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121-514: Charleville-Mézières ( French pronunciation: [ʃaʁləvil mezjɛʁ] ) is a commune of northern France, capital of the Ardennes department , Grand Est . Charleville-Mézières is located on the banks of the river Meuse . Charleville and Mézières were originally separate communities on opposite banks of the Meuse , about 1.2 km (0.75 mi) from one another. Charleville

242-584: A Paduan engineer in 1420, developed Bellicorum instrumentorum liber which includes a puppet of a camelid driven by a clothed primate twice the height of a human being and an automaton of Mary Magdalene. He also created mechanical devils and rocket-propelled animal automata. While functional, early clocks were also often designed as novelties and spectacles which integrated features of automata. Many big and complex clocks with automated figures were built as public spectacles in European town centres . One of

363-461: A linkage which makes a servant figure appear from behind a door under the peacock and offer soap. When more water is used, a second float at a higher level trips and causes the appearance of a second servant figure—with a towel!" Al-Jazari thus appears to have been the first inventor to display an interest in creating human-like machines for practical purposes such as manipulating the environment for human comfort. Lamia Balafrej has also pointed out

484-643: A mechanical computer and driven by wind power. Automaton clocks are clocks which feature automatons within or around the housing and typically activate around the beginning of each hour, at each half hour, or at each quarter hour. They were largely produced from the 1st century BC to the end of the Victorian times in Europe. Older clocks typically featured religious characters or other mythical characters such as Death or Father Time. As time progressed, however, automaton clocks began to feature influential characters at

605-421: A "realm of 100,000 steeples". Parishes lacked the municipal structures of post-Revolution communes. Usually, one contained only a building committee ( conseil de fabrique ), made up of villagers, which managed the buildings of the parish church, the churchyard, and the other numerous church estates and properties, and sometimes also provided help for the poor, or even administered parish hospitals or schools. Since

726-606: A European soldier being mauled by a tiger. Catherine the Great of Russia was gifted a very large and elaborate Peacock Clock created by James Cox in 1781 now on display in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg . According to philosopher Michel Foucault , Frederick the Great , king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, was "obsessed" with automata. According to Manuel de Landa , "he put together his armies as

847-445: A category currently being phased out), made up of 33,327 communes (91.1 percent of all the communes of metropolitan France), and 52.86 million inhabitants, i.e., 86.7 percent of the population of metropolitan France. These impressive results however may hide a murkier reality. In rural areas, many communes have entered a community of communes only to benefit from government funds. Often the local syndicate has been turned officially into

968-481: A celebration hosted by Ludovico Sforza at the court of Milan around 1495. The design of Leonardo's robot was not rediscovered until the 1950s. A functional replica was later built that could move its arms, twist its head, and sit up. Da Vinci is frequently credited with constructing a mechanical lion , which he presented to King Francois I in Lyon in 1515. Although no record of the device's original designs remain,

1089-537: A commune for their administration. This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions: Furthermore, two regions without permanent habitation have no communes: In metropolitan France , the average area of a commune in 2004 was 14.88 square kilometres (5.75 sq mi). The median area of metropolitan France's communes at

1210-537: A community of communes, the new community of communes in fact managing only the services previously managed by the syndicate, contrary to the spirit of the law which has established the new intercommunal structures to carry out a much broader range of activities than that undertaken by the old syndicates. Some say that, should government money transfers be stopped, many of these communities of communes would revert to their former status of syndicate, or simply completely disappear in places where there were no syndicates prior to

1331-414: A connection with Archimedes . According to Jewish legend , King Solomon used his wisdom to design a throne with mechanical animals which hailed him as king when he ascended it; upon sitting down an eagle would place a crown upon his head, and a dove would bring him a Torah scroll. It is also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon

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1452-520: A cunning manner that at one moment it was down on the ground, while at another it rose higher and was to be seen up in the air." Similar automata in the throne room (singing birds, roaring and moving lions) were described by Luitprand's contemporary the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus , in his book De Ceremoniis (Perì tês Basileíou Tákseōs). In the mid-8th century, the first wind powered automata were built: "statues that turned with

1573-589: A density of communes as France, and even there an extensive merger movement has started in the last 10 years. To better grasp the staggering number of communes in France, two comparisons can be made: First, of the original 15 member states of the European Union there are approximately 75,000 communes; France alone, which comprises 16 percent of the population of the EU-15, had nearly half of its communes. Second,

1694-472: A drawing titled How to make an angel keep pointing his finger toward the Sun with an angel that would perpetually turn to face the sun. He also drew an automaton of a bird with jointed wings, which led to their design implementation in clocks. At the end of the thirteenth century, Robert II, Count of Artois , built a pleasure garden at his castle at Hesdin that incorporated several automata as entertainment in

1815-483: A game of chess when Franklin was ambassador to France. The Turk was actually operated from inside by a hidden human director, and was not a true automaton. Other 18th century automaton makers include the prolific Swiss Pierre Jaquet-Droz (see Jaquet-Droz automata ) and his son Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, and his contemporary Henri Maillardet . Maillardet, a Swiss mechanic, created an automaton capable of drawing four pictures and writing three poems. Maillardet's Automaton

