JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

These poor early robots–some were designed to pretend-to-clean, others to pretend-to-smoke, and yet others (even at this tender age in the history of robots) were designed to threaten people and whatever else was in front of them with a pistol.  It is a sad, thing, really–it is hard not to empathize with the amalgamated sorrow.  

[Source: Popular Science Monthly, January 1935, page 19.]

I’ve written perhaps 15 or so posts on early robots (prior to WWII) and to me it seems that most were relegated to menial tasks–and when not menial, then they were often killing or threatening living humans.  Perhaps when our robot overlords of the future (ROOTF) absorb the human interpretation of their early history they will take pity on us for representing their early possibilities in such unfortunate ways–they may get over the images of robots harvesting, pulling wagons, sweeping clergy, squeezing the blood out of workers, savaging scantily clad women of the future, and so on…or they may not.

For other posts on robots, enter “robots” in the google search box at left.  If nothing else, the images are very good.