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 Émile Merlin Émile Alphonse Louis Merlin (12 October 1875, Mons – 29 July 29 1938, Le Bourg d'Oisans) was a Belgian mathematician and astronomer. Merlin attended the secondary school "Athénée royal de Bruxelles". He then studied at the University of Liège and the University of Ghent, where in 1900 he received his doctorate in mathematics. This was followed by a stay abroad 1901–1903 in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and in Göttingen. In 1904 he became an assistant at the observatory in Uccle. In 1909 he was promoted to astronomer adjoint. From 1912 he was a