a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
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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↵ 1948 GE Master-Slave Manipulator – John Payne Patent number: 2476249 (see here) Filing date: Nov 24, 1948 Issue date: Jul 1949 MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED, JUNE 1948 Mechanical Hands with Remote Control The village blacksmith of Longfellow may have had "muscles like iron bands," but scientist John Payne of General Electric has done him one better; …
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Several feet away, the operator controls the arm from this chair. It can measure out liquid by the drop. "Adelbert"—Science's "Right Arm"—Can Even Write Its Name ALTHOUGH it looks more like a dentist's oversized drill, a gentle-acting mechanical arm called "Adelbert" is actually built like the human arm. It has an elbow, shoulder, wrist and …
Read More “1950 – Remote-control Manipulator – Art Youmans (American)”
The Iron Hand (Sourced from here and authored by Kerry Kirsch) The Iron Hand was a robot that was developed by someone at Erie Engineering Company, 840 West Baltimore, Detroit, Michigan in the shadows of the old General Motors Building. Erie Engineering was owned by my grandfather, Frank Karl Kirsch, and specialized in Tool & …
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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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