a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
A catalogue of Cybernetic Animals, including pre-Cybernetic Creatures
This copy of a letter from 1957 describes the first "Mechanical Animal" built by the Sutherland brothers, Bert and Ivan. Here’s a transcript of the letter sent from Ivan E. Sutherland to Grey Walter in 1957: Nov 10. [IES to WGW] “Dear Sir: Early last month I had sent to you two copies of …
Snail Robot by Versal Cross High-School Robots Learn the “Three Rs” By Jim Collison – Popular Mechanics July 1955 There is also a little robot. Versal Cross, 17, the senior student who built it calls it a Doodlebug or Snail. The Snail follows a beam of light and, having lost it, searches until it finds …
1953 – Timothy Turtle by Jack H. Kubanoff, Radio and Television News, April 1953 The text to the article is below. For the moment, the pages themselves can be found here. The article itself has a good description of its functionality. Some of its functionality reminds me of Berkeley's Squee i.e. flashing lamps controlling the …
Read More “1953 – Timothy Turtle – Jack Kubanoff (American)”
In June of this year (2009), I went to the UK and to Europe to visit some of the great computer pioneers and in particular, to talk to them about their early cybernetic models they built. I travelled with David Buckley (see his site here), and one of our stops was to see Heinz Zemanek …
Read More “1954 – Vienna Turtle – Eichler / Zemanek (Austrian)”
In my research for all things Grey Walter and his tortoises, I have uncovered five (5) video clips available on the internet. Of the five, I have downloaded four of them, the 5th has been allusive for some time, having not been able to re-locate it again after spending many hours trying. It is not …