Francine

Francine is an automaton supposedly created by French philosopher René Descartes. Descartes was interested in the possibility that living things were machines, and he wrote about this topic in his work Discourse on Method (1637). The legend of Francine is possibly inspired by the story of Descartes’ real-life daughter Francine Descartes, who died of scarlet fever at age five. And so, legend has it, Descartes in grief chose to construct a mechanical doppelganger of his lost daughter. The fable of the mechanical Francine may be traced to a 1699 work Mélanges d’histoire et de littérature by the Carthusian monk Recueillis Par M. de Vigneul-Marville. According to the story, the Francine automaton accompanied Descartes in his travels inside a coffin-like box. In 1646, while on a boat trip to visit Christina, Queen of Sweden, the crew of the sailing vessel became frightened of a vicious storm. Hearing Descartes speaking to the robot girl in his cabin, the crew became convinced that it was witchcraft, broke the complex machine, and threw her into the sea. Descartes was so heartbroken by the loss of his automaton daughter he died soon thereafter.