1936-518: A golden age during the Edo period (1603–1867). A new attitude towards automata is to be found in René Descartes when he suggested that the bodies of animals are nothing more than complex machines – the bones, muscles and organs could be replaced with cogs , pistons , and cams . Thus mechanism became the standard to which Nature and the organism was compared. France in the 17th century

2057-420: A live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken

2178-769: A massive merger of communes, including by such distinguished voices as the president of the Cour des Comptes (the central auditing administrative body in France). In 1971 the Marcellin law offered support and money from the government to entice the communes to merge freely with each other, but the law had only a limited effect (only about 1,300 communes agreed to merge with others). Many rural communes with few residents struggle to maintain and manage basic services such as running water, garbage collection, or properly paved communal roads. Mergers, however, are not easy to achieve. One problem

2299-592: A much larger territory covering 449,964 km (173,732 sq mi) and yet is divided into only 290 municipalities ( kommuner ). Alsace has more than double the total number of municipalities of the Netherlands which, in spite of having a population nine times larger and a land area four times larger than Alsace, is divided into just 390 municipalities ( gemeenten ). Most of the communes in Alsace, along with those in other regions of France, have rejected

2420-463: A peacock that walked and ate. Athanasius Kircher produced many automata to create Jesuit shows, including a statue which spoke and listened via a speaking tube . The world's first successfully-built biomechanical automaton is considered to be The Flute Player , which could play twelve songs, created by the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737. He also constructed The Tambourine Player and

2541-467: A population of about 51,000. With an annual average of 10 °C (50 °F), Charleville-Mézières is generally the coolest city of France. Winters are long, cold and gloomy while summers are interchangeably warm or hot but sometimes, even in the middle of July, night temperatures can drop below 5 °C (41 °F). Under the Köppen-Geiger climate classification , Charleville-Mézières features

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2662-404: A programmable drum machine with pegs ( cams ) that bump into little levers that operate the percussion . The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. Al-Jazari constructed a hand washing automaton first employing the flush mechanism now used in modern toilets . It features a female automaton standing by a basin filled with water. When

2783-562: A recreation of this piece is housed at the Château du Clos Lucé . The Smithsonian Institution has in its collection a clockwork monk, about 15 in (380 mm) high, possibly dating as early as 1560. The monk is driven by a key-wound spring and walks the path of a square, striking his chest with his right arm, while raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings

2904-515: A silver and golden tree in his palace in Baghdad , which had the features of an automatic machine. There were metal birds that sang automatically on the swinging branches of this tree built by Muslim inventors and engineers . The Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir also had a silver and golden tree in his palace in Baghdad in 917, with birds on it flapping their wings and singing. In the 9th century,

3025-528: A temperate oceanic climate ( Cfb ) with strong continental influences ( Dfb ). The climate is vastly affected by the low mountain Ardennes range nearby. The proximity results in moisture being trapped and excessive precipitation occurs as a result when compared to other parts of northern France. Temperature inversion is also common, which results in strong cold snaps compared to the oceanic climates further west. This results in overnight temperatures below −10 °C (14 °F) happening during most winters as

3146-443: A type of finite automaton . Automaton clocks being finite essentially means that automaton clocks have a certain number of states in which they can exist. The exact number is the number of combinations possible on a clock with the hour, minute, and second hand: 43,200. The title of timed automaton declares that the automaton changes states at a set rate, which for clocks is 1 state change every second. Clock automata only takes as input

3267-650: A well-oiled clockwork mechanism whose components were robot-like warriors". In 1801, Joseph Jacquard built his loom automaton that was controlled autonomously with punched cards. Automata, particularly watches and clocks, were popular in China during the 18th and 19th centuries, and items were produced for the Chinese market. Strong interest by Chinese collectors in the 21st century brought many interesting items to market where they have had dramatic realizations. The famous magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805–1871)

3388-664: Is 35 km (14 sq mi); and in Germany , the majority of Länder have communes ( Gemeinden ) with a median area above 15 km (5.8 sq mi). Switzerland and the Länder of Rhineland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France. The communes of France's overseas départements such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They usually group into

3509-425: Is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023–957 BCE) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a very realistic and detailed life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork: The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for

3630-495: Is an important part of the cultural life of Charleville-Mézières, which is called the "World Capital of Puppetry Arts". An international puppet festival has been held there every three years since 1961, and became a biennial event in 2011. The town is also home to the world headquarters of UNIMA as well as the International Puppetry Institute (French: Institut International de la Marionnette), which

3751-534: Is housed in a historic building featuring a giant automaton of a puppeteer who performs a puppet show every hour on the hour. The École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (ESNAM), a college which offers a higher education in puppetry, is also situated in Charleville-Mézières. The poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) was born in Charleville. The Rimbaud museum  [ fr ]

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3872-518: Is located in the old water mill ( Le Vieux Moulin ) to the north of the town. Charleville served as the starting location for two seasons of the travel competition show Jet Lag: The Game . The local network of public buses within the Ardenne Métropole , TAC, is operated by RATP Dev . The Charleville-Mézières railway station offers connections to Paris (by TGV), Reims, Lille, Metz and regional destinations. OFC Charleville represent

