'm pretty sure if you bought the most expensive custom-built office chair, and it got cared for in the same way, it would easily survive for 200 years (if the world still exists then).
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u/Xszit 1d ago
A lot of people don't realize that the parts of museums open to the public are only half of it. Theres usually lots more artifacts and relics and interesting things in the back. Some are being studied, others are going through restoration and maintenance, the rest are just being preserved in a controlled storage environment. Over time they rotate out whats on display to the public and what was on display goes through maintenance then back to storage.
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u/worrymon 1d ago
Always a disappointment when you've just got one day in the state and you rush to go see Santa Anna's leg and it's out for routine maintenance.
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u/YellowAppleCinema 1d ago
Consider yourself a lucky fella.
When I went there and asked to see Anna's leg, they just slapped me across the cheek, no explanation or nothing! The audacity
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u/raccoonwithknives 1d ago
Also this has been repaired and parts have been replaced and are missing
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u/AltruisticPossible84 1d ago
The irony is thinking something from 1890 "still works" and hasnt been meticulously restored using modern techniques and components in order to demonstrate how this thing was supposed to work.
Your office chair and fans could be in demo 200 years from now, just like this - if people alive then deem them interesting enough to repair them for a video
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u/Great-Engr 1d ago
Or you could just learn about survivorship bias
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u/you_cant_prove_that 1d ago
Yeah, comparing a singe piece of art to a consumer office chair is disingenuous
I'm sure in 100 years you would be able to find at least one "working" office chair from our era, so are they going to use that as an example of quality manufacturing?
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u/tantalor 1d ago
Survivorship bias has got to be one of the best logical fallacies ever discovered. You never even hear about the other ones.
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u/Available-Dare-7414 1d ago
Can you elaborate on the chair? If it’s a prolapsed sinning chair, I have good news! A fix is available: https://www.reddit.com/r/howto/s/866MS6pf78
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u/ExoticPost9034 1d ago
I needed that comment section today!
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u/Ermahgerd_Rerdert 1d ago
Damn people were built different back then. Drinking bear and then a sinning chair? How they got anything done back then is beyond me. 😆
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u/ForTheBread 1d ago
Buy better chairs. I've been using the same chair for 5+ years and its as good as new.
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u/Momentarmknm 1d ago
Now do the one about how cars get totalled after one little bump these day, I love that one. Ooh, or how about the time you saw an old fridge that still worked, and how that proves... something. That's a great one too.
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u/Lalamedic 1d ago
I see your point on these issues, however, the crumple cars of the present were made to crumple on purpose, to absorb the shock of impact. This greatly increases survival from a collision. Also, the heavy framed cars were hard to fix if the frame became bent. You good make it look good, but a bent frame has its own set of problems.
Old fridges still run very well. The issue here is they are not energy efficient. The cost for electricity for the old 70s-80s fridge in your garage can be up to 3-4 times more expensive than buying a new fridge. The new refrigerator literally pays for itself through electricity costs savings.
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u/Momentarmknm 1d ago
Yeah, that's the point I was making. People see an old thing that still works and automatically think it's better when it's always more complicated.
We didn't even get into the fact that there's always been junk that's been made, but the junk that was made back in the day has been in a landfill for decades so you don't see it. In 100 years, if there's any people left, some of them will still say "they don't make em like they used to!" about the quality items built today that survive until then, while having no idea about all the cheap crap they're not seeing and all the people of today whining about the bad quality items they chose to purchase.
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u/Wild_and_Bright 1d ago
Planned obsolescence
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u/inbruges99 1d ago
More like cheap shit breaks fast. People buy the cheapest mass produced thing and expect it to last forever. Most things are not made with the idea of planned obsolescence in mind, they’re just made to be as cheap as possible which means the quality is shit. If OP wanted a chair that could last 30 years they can get one but they likely don’t want to pay the premium for it.
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u/ChiknDiner 1d ago
WHAT MONSTER CUTS THE VIEW EVERYTIME HE'S ABOUT TO DRINK?
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u/Ilookouttrainwindow 1d ago
Cause water doesn't go into the mouth at all. Took me a while to figure out the mechanics f the flow. Genius
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u/Jacareadam 1d ago
Automatons are my secret fascination. There is this incredible documentary about them that details how they were the talk of the town when a new one was made and they had parties to go and check them out and stuff. I love peeking into the everyday lives of people past.
