I will talk about various inventions such as the Eureka, which generated Latin poetry in hexameter while playing "God Save the Queen"; the Homeoscope, a mechanical search engine invented by a Russian police clerk in 1832; the Componium, an orchestra-in-a-box which composed random variations on a melody; and others along the same lines. I'll also talk about how we could go beyond these techniques to build something really creative. This is a presentation of material I found when I was doing research for the book I published in January, Machinamenta.