3993-633: Is now part of the collections at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia . Belgian-born John Joseph Merlin created the mechanism of the Silver Swan automaton, now at Bowes Museum . A musical elephant made by the French clockmaker Hubert Martinet in 1774 is one of the highlights of Waddesdon Manor . Tipu's Tiger is another late-18th century example of automata, made for Tipu Sultan , featuring

4114-402: Is that mergers reduce the number of available elected positions, and thus are not popular with local politicians. Moreover, citizens from one village may be unwilling to have their local services run by an executive located in another village, whom they may consider unaware of or inattentive to their local needs. In December 2010 the law n° 2010-1563 regarding reform of territorial collectivities

4235-552: Is the Antikythera mechanism , the earliest known analog computer . The clockwork is thought to have come originally from Rhodes , where there was apparently a tradition of mechanical engineering; the island was renowned for its automata; to quote Pindar 's seventh Olympic Ode : However, the information gleaned from recent scans of the fragments indicate that it may have come from the colonies of Corinth in Sicily and implies

4356-636: Is the first documented description of how a mechanical cuckoo works, a mechanical organ with several automated figures is described. In 18th-century Germany, clockmakers began making cuckoo clocks for sale. Clock shops selling cuckoo clocks became commonplace in the Black Forest region by the middle of the 18th century. Japan adopted clockwork automata in the early 17th century as " karakuri " puppets. In 1662, Takeda Omi completed his first butai karakuri and then built several of these large puppets for theatrical exhibitions. Karakuri puppets went through

4477-483: Is the latinization of the Ancient Greek automaton ( αὐτόματον ), which means "acting of one's own will". It was first used by Homer to describe an automatic door opening, or automatic movement of wheeled tripods. It is more often used to describe non-electronic moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions, such as the jacks on old public striking clocks , or

4598-516: Is the only administrative unit below the commune in the French Republic but exists only in these three communes. These municipal arrondissements are not to be confused with the arrondissements that are subdivisions of French départements : French communes are considered legal entities , whereas municipal arrondissements, by contrast, have no official capacity and no budget of their own. The rights and obligations of communes are governed by

4719-669: Is the smallest and oldest administrative division in France . " Commune " in English has a historical association with socialist and collectivist political movements and philosophies. This association arises in part from the rising of the Paris Commune (1871) which could have more felicitously been called, in English, "the rising of the City of Paris". There is nothing intrinsically different between "town" in English and commune in French. The French word commune appeared in

4840-802: The Han Fei Zi and other texts. The manufacturing tradition of automata continued in the Greek world well into the Middle Ages. On his visit to Constantinople in 949 ambassador Liutprand of Cremona described automata in the emperor Theophilos ' palace, including "lions, made either of bronze or wood covered with gold, which struck the ground with their tails and roared with open mouth and quivering tongue," "a tree of gilded bronze, its branches filled with birds, likewise made of bronze gilded over, and these emitted cries appropriate to their species" and "the emperor's throne" itself, which "was made in such

4961-599: The Digesting Duck , a mechanical duck that – apart from quacking and flapping its wings – gave the false illusion of eating and defecating, seeming to endorse Cartesian ideas that animals are no more than machines of flesh. In 1769, a chess-playing machine called the Turk , created by Wolfgang von Kempelen , made the rounds of the courts of Europe purporting to be an automaton. The Turk beat Benjamin Franklin in

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5082-572: The Banū Mūsā brothers invented a programmable automatic flute player and which they described in their Book of Ingenious Devices . Al-Jazari described complex programmable humanoid automata amongst other machines he designed and constructed in the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206. His automaton was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. His mechanism had

5203-493: The Charleville musket , before being relocated and divided between Tulle and Châtellerault . In the 19th century, the city continued to produce arms through private firms, as well as nails, hardware, wine, spirits, coal, iron, and slate. It boasted a spacious port, a theatre, a large public library, and a museum of natural history. The inhabitants of Mézières were known as Macerians ( Macériens or Macériennes ). By

5324-552: The Code général des collectivités territoriales (CGCT) which replaced the Code des communes (except for personnel matters) with the passage of the law of 21 February 1996 for legislation and decree number 2000-318 of 7 April 2000 for regulations. From 1794 to 1977 — except for a few months in 1848 and 1870-1871 — Paris had no mayor and was thus directly controlled by the departmental prefect. This meant that Paris had less autonomy than certain towns or villages. Even after Paris regained

5445-520: The Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria (sometimes known as Heron), whose writings on hydraulics , pneumatics , and mechanics described siphons , a fire engine , a water organ , the aeolipile , and a programmable cart. Philo of Byzantium was famous for his inventions. Complex mechanical devices are known to have existed in Hellenistic Greece , though the only surviving example

5566-644: The Hellenistic world were intended as tools, toys, religious spectacles, or prototypes for demonstrating basic scientific principles. Numerous water-powered automata were built by Ktesibios , a Greek inventor and the first head of the Great Library of Alexandria ; for example, he "used water to sound a whistle and make a model owl move. He had invented the world's first 'cuckoo clock ' " . This tradition continued in Alexandria with inventors such as

5687-555: The Ming dynasty founder Hongwu (r. 1368–1398) was destroying the palaces of Khanbaliq belonging to the previous Yuan dynasty , there were—among many other mechanical devices—automata found that were in the shape of tigers. The Renaissance witnessed a considerable revival of interest in automata. Hero's treatises were edited and translated into Latin and Italian. Hydraulic and pneumatic automata, similar to those described by Hero, were created for garden grottoes . Giovanni Fontana ,

