John Joseph Merlin he wheeled about himself, with great facility to any part of the room." At an event held by Teresa Cornelys in Carlisle House, Soho Square, Merlin appeared somewhat disastrously on roller skates of his own invention. By April 1783 Merlin was putting his musical instruments and his automatons on display at his own museum. Advertisements invited readers to visit his Museum of Musical Instruments and Mechanical Inventions at No. 2, Princes Street, Hanover Square, London. Well-off Londoners could meet their friends at Merlin's Mechanical Museum in the afternoon or evening, pay to see the exhibits, and drink tea or coffee
Émile Merlin lecturer on astronomy and geodesy at the University of Ghent and in 1919 he became a full professor and director of the geographical station of the University of Ghent. He was an alpinist and died in a mountain accident in the French Alps in Le Bourg d'Oisans. Merlin was one of the editors for the French edition of Klein's encyclopedia. For his work on celestial mechanics he was awarded the A. de Potter Prize of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences. He was president of the Belgian Mathematical Society, honorary member of the Astronomical Society of Mexico and member of