Ancient Artificial Intelligence: The Mechanical Messiah and Other Automatons
It may not be long before Artificial Intelligence creates access to God via modern technology, however during the 19th century, a spiritualist by the name of John Murray Spear was inspired to build a Mechanical Messiah. Born on September 16, 1804, into a deeply religious family, John Murray Spear eventually became a member and minister of the Universalist Church. He forsook his ministry for spiritualism and was aided in his endeavor by illustrious technical advisors, the members of the ‘Association of Electrizers’: Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), the third president of the United States; John Quincy Adams (1767 – 1848) an American statesman, diplomat, and lawyer who served as the sixth president of the United States; Benjamin Rush (1746 - 1813) a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and a civic leader in Philadelphia, and Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) a scientist, journalist, politician, inventor and one of the major protagonists of the American Revolution. This ambitious project had one flaw – most of the technical team were deceased.
Three of the Electricizers: John Quincy Adams (Public Domain); Benjamin Rush by Charles Peale (1818) (Public Domain) and Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis (1785) (Public Domain)
The innovative Spear, under the influence of his first wife Sophronia, was intent on bettering the fate of this wretched humanity by providing it with all sorts of 'technical' information. With the guidance of his highly qualified technical team, Spear received instructions for realizing the unattainable ‘perpetual’ death; a thinking machine; an electric ship and a global telepathic network. But his greatest achievement was a strange automaton, a curious device composed of electrical and mechanical parts that was to embody the 'New Motive Force', a technological 'Holy Spirit', a new 'Messiah' destined to awaken the whole of humanity from a demonic stupor. Spear believed he was spearheading a technological revolution (certainly not yet the Fourth) at a time when electricity was just beginning to enlighten the man in the street as to what 'miracles' human ingenuity was capable of.
John Murray Spear inventor of the Mechanical Messiah
No Manger for the Mechanical Messiah
The Mechanical Messiah was not born in a stable, nor warmed by the loving breath of an ox and a donkey, as the established Christian tradition would have one believe. No, this very strange, technological transformer between the Earth and Heaven, between the Immanent and the Transcendent, was born in a laboratory at High Rock Cottage, Massachusetts, with the help of said group of dearly-departed spirits - the ‘Electricizers’- accompanied by certain eclectic characters in the flesh, such as the Reverend Hewitt, editor of the newspaper New Era; Alonzo Newton, editor of the New England Spiritualist; and a woman called the 'Mary of the New Divine Law'. The true identity of this last character has never been definitively clarified, but most likely she was Spear's very tangible wife. Although a ‘Divine Mary’ was thus involved by proxy, there was no immaculate conception, but the birth of the Mechanical Messiah required the gestation time of nine months, during which Spear in a self-induced trance, received hundreds of instructions from the ‘Association of Electrizers’. So, during the gestation period of the Mechanical Messiah, it took shape piece by piece, device by device, circuit by circuit like a divine Christmas tree waiting to burst into light.
What made the ‘miracle’ even more amazing was that Spear himself was totally lacking in any technical or scientific knowledge or previous training. This was perhaps an advantage since he never dared rationalizing or to question what he was building and obediently proceeded step by step according to the instructions from the dearly departed experts, without understanding almost anything of what he was doing.
Early etching of the Mechanical Messiah (Image: Courtesy Danbaines.blog)