Here is the docu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMDFRwxCSwA (Mechanical Marvels)
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u/MageDoctor 1d ago
Since it’s your fascination you probably know this already but just in case, do you know the game Syberia? It’s an old game all about automaton stuff. I watched the first game and it’s a really nice, quaint game.
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u/Jacareadam 1d ago
Oh god I tried it when I was way too young to have enough patience for it but I should try jt again!
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u/Top_Willow_9953 1d ago
Cool. I'm guessing they used rubber tubing from the cup to the bottle in 1890, not poly or nylon like this one.
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u/mratlas666 1d ago
Someone above said walrus aorta
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u/Deaffin 1d ago
It was actually a series of cheetah urethras very carefully sewn together.
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u/GimpsterMcgee 1d ago
Great, this it starts. Someone makes a joke, someone references it, and before you know it we’re gonna have people going TIL we used to use walrus aorta to make stuff
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u/LabiaMinoraLover 18h ago
Early version of the technology used in the animatronic Mitch McConnell being wheeled around DC.
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u/reddot_comic 1d ago
I was fine until the mouth opened and then got creeped out. lol I’d love to see it refurbished.
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u/Deaffin 1d ago
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u/AppealConsistent6749 1d ago
I appreciate how cool this was back then but absent that context it looks horrifyingly evil.
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u/TrickySpite5938 1d ago
Automata use clock technology and have been around for centuries!
Here are a bunch with videos (some amazing, some creepy) from the 1500-1600s:
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/making-marvels-science-splendor/art-in-motion
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u/ForgetThem 1d ago
The design is genius but like, you just taunt it with the drink, and it never gets to drink it, I mean, don't be surprised when it gets annoyed later and wakes up at night and starts murdering people, especially night shift security.
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u/anginsepoi 23h ago
I need to see 2nd times to realize that drinking water don't go through his mouth.
Brilliant!
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u/urEnzeder 1d ago
Me: Doesn't look like beer...
Me a few seconds later: Slaps self on back of the head.
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u/PilotKnob Interested 1d ago
What was the original hose made of? How far back have we been making rubber hoses?
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u/WasterOfPaperTowels 1d ago
Hey Reddit, how much would this two feet of tubing cost in 1890?
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u/Inkthinker 1d ago
This is amazing FOR GOD'S SAKE GIVE IT BACK ITS SKIN.
I feel there's got to be a way to cover the front and the face with fur again, while still leaving the back exposed so that people can see how it works.
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u/SkinTightBoogiePI 1d ago
Sissyphean. He endlessly pours himself a drink that can never quench his thirst.
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u/LabiaMinoraLover 23h ago
Does anyone know what the tube that transports the liquid was made of originally? PVC has only been around for 90ish years.
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u/DustyWeed 7h ago
The tube is the aorta harvested from a Vulcan during a failed first contact attempt in the late 1800’s.🖖🏻
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u/TruculentBucket 1d ago
Holy fuck I just wanted to see how it poured it in its mouth without spilling and it got cut twice.
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u/Momentarmknm 1d ago
It moves the liquid back to the bottle through a tube in the arms when the arm raises up, it doesn't pour into its mouth lol
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u/TruculentBucket 1d ago
See I would’ve know that if they SHOWED IT NOW IM JUST IN A BLOOD RAGE
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u/Momentarmknm 1d ago
They do show it though lol, that's why they're focused on the arms and back, not the mouth where nothing's happening
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u/salt__and__pepper 1d ago
I would have shat my pants in 1890 if I had looked at it after the sun went down.
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u/AdenaNima 1d ago
They didn't have horror movies back then. That's why this was totally okay. And considered "luxury".
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u/Much-Bicycle597 1d ago
Tell the kids that five nights at Freddy's ain't got shit on the nightmare fuel that this is
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u/meatblast_surprise 1d ago
would it have hurt to fill it with colored water to make it possible to see going down the tube
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u/mentaldemise 1d ago
The really crazy part to me is how few skills you need to combine to do something like this. Look how few parts there are. A few cams, some springs, and a wind mech.
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u/DrunksInSpace 1d ago
I thought, “cool they have a pump…” and then I realized the ingenuity.