5808-565: The National Assembly ( Assemblée Nationale ) passed a law creating the commune, designed to be the lowest level of administrative division in France, thus endorsing these independently created communes, but also creating communes of its own. In this area as in many others, the work of the National Assembly was, properly speaking, revolutionary: not content with transforming all the chartered cities and towns into communes,

5929-482: The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 by Francis I , the priest in charge of the parish was also required to record baptisms, marriages, and burials. Except for these tasks, villages were left to handle other issues as they pleased. Typically, villagers would gather to decide over a special issue regarding the community, such as agricultural land usage, but there existed no permanent municipal body. In many places,

6050-631: The United States , with a territory fourteen times larger than that of the French Republic, and nearly five times its population, had 35,937 incorporated municipalities and townships at the 2002 Census of Governments, fewer than that of the French Republic. The number of barangays in the Philippines, villages of Indonesia, and muban in Thailand also have a higher number than the French communes. There have long been calls in France for

6171-555: The cuckoo and any other animated figures on a cuckoo clock . There are many examples of automata in Greek mythology : Hephaestus created automata for his workshop; Talos was an artificial man of bronze; King Alkinous of the Phaiakians employed gold and silver watchdogs. According to Aristotle , Daedalus used quicksilver to make his wooden statue of Aphrodite move. In other Greek legends he used quicksilver to install voice in his moving statues. The automata in

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6292-444: The mairies . These abrupt changes profoundly alienated devout Catholics, and France soon was plunged into the throes of civil war , with the fervently religious regions of western France at its center. It would take Napoleon I to re-establish peace in France, stabilize the new administrative system, and make it generally accepted by the population. Napoleon also abolished the election of the municipal councils, which now were chosen by

6413-716: The prefect , the local representative of the central government. Today, French communes are still very much the same in their general principles as those that were established at the beginning of the Revolution. The biggest changes occurred in 1831, when the French Parliament re-established the principle of the election of municipal councils, and in 1837 when French communes were given legal "personality", being now considered legal entities with legal capacity. The Jacobin revolutionaries were afraid of independent local powers, which they saw as conservative and opposed to

6534-551: The 12th century, from Medieval Latin communia , for a large gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin communis , 'things held in common'. As of January 2021, there were 35,083 communes in France , of which 34,836 were in metropolitan France , 129 in the overseas departments , and 83 in the overseas collectivities and New Caledonia . This is a considerably higher total than that of any other European country , because French communes still largely reflect

6655-512: The 1999 census was even smaller, at 10.73 square kilometres (4.14 sq mi). The median area gives a better sense of the size of a typical mainland France commune than the average area since the average includes some very large communes. In Italy , the median area of communes ( comuni ) is 22 km (8.5 sq mi); in Belgium it is 40 km (15 sq mi); in Spain it

6776-401: The 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants and, with 4,638,000 inhabitants, these smaller communes constitute just 7.7 percent of the total population. In other words, just 8 percent of the French population live in 57 percent of its communes, whilst 92 percent are concentrated in the remaining 43 percent. Alsace , with an area of 8,280 km (3,200 sq mi), and now part of

6897-565: The National Assembly also decided to turn all the village parishes into full-status communes. The Revolutionaries were inspired by Cartesian ideas as well as by the philosophy of the Enlightenment . They wanted to do away with all the peculiarities of the past and establish a perfect society, in which all and everything should be equal and set up according to reason, rather than by tradition or conservatism. Thus, they set out to establish administrative divisions that would be uniform across

7018-720: The Pheasant , which was intended to influence the Duke's peers to participate in a crusade against the Ottomans but ended up being a grand display of automata, giants, and dwarves. A banquet in Camilla of Aragon's honor in Italy, 1475, featured a lifelike automated camel. The spectacle was a part of a larger parade which continued over days. Leonardo da Vinci sketched a complex mechanical knight, which he may have built and exhibited at

7139-502: The Région Grand Est, used to be the smallest of the regions of metropolitan France , and still has no fewer than 904 communes. This high number is typical of metropolitan France but is atypical when compared with other European countries. It shows the distinctive nature of the French commune as a geo-political or administrative entity. With its 904 communes, Alsace has three times as many municipalities as Sweden , which has

7260-728: The automaton's lips and fingers move on the flute according to a program recorded on a cylinder similar to those used in player pianos . The automaton was powered by clockwork and could perform 12 different arias. As part of the performance, it would rise from the chair, bow its head, and roll its eyes. The period between 1860 and 1910 is known as "The Golden Age of Automata". Mechanical coin-operated fortune tellers were introduced to boardwalks in Britain and America. In Paris during this period, many small family based companies of automata makers thrived. From their workshops they exported thousands of clockwork automata and mechanical singing birds around

7381-780: The beach. British sculptor Sam Smith (1908–1983) was a well-known maker of automata. In 2016, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program studied a rover, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments , designed to survive for an extended time in Venus' environmental conditions. Unlike other modern automata, AREE is an automaton instead of a robot for practical reasons—Venus's harsh conditions, particularly its surface temperature of 462 °C (864 °F), make operating electronics there for any significant time impossible. It would be controlled by

