This is the beginning of a series of posts on the history of cybernetic animals, early robots, steam men, and other walking machines covering the late 19th century and the 20th century. My initial focus will be my recent work on W. Grey Walter and his tortoises, with starters to the other categories to whet your appetites on things to come.
For those of you who can't wait, my good friend David Buckley has a wonderful site on the history of robots ( http://www.davidbuckley.net/DB/HistoryMakers.htm ) and some of my earlier work has been published by David. I should add here that I recently travelled to the UK ( June, 2009) and met up with David, and together we spent the next 3 weeks travelling the UK and Europe to visit archives, museums, robot artists, computer and cybernetic pioneers. The results of that trip will appear over time in this blog.