JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post                                                                   

This ad (which was tiny in real life) appeared in the back pages of the last issue in June 1922 of the Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig), and to me it is a little peep into the future of vast industrialization and the coming of robotic replacements for certain human interactions. In this case, the robotics (here three years after the term “robot” was coined by Karel Capek in his R.U.R. Rosumovi Univerzální Roboti)) is a time-card machine.  Here the happy business owner is able to recognize what workers were working and via a short stroll over to the wall of cards he could tell who was at work and for how long.  It was a control of worker’s time and in a sense of their output, a real sense of ownership of the worker and industrialization of people.  Time and motion studies and Taylorism had started nearly 20 years earlier, but I do not recall seeing many advertisements that were disposed to suggest these new relationships.  

Which is a detail from: