Automation and Robots: Iron Man, an Automated Bowery Hotel, and a Fortune Teller (1932)

JF Ptak Science Books   2771

“All things are leading to Man's Machine Made Millenium”--maxim by Hudson Maxim

There are a number of posts to this blog on the coming of the “robotic” and the modern automatic age(s), though they are mostly concerned with the period from anthropomorphic steam preachers of 1840 to the 1930s. Admittedly there's not a lot of “robots” in the 19^th c lit but there are some; and of course there's a fair amount of basic automation that takes place in the 19^th c as well—but things really start to heat up in the 20^th c. (It should be remember that just after the turn of the 19^th c that “Ned Ludd's” followers weren't what they are confused with being today—they weren't resistant to technology and innovation, so long as those new machines didn't take away their means of supporting themselves, which was their real bone of contention. After all, there have been automated machines that have taken jobs from folks going back thousands of years. All of that is a huge story, and today all I'm concerned with in the present entry is robotics (such as they were) and automation (ditto) for an article and a couple of picture-posts from Popular Mechanics for 1932.

And by “robots” I'm not talking about the the sophistication of AI and the Singularity; mainly they are posts about the first or early ventures in replacing some aspect of human activity with a machine. The Pop Mech article that addresses this in very simple terms: “The Automatic Age, Millions in Pennies” appearing in the October issue, does come close to using the term and concept of “automation” here, though that word does not make an official appearance in this context for another 16 years. The discussion in the article is on curious applications for machines, like penny fortune teller dolls, automated public hair dryers, and “drink dialers” (after the deposit of a nickel you would use a telephone dialer to order your favorite beverage). There's also some recognition of an automatic grocery which was “devoid of time-wasting conversation” with store clerks, the machine also being equipped with a “mechanical brain” to make change as your dropped in your dime for some 5-cent canned corn. Also among the moderns here were “pin” (pinball machines of a sort) games, automatic scales, and a very odd phrenological device. Plus: there's a short note on the first coin-operated hotel, this one being opened on the Bowery...The Bowery, the home of America's “Forgotten Men”. If you dropped two bits into the automated room opener you were allowed into a “tiny room” where the renter was allowed a “cot, hooks, hangers, a chair, a mirror, wash basin, soap, a towel, and privacy for the night”.

Following on the heels of this article was a short notice on “reading and whistling” “Iron Man”, which just looks sad. And then, but to a lesser extent, there was another automated man, of a sort. A machine that eliminated the need for a person to run a scoreboard at a basketball game. A small wink towards the future, though at the time this was a lovely and wonderful small innovation.

In any event I was a little surprised to see the attention paid I this half year volume of Popular Mechanics to “the automatic present”.

Notes:

Here's a few definitions of “automation” from the Oxford English Dictionary:

1948: American Machinist 21 Oct. in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.  I. 676/2. “Automation, the art of applying mechanical devices to manipulate work pieces into and out of equipment, turn parts between operations, [etc.].”

1953: Manchester Guardian Weekly 3 Dec. 15/2  “ Many factories are spending large sums on ‘automation’, that is, the adoption of automatic machines working together with little labour.”

1660:  H. More Explan. Grand Myst. Godliness ii. iii. 37   “God will not let the great Automaton of the Universe be so imperfect. (first appearance 1616 though this.”

Also this, assigning a more definite place for the word to originate:

1948: ”in the manufacturing sense, coined by Ford Motor Co. Vice President Delmar S. Harder, from automatic+ ion. Earlier (1838) was automatism , which meant "quality of being automatic" in the classical sense.: Online Etymology Dictionary, by Douglas Harper