a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
November, 1915 THE ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER by Hugo Gernsback. Front cover -"THE RADIUM DESTROYER" from a painting by Thomas H. Wrenn. (typo- actually Thomas N. Wrenn) Warfare of the Future The Radium Destroyer THE European War has clearly demonstrated what a tremendous part modern science plays in the offense as well as in the defense of …
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Caption: This electronic Robot might have prevented the horse-racing ban, but it would cause technological unemployment among the jockey fraternity. Source: Radio-Craft for March, 1945. RADIO JOCKEY – Electronically-Controlled Robot Rider By ERIC LESLIE HORSE-RACING—the game of kings—has one great weakness. The suspicion of "fixed" races, of "pulled" horses and of dishonest jockeys, has prevented …
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Gernsback, Hugo "The Teledoctor", Television, Feb. 1955 pp. 22-24. Hugo Gernsback's 1954 solution to the doctor shortage was the ultimate in bringing the patient to the overworked physician: an updated version of the 1924 Radio Doctor called the "Teledoctor." Delivered to your front door on a rental plan, this melding of television and diagnostics …
In 1960, the indefatigable Gernsback came out with another lunar rover design. He called it the “Homobile.” It had a pressurized cabin mounted on tracks and powered by electricity from fuel cells, with a leg-powered generator as an alternate source of energy. The cabin also had a pair of manipulator arms. Source:Originally from “1961 Forecast”, …
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I'm having difficulty in obtaining a copy of this magazine, so I have used the original article and illustrations from Matt Novak's wonderful Paleofuture/Smithsonian article here. Hugo Gernsback’s device was called the "radio teledactyl” and would allow doctors to not only see their patients through a viewscreen, but also touch them from miles away with spindly …
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