Innocenzo Manzetti was an Italian inventor trained as a land surveyor who built a life-sized automaton flute player powered by compressed air and clockwork, able to perform twelve pieces of music. He is also credited with developing a speaking telegraph that transmitted words over an ordinary telegraph wire in the mid 1860s, building a steam-powered car around 1864, and designing a hydraulic machine for draining water from mines. Despite this range of invention he died poor and largely unrecognized in his hometown of Aosta. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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- Also in Geography Atlas: Italy, nationality there.
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1. Innocenzo Manzetti (Wikipedia)
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17 March 1826
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15 March 1877
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15 March 1877
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Italian inventor born in Aosta
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What did Innocenzo Manzetti invent, and why is he so little known?
A flute-playing automaton, a speaking telegraph and a steam car, yet he died poor and unrecognized in Aosta.
Manzetti, an Italian inventor trained as a land surveyor, built a life-sized automaton flute player powered by compressed air and clockwork that could perform twelve pieces of music. He is also credited with a speaking telegraph that carried words over an ordinary telegraph wire in the mid 1860s, a steam-powered car built around 1864, and a hydraulic machine for draining water from mines. Despite this range of invention he died poor and largely unrecognized in his hometown of Aosta.
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