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"I think we're still on that topic, still trying to figure out what computers are, how they change us, why we use them."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Robot-Surgeon | ||
| A perfect robot for perfected human beings. |
In the story, Rex starts out as a doctor for other robots, but eventually learns what he needs to know about human beings.
| IT WAS a thing of glistening levers and bell cranks, of flexible shafting, cams, and delicate mechanical fingers, of vacuum tubes and photo-electric cells, of relays that clicked in ordered sequence when called upon to perform their myriad functions, of pumps, tanks, condensers, reactances, microphones, and loud-speakers. A robot, created by the master scientists of the twenty-third century.
 (Rex the Robot-Surgeon) The robot-surgeon, it was sometimes called. And indeed the term was most appropriate, for this robot was chief of the mechanicals ; its control tubes and relays provided the ability not only to diagnose swiftly and unerringly the slightest electrical or mechanical faults of the lesser robots but to supervise their correction... Rex peered into a white-walled room where human surgeons operated on human patients. He observed that their procedure was much the same as his own ; that they dissected the body or head or other portions of human anatomy and made repairs in similar manner to that which he used on his own robot patients. Forthwith, he began, in the library, an intensive study of the human brain and anatomy. |
| Technovelgy from Rex,
by Harl Vincent. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1934 Additional resources -
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| Robots Repair And Modify Themselves |
| Robot Janitors Get To Work |
| Robots Learn To Install Charged Batteries Into Themselves |
| Robot Rabbits Entice Pythons |
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'Twoflower's Luggage, which was currently ambling along on its little legs...'
'He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains...'
'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
This is nothing new for science fiction fans!
