JFPtak Science Books Quick Post
This is emphatically not a robot-type contraption, not by a long shot--it just happens (if you look at it in a certain way) to look like one. The automatic man was still a bit away, though Steam People and the like had certainly made appearances decades before this one.
The toys--Crandall's Acrobats, patented in 1867--came in boxes, a number of "acrobats" per box, as seen in the following post from Tracy's Toys blog:
I found both of these ads in the July 1876 issue of American Agriculturalist for the Farm, Garden, and Household, which aside from its fantastic contribution to the history of agriculture, is a treasure trove of images relating to working America at Bicentennial.
Here's another beautiful thing, from the page facing the acrobat:
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