a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
Humaniform automatons, mechanical men, robots covering late 19th century and the 20th century
The entry is significant in that it highlights the technologies of the time that enabled most of the early electric animals, mechanical men then later the robots to be operated remotely by sound, light, or radio waves. This technology and underlying principles influenced these machines for at least 50 years. The technology is studied in detail …
Strickly speaking, the 1900 Electric Man is a pseudo-walking machine only, so I will include him in the Early Walking Machine category, not here. A further note of clarity. This entry is here as there was an article published in 1900 by "The Strand" illustrated magazine titled "The Electric Man". This has been hijacked and misrepresented somewhat as "The …
Dr. Lube's 'Mr. Eisenbrass' Characteristics: Electrically powered – electro-magnets, solenoids Rubber skin Activated by piano-style keyboard Stand-up. bow, sit down. Electro-mechanical voice styled after Prof. Faber's machine From 'The Racine Advocate' 10th May 1848 p1 Article also appeared in Scientific American Vol3#34-13May1848 p272 but written in 3rd person. [Note that some of the pre-amble hasn't …
The robots that are in this category of my blog are those that look and attempt to behave like human beings according to their creator's abilities and available technologies. Although I'll use the word "humanoid", words such as "humaniform" and "anthropomorphic" tend to be used as well. My focus is also on Robots at the beginning of …
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 …