a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
When one reads through documents and histories on cybernetic and cybernetic models, one of the earliest models refered to is the Toy Beetle. The key reference is A. J. LOTKA. Elements of Physical Biology. Baltimore, 1925. Normally you see it in simple diagrammatic form, but after many hours on patent search engines (pre Google patents …
Read More “1911 – Toy Beetle – Adolph Weigel – referenced by A.J. Lotka”
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 …
Before I introduce Elmer, the first of Grey’s tortoises, a little background on Grey’s technical skills. We already learnt from the previous post that Grey was building "wireless" sets with his Dad in 1919. The BNI Archives have a photo of a young Grey Walter at a metal turning lathe, so he appears to be quite …