a history of cybernetic animals and early robots
1982 – "A2W2" the Andy Warhol Robot. "I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do. I think everybody should be a machine." Andy Warhol, Nov 1963. Source: Times Daily, Oct 30, 1982. Alvaro Villa with some of his animatronic figures. Image …
Read More “1982 – “A2W2” the Andy Warhol Robot – Lewis Allen / Alvaro Villa (American/Columbian)”
Inventor Shunichi Mizuno, now president of Cybot Corporation in Japan, at work on his robot. Image source: Robots, machines in man's image, Isaac Asimov, Karen A. Frenkel – 1985. Photo by Mark Wexler. Caption: Instead of diamonds, up to 20,000 electronic components are this girl's best friends. Low-[pressure] pneumatic valves controlled by a microcomputer give …
Read More “1982 – “Marilyn Monroe” the Cybot – Shunichi Mizuno (Japanese)”
Prosopographus Selected extract from the full post by Patrick Feaster here. Between 1820 and 1835, a machine was exhibited around Great Britain that was advertised as taking people’s portraits by strictly automatic means. Someone had only to pay a shilling and sit perfectly still next to it for the space of a minute to obtain …
Read More “1820 – Prosopographus, the Automaton Artist – Charles Hervé”
I first saw this mentioned in David M. Earle's interesting book titled "Re-Covering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks, and the Prejudice of Form", but John Ptak's recent post reminded me of it. I have used his image of the prototype walking machine. The model of King Grey, the Electric Titan. Although called "Electric", the motive power is …
Read More “1916 – “King Grey” the Electric Titan – Fern Pieper (American)”
Ft. Lauderdale – TOMATON and his creator Lenny Schectman. July 1979. Tomaton, short for Automaton, is 6-foot tall. Lenny Schectman became involved in robotics mainly because of his interest in technology allowing the brain to be tapped to signal function in limbs of paraplegics and quadraplegics. He wanted to enter the biomedical engineering field but lacked …
Read More “1979 – “Tomaton” the Robot – Lenny Schectman (American)”