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"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way."
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![]() FESS (the name of the horse mentioned in the following quote) had one charming idiosyncrasy; a faulty capacitor would blow just at the most exciting (dangerous) moments.
FESS gets his name from an acronym:
Fess (a name derived from trying to pronounce "FCC" as a single word) had survived, thanks to his epilepsy. He had a weak capacitor that, when over-strained, released all its stored energy in a massive surge lasting several milli-seconds. When the preliminary symptoms of this electronic seizure—mainly a fuzziness in Fess's calculations—appeared, a master circuit breaker popped, and the faulty capacitor discharged in isolation from the rest of Fess's circuits; but the robot was out of commission until the circuit breaker was reset.
Since the seizures occurred during moments of great stress—such as trying to land a spaceship-cum-asteroid while analyzing an aberrant radio wave, or trying to protect a master from three simultaneous murderers— Fess had survived the Interregnum; for, when the Proletarians had attacked his masters, he had fought manfully for about twenty-five seconds, then collapsed. He had thus become a rarity—the courageous servant who had survived. He was one of five FCC robots still functioning.
Another variation on the robotic horse idea is the horse named Black in Roger Zelazny's stories about Dilvish the Damned. Black is a metallic horse; that is, he is a demon who manifests as a horse made of metal (as opposed to being a robotic horse - hey, it's a fantasy, you can do what you want).
Frank Reade, a 19th century author, described a robotic horse in his 1882 story Frank Reade and His Steam Horse. (See also the steam man of the prairie.)
![]() (Frank Reade and his Steam Horse (1882))
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