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7502-452: The benefit of poorer suburbs. Moreover, intercommunal structures in many urban areas are still new, and fragile: Tensions exist between communes; the city at the center of the urban area often is suspected of wishing to dominate the suburban communes; communes from opposing political sides also may be suspicious of each other. Two famous examples of this are Toulouse and Paris. In Toulouse, on top of there being six intercommunal structures,

7623-532: The central government's calls for mergers and rationalization. By way of contrast, in the German states bordering Alsace, the geo-political and administrative areas have been subject to various re-organizations from the 1960s onward. In the state of Baden-Württemberg , the number of Gemeinden or communities was reduced from 3,378 in 1968 to 1,108 in September 2007. In comparison, the number of communes in Alsace

7744-410: The chartered cities) suddenly became legal entities for the first time in their history. This is still the case today. During the revolution, approximately 41,000 communes were created, on territory corresponding to the limits of modern-day France (the 41,000 figure includes the communes of the departments of Savoie , Haute-Savoie and Alpes-Maritimes which were annexed in 1795, but does not include

7865-535: The city of Toulouse chartered by the counts of Toulouse). These cities were made up of several parishes (up to c. 50 parishes in the case of Paris), and they were usually enclosed by a defensive wall . They had been emancipated from the power of feudal lords in the 12th and 13th centuries, had municipal bodies which administered the city, and bore some resemblance with the communes that the French Revolution would establish except for two key points: In

7986-559: The cold air descends at night. Similar patterns replicate year round, causing Charleville-Mezières to have cooler summer nights than Nordic coastal areas near the Arctic Circle . The intermittent frosts in May and September also result in a short growing season . In the table and graph below, data for 1962 and earlier refer to the old commune of Charleville, before the merger with Étion, Mézières, Mohon and Montcy-Saint-Pierre. Puppetry

8107-544: The country: the whole of France would be divided into départements , themselves divided into arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons, themselves divided into communes, no exceptions. All of these communes would have equal status, they would all have a mayor at their head and a municipal council elected by the inhabitants of the commune. This was a real revolution for the thousands of villages that never had experienced organized municipal life before. A communal house had to be built in each of these villages, which would house

8228-700: The cross to his lips and kisses it. It is believed that the monk was manufactured by Juanelo Turriano , mechanician to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V . The first description of a modern cuckoo clock was by the Augsburg nobleman Philipp Hainhofer in 1629. The clock belonged to Prince Elector August von Sachsen . By 1650, the workings of mechanical cuckoos were understood and were widely disseminated in Athanasius Kircher 's handbook on music, Musurgia Universalis . In what

8349-464: The departments of modern-day Belgium and Germany west of the Rhine , which were part of France between 1795 and 1815). This was fewer than the 60,000 parishes that existed before the revolution (in cities and towns, parishes were merged into one single commune; in the countryside, some very small parishes were merged with bigger ones), but 41,000 was still a considerable number, without any comparison in

8470-412: The difference residing in the lack of administrative powers. Except for the municipal arrondissements of its largest cities, the communes are the lowest level of administrative division in France and are governed by elected officials including a mayor ( maire ) and a municipal council ( conseil municipal ). They have extensive autonomous powers to implement national policy. A commune

8591-599: The division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution . (1) Within the current limits of metropolitan France, which existed between 1860 and 1871 and from 1919 to today. (2) Within the current extent of overseas France, which has remained unchanged since the independence of the New Hebrides in 1980. The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes; even uninhabited mountains or rain forests are dependent on

8712-525: The earliest of these large clocks was the Strasbourg astronomical clock , built in the 14th century which takes up the entire side of a cathedral wall. It contained an astronomical calendar, automata depicting animals, saints and the life of Christ. The mechanical rooster of Strasbourg clock was active from 1352 to 1789. The clock still functions to this day, but has undergone several restorations since its initial construction. The Prague astronomical clock

8833-556: The effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted. Other notable examples of automata include Archytas ' dove, mentioned by Aulus Gellius . Similar Chinese accounts of flying automata are written of the 5th century BC Mohist philosopher Mozi and his contemporary Lu Ban , who made artificial wooden birds ( ma yuan ) that could successfully fly according to

8954-483: The end of the afternoon, following the storming of the Bastille , the provost of the merchants of Paris, Jacques de Flesselles was shot by the crowd on the steps of Paris City Hall. Although in the Middle Ages the provosts of the merchants symbolized the independence of Paris and even had openly rebelled against King Charles V , their office had been suppressed by the king, then reinstated but with strict control from

9075-480: The fact that there are pronounced differences in size between French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What the median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants, but there are also a small number of communes with much higher populations. In metropolitan France 57 percent of

9196-507: The first step, a golden ox and a golden lion each stretched out one foot to support him and help him rise to the next step. On each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne. In ancient China , a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, believed to have originated around 400 BCE and compiled around the fourth century CE. Within it there

9317-558: The form of a law on 22 March 1890, which provided for the establishment of single-purpose intercommunal associations. French lawmakers having long been aware of the inadequacy of the communal structure inherited from the French Revolution for dealing with a number of practical matters, the so-called Chevènement law of 12 July 1999 is the most recent and most thoroughgoing measure aimed at strengthening and simplifying this principle. In recent years it has become increasingly common for communes to band together in intercommunal consortia for

