![]() |
Science Fiction
Dictionary Latest By
"I identify with the weak person; this is one reason why my fictional protagonists are essentially antiheroes."
|
![]() |
![]() This play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) premiered in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1921. The word "robot" comes from the Czech word robota, which means "drudgery" or "servitude"; a robotnik is a serf who performs menial labor.
Although today we usually think of the word "robot" in association with some sort of electromechanical being made of metal and spare parts, the artifact in the play R.U.R. is closer to what we would call an android. The robots were fabricated in a biological manner.
They remember everything, while at the same time thinking of nothing new; one of the characters remarks that "they'd make fine university professors."
Capek himself credits his brother Josef Capek as the originator of the term "robot". The play was issued in an English translation in 1923, introducing the term to the English-speaking world.
It appears that Isaac Asimov, rightly famed for his collection of stories about robots, was the originator of associated terms like "robotics" and "roboticist".
The idea of an artificial person is quite old. The ancient Greek legend of Cadmus, who sowed dragon teeth that turned into soldiers, is one example. Another is the story of Pygmalion, an artist so great that one of his beautiful sculptures, Galatea, came to life. The Greeks also tell of Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods, who created metal mechanical figures; the mythical mechanical creation Talos defended Crete.
Capek himself recognized that his "robota" were recreations of the golem, a creation of Jewish folklore. The golem is formed of earth or clay in a roughly human shape and then animated by religious or magical forces.
The Greek genius Ctesibius of Alexandria created clocks that activated simple automata at set times in the third century B.C. His machines and automata were described in a First Century A.D. document by Heron of Alexandria.
See the term andy from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick for another look at non-mechanical robots. Also, compare to the autonomous digging machine from The War of the Worlds (1898) by HG Wells and to the steam man from The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868) by Edward S. Ellis. Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
resources: Robot-related
news articles:
Want to Contribute an
Item?
It's easy:
|
![]() |
Science Fiction
Timeline
Small Town Wants 60 License Plate Readers
'the registration number which the traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlway...'
Lightyear 0 World's First Production-Ready Solar Car
'It could maintain a steady six miles per hour...'
AI Robots Excel At Trash Sorting And Recycling
'Then they press one of these here thirteen buttons...'
Could Increased Space Rocketry Damage The Ozone Layer?
'...without burning a single hydrocarbon molecule to injure the diseased atmosphere any further.'
Festo BionicSwift Bird Robots Described In 1930
'Bird-like robots now descended from the ceiling of the theatre...'
Robotics Jobs In The Food Industry
'The efficient robot waiter of the Sky Club had cleared away the remnants of an epicurean meal.'
Prototype 3D Printer Could Print Arteries In Seconds
'...in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life has taken almost instant form.'
China Wants 'Hard Kill' Capability To Counter Starlink Satellites
'pirate three-vee satellites sanded out of orbit...'
Low-Cost Gel Pulls Water From Atmosphere Like Star Wars Vaporator
'The atmosphere yielded its moisture with reluctance. It had to be coaxed down...'
|
![]() |
![]() |
Home | Glossary
| Science Fiction Timeline | Category | New | Contact
Us | FAQ | Advertise | ![]() Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™ Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved. |
![]() |