I emailed the Franklin Institute in 2014 requesting the date of the next demonstration. Here is the response I received:
"The Curatorial Department has received your request for information about the Maillardet Automaton (Cat.#1663). Though in the recent past, we have demonstrated the Automaton four times per year, the Curatorial Department (based on information gathered by our mechanicians/conservators) has decided that TFI will not run the machine until we can ensure its safety."
"The Automaton is located in our Amazing Machines exhibition. The Amazing Machines exhibition discusses the mechanics and beauty of movement in relation to artifacts; for example, near the Automaton case there are exhibits discussing gears and cams. Behind the Automaton, there is a short film of two of our mechanician/conservators running the Automaton. This, coupled with the fair amount of narrative text about the machine, provides a pretty good understanding of the artifact. Since we will not be producing any more drawings in the near future, we retain some originals in our archival collections and the rest are sold in the museum's bookstore as original artifacts."
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 21.0 ms ] thread"The Curatorial Department has received your request for information about the Maillardet Automaton (Cat.#1663). Though in the recent past, we have demonstrated the Automaton four times per year, the Curatorial Department (based on information gathered by our mechanicians/conservators) has decided that TFI will not run the machine until we can ensure its safety."
"The Automaton is located in our Amazing Machines exhibition. The Amazing Machines exhibition discusses the mechanics and beauty of movement in relation to artifacts; for example, near the Automaton case there are exhibits discussing gears and cams. Behind the Automaton, there is a short film of two of our mechanician/conservators running the Automaton. This, coupled with the fair amount of narrative text about the machine, provides a pretty good understanding of the artifact. Since we will not be producing any more drawings in the near future, we retain some originals in our archival collections and the rest are sold in the museum's bookstore as original artifacts."