9438-636: The imaginary of automation. In 1066, the Chinese inventor Su Song built a water clock in the form of a tower which featured mechanical figurines which chimed the hours. Samarangana Sutradhara , a Sanskrit treatise by Bhoja (11th century), includes a chapter about the construction of mechanical contrivances (automata), including mechanical bees and birds, fountains shaped like humans and animals, and male and female dolls that refilled oil lamps, danced, played instruments, and re-enacted scenes from Hindu mythology. Villard de Honnecourt , in his 1230s sketchbook, depicted an early escapement mechanism in

9559-548: The king, and so they had ended up being viewed by the people as yet another representative of the king, no longer the embodiment of a free municipality. Following that event, a "commune" of Paris was immediately set up to replace the old medieval chartered city of Paris, and a municipal guard was established to protect Paris against any attempt made by King Louis XVI to quell the ongoing revolution. Several other cities of France quickly followed suit, and communes arose everywhere, each with their municipal guard. On 14 December 1789,

9680-437: The kingdom. A parish was essentially a church, the houses around it (known as the village), and the cultivated land around the village. France was the most populous country in Europe at this time, with a population of approximately 25 million inhabitants in the late 18th century ( England in contrast had only 6 million inhabitants), which accounts for the large number of parishes. French kings often prided themselves on ruling over

9801-653: The law. In urban areas, the new intercommunal structures are much more a reality, being created by local decision-makers out of genuine belief in the worth of working together. However, in many places, local feuds have arisen, and it was not possible to set up an intercommunal structure for the whole of the urban area: some communes refusing to take part in it, or even creating their own structure. In some urban areas like Marseille there exist four distinct intercommunal structures! In many areas, rich communes have joined with other rich communes and have refused to let in poorer communes, for fear that their citizens would be overtaxed to

9922-552: The least money per inhabitant, whereas urban communities are given the most money per inhabitant, thus pushing communes to form more integrated communities where they have fewer powers, which they might otherwise have been loath to do if it were not for government money. The Chevènement law has been extremely successful in the sense that a majority of French communes now have joined the new intercommunal structures. On 1 January 2007, there were 2,573 such communities in metropolitan France (including five syndicats d'agglomération nouvelle ,

10043-414: The local feudal lord ( seigneur ) still had a major influence in the village's affairs, collecting taxes from tenant-villagers and ordering them to work the corvée , controlling which fields were to be used and when, and how much of the harvest should be given to him. Additionally, some cities had obtained charters during the Middle Ages, either from the king himself or from local counts or dukes (such as

10164-519: The lowest communes' median population of all the European countries (communes in Switzerland or Rhineland-Palatinate may cover a smaller area, as mentioned above, but they are more populated). This small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where the median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium (11,265 inhabitants), or even Spain (564 inhabitants). The median population given here should not hide

10285-480: The main community of Toulouse and its suburbs is only a community of agglomeration, although Toulouse is large enough to create an Urban Community according to the law. This is because the suburban communes refused an urban community for fear of losing too much power, and opted for a community of agglomeration, despite the fact that a community of agglomeration receives less government funds than an urban community. As for Paris, no intercommunal structure has emerged there,

10406-466: The maximum allowable pay of the mayor and deputy mayors, and municipal campaign finance limits (among other features) all depend on the population echelon into which a particular commune falls. Since the PLM Law of 1982, three French communes also have a special status in that they are further divided into municipal arrondissements : these are Paris, Marseille , and Lyon . The municipal arrondissement

10527-486: The mayors. Civil marriages were established and started to be performed in the mairie with a ceremony not unlike the traditional one, with the mayor replacing the priest, and the name of the law replacing the name of God (" Au nom de la loi, je vous déclare unis par les liens du mariage. " – "In the name of the law, I declare you united by the bonds of marriage."). Priests were forced to surrender their centuries-old baptism, marriage, and burial books, which were deposited in

10648-425: The meetings of the municipal council as well as the administration of the commune. Some in the National Assembly were opposed to such a fragmentation of France into thousands of communes, but eventually Mirabeau and his ideas of one commune for each parish prevailed. On 20 September 1792, the recording of births, marriages, and deaths also was withdrawn as a responsibility of the priests of the parishes and handed to

10769-691: The mid-19th century, the two towns were linked by a suspension bridge . It was occupied by the German Empire in the First World War and by Nazi Germany in World War II - the town served as the center of the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) for 26 days during World War I. The present commune was established in 1966, the year after another commune, Le Theux , had been merged into Mézières. The entire resultant commune has

10890-521: The north, cities tended to be administered by échevins (from an old Germanic word meaning judge), while in the south, cities tended to be administered by consuls (in a clear reference to Roman antiquity), but Bordeaux was administered by jurats (etymologically meaning "sworn men") and Toulouse by capitouls ("men of the chapter"). Usually, there was no mayor in the modern sense; all the échevins or consuls were on equal footing, and rendered decisions collegially. However, for certain purposes, there

11011-523: The number of communes in the process – the Gemeinden of West Germany were decreased from 24,400 to 8,400 in the space of a few years – France only carried out mergers at the margin, and those were mostly carried out during the 19th century. From 41,000 communes at the time of the French Revolution, the number decreased to 37,963 in 1921, to 36,569 in 2008 (in metropolitan France). Thus, in Europe, only Switzerland has as high

11132-404: The number of municipalities compared to the large and populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (396 Gemeinden in September 2007). Despite differences in population, each of the communes of the French Republic possesses a mayor ( maire ) and a municipal council ( conseil municipal ), which jointly manage the commune from the municipal hall ( mairie ), with exactly the same powers no matter

11253-631: The only partially successful statute enacted in 1966 and enabling urban communes to form urban communities or the more marked failure of the Marcellin law of 1971, the Chevènement law met with a large measure of success, so that a majority of French communes are now involved in intercommunal structures. There are two types of these structures: In exchange for the creation of a community, the government allocates money to them based on their population, thus providing an incentive for communes to team up and form communities. Communities of communes are given

11374-403: The place of the former communes, which are represented by a delegated mayor and a delegated council. Between 2012 and 2021, about 820 communes nouvelles have been established, replacing about 2,550 old communes. The expression "intercommunality" ( intercommunalité ) denotes several forms of cooperation between communes. Such cooperation first made its appearance at the end of the 19th century in

11495-541: The populations and land of the geographic area covered. The communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. Communes vary widely in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris , to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. Communes typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance. All communes have names, but not all named geographic areas or groups of people residing together are communes ( "lieu dit" or "bourg" ),

11616-462: The prevalence of the figure of the automated slave in al-Jazari's treatise. Automated slaves were a frequent motif in ancient and medieval literature but it was not so common to find them described in a technical book. Balafrej has also written about automated female slaves, which appeared in timekeepers and as liquid-serving devices in medieval Arabic sources, thus suggesting a link between feminized forms of labor like housekeeping, medieval slavery, and

11737-495: The provision of such services as refuse collection and water supply. Suburban communes often team up with the city at the core of their urban area to form a community charged with managing public transport or even administering the collection of local taxes. The Chevènement law tidied up all these practices, abolishing some structures and creating new ones. In addition, it offered central government finance aimed at encouraging further communes to join in intercommunal structures. Unlike

11858-489: The revolution, and so they favored a powerful central state. Therefore, when they created the communes, they deprived them of any legal "personality" (as they did with the départements ), with only the central state having legal "personality." By 1837 that situation was judged impractical, as mayors and municipal councils could not be parties in courts. The consequence of the change, however, was that tens of thousands of villages which had never had legal "personality" (contrary to

11979-469: The right to elect its own mayor in 1977, the central government retained control of the Paris police. In all other French communes, the municipal police are under the mayor's supervision. French communes were created at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789–1790. Before the revolution, France's lowest level of administrative division was the parish ( paroisse ), and there were up to 60,000 of them in

12100-456: The robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried

12221-406: The same as those designed at the time of the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, with the same limits. Countless rural communes that had hundreds of inhabitants at the time of the French Revolution now have only a hundred inhabitants or fewer. On the other hand, cities and towns have grown so much that their urbanized area is now extending far beyond the limits of their commune which were set at

12342-403: The same commune several villages or towns, often with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in the administrative splitting of some communes . The median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a very small number, and here France stands absolutely apart in Europe, with

12463-414: The size of the commune. This uniformity of status is a legacy of the French Revolution, which wanted to do away with the local idiosyncrasies and tremendous differences in status that existed in the kingdom of France. French law makes allowances for the vast differences in commune size in a number of areas of administrative law. The size of the municipal council, the method of electing the municipal council,

12584-425: The suburbs of Paris fearing the concept of a "Greater Paris", and so disunity still is the rule in the metropolitan area, with the suburbs of Paris creating many different intercommunal structures all without the city. Automaton Animatronics are a modern type of automata with electronics , often used for the portrayal of characters or creatures in films and in theme park attractions. The word automaton

12705-420: The time displayed by the previous state. The automata uses this input to produce the next state, a display of time 1 second later than the previous. Clock automata often also use the previous state's input to 'decide' whether or not the next state requires merely changing the hands on the clock, or if a special function is required, such as a mechanical bird popping out of a house like in cuckoo clocks. This choice

12826-459: The time of creation, such as kings, famous composers, or industrialists. Examples of automaton clocks include chariot clocks and cuckoo clocks . The Cuckooland Museum exhibits autonomous clocks. While automaton clocks are largely perceived to have been in use during medieval times in Europe, they are largely produced in Japan today. In Automata theory , clocks are regarded as timed automatons ,

12947-609: The time of the revolution. The most extreme example of this is Paris, where the urbanized area sprawls over 396 communes. Paris in fact was one of the very few communes of France whose limits were extended to take into account the expansion of the urbanized area. The new, larger, commune of Paris was set up under the oversight of Emperor Napoléon III in 1859, but after 1859 the limits of Paris rigidified. Unlike most other European countries, which stringently merged their communes to better reflect modern-day densities of population (such as Germany and Italy around 1970), dramatically decreasing

13068-787: The town at association football . Étoile de Charleville-Mézières is a basketball club. Charleville-Mézières is twinned with: Communes of France The commune ( French pronunciation: [kɔmyn] ) is a level of administrative division in the French Republic . French communes are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, Gemeinden in Germany, comuni in Italy, or municipios in Spain. The UK equivalent are civil parishes . Communes are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage

13189-421: The user pulls the lever, the water drains and the automaton refills the basin. His "peacock fountain" was another more sophisticated hand washing device featuring humanoid automata as servants who offer soap and towels . Mark E. Rosheim describes it as follows: "Pulling a plug on the peacock's tail releases water out of the beak; as the dirty water from the basin fills the hollow base a float rises and actuates

13310-495: The walled park. The work was conducted by local workmen and overseen by the Italian knight Renaud Coignet. It included monkey marionettes, a sundial supported by lions and "wild men", mechanized birds, mechanized fountains and a bellows-operated organ. The park was famed for its automata well into the fifteenth century before it was destroyed by English soldiers in the sixteenth century. The Chinese author Xiao Xun wrote that when

13431-652: The wind over the domes of the four gates and the palace complex of the Round City of Baghdad ". The "public spectacle of wind-powered statues had its private counterpart in the ' Abbasid palaces where automata of various types were predominantly displayed." Also in the 8th century, the Muslim alchemist , Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber), included recipes for constructing artificial snakes , scorpions , and humans that would be subject to their creator's control in his coded Book of Stones . In 827, Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun had

13552-542: The works of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre in the United Kingdom , Thomas Kuntz , Arthur Ganson , Joe Jones and Le Défenseur du Temps by French artist Jacques Monestier . Since 1990 Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been building large automated PVC structures called strandbeest (beach animal) that can walk on wind power or compressed air. Jansen claims that he intends them to automatically evolve and develop artificial intelligence , with herds roaming freely over

13673-580: The world at the time, except in the empire of China (but there, only county level and above had any permanent administration). Since then, tremendous changes have affected France, as they have the rest of Europe: the Industrial Revolution , two world wars , and the rural exodus have all depopulated the countryside and increased the size of cities. French administrative divisions, however, have remained extremely rigid and unchanged. Today about 90 percent of communes and departments are exactly

13794-580: The world. Although now rare and expensive, these French automata attract collectors worldwide. The main French makers were Bontems , Lambert, Phalibois, Renou, Roullet & Decamps , Theroude and Vichy. Abstract automata theory started in mid-20th century with finite automata ; it is applied in branches of formal and natural science including computer science , physics , biology , as well as linguistics . Contemporary automata continue this tradition with an emphasis on art, rather than technological sophistication. Contemporary automata are represented by

13915-428: Was adopted, which created the legal framework for the communes nouvelles (lit. "new communes"). A commune nouvelle can be created by merger of a number of communes at the request of the municipal councils of all the communes or at the initiative of the state representative in the department (the prefect ). The municipal council of the new commune can decide to create communes déléguées (lit. "delegated communes") in

14036-504: Was built in 1410, animated figures were added from the 17th century onwards. Numerous clockwork automata were manufactured in the 16th century, principally by the goldsmiths of the Free Imperial Cities of central Europe. These wondrous devices found a home in the cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammern of the princely courts of Europe. In 1454, Duke Philip created an entertainment show named The extravagant Feast of

14157-497: Was founded by Charles Gonzaga , the 8th duke of Mantua , in 1606. Its inhabitants were known as Carolopolitans ( Carolopolitains or Carolopolitaines ). It was prosperous from the 17th century, although its fortifications were dismantled under Louis XIV in 1687 and it passed into French hands in 1708. It was plundered by the Prussians in 1815. France's royal armaments factory was formerly located there and gave its name to

14278-400: Was known for creating automata for his stage shows. Automata that acted according to a set of preset instructions were popular with magicians during this time. In 1840, Italian inventor Innocenzo Manzetti constructed a flute -playing automaton, in the shape of a man, life-size, seated on a chair. Hidden inside the chair were levers, connecting rods and compressed air tubes, which made

14399-995: Was one échevin or consul ranking above the others, a sort of mayor, although not with the same authority and executive powers as a modern mayor. This "mayor" was called provost of the merchants ( prévôt des marchands ) in Paris and Lyon; maire in Marseille, Bordeaux, Rouen , Orléans , Bayonne and many other cities and towns; mayeur in Lille ; premier capitoul in Toulouse; viguier in Montpellier ; premier consul in many towns of southern France; prêteur royal in Strasbourg ; maître échevin in Metz ; maire royal in Nancy ; or prévôt in Valenciennes . On 14 July 1789, at

14520-555: Was only reduced from 946 in 1971 (just before the Marcellin law aimed at encouraging French communes to merge with each other was passed, see Current debate section below) to 904 in January 2007. Consequently, the Alsace region—despite having a land area only one-fifth the size and a total population only one-sixth of that of its neighbor Baden-Württemberg—has almost as many municipalities. The small Alsace region has more than double

14641-483: Was the birthplace of those ingenious mechanical toys that were to become prototypes for the engines of the Industrial Revolution . Thus, in 1649, when Louis XIV was still a child, François-Joseph de Camus designed for him a miniature coach, complete with horses and footmen, a page, and a lady within the coach; all these figures exhibited a perfect movement. According to Labat , General de Gennes constructed, in 1688, in addition to machines for gunnery and navigation,

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