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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
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| Iron Man Robot With Human Brain | ||
| A huge robot with a tub containing a human brain. |
This is a relatively early description of the idea of a robot that is controlled by a human brain.
It all starts in Amos Klegg's laboratory...
Tlie case, I saw then, was full of a colorless fluid. And there was more, soaking
placidly in the fluid, than a pair of eyeballs.
There was a brain behind the eyeballs,
for one thing. A naked human brain, looking like the specimens you see pickled in
glass jars at a medical school. The brain
rested on a glass shelf near the top of the
case. The eyes projected from the forepart of the wrinkled, grayish lump on
two stalks that resembled antennas. The
stalks, I recognized, were the optic nerves.
Leading down from the brain, like
small trailing power cables, were a score
or more of grayish-white, elastic-looking
tubes. These, as they descended, branched
into four main tubes. And these main
tubes were finally rooted in—a human
heart!
Yes, there was no mistaking it. Lying
on the floor of the case, like a pallid mushroom growth tinged with red, was a
human heart. And what was more—it
was beating.
...Klegg said "It’s the
brain of Tuzloff. You’ve heard of him?”
My eyes opened at that. Heard of
him? Who has not! Bomber, murderer,
outlaw, he had left a grim trail of death
behind him for two years, until an outraged state had finally captured and executed him.
And what would you do with this setup? Put it inside a giant metal robot? Of course you would.
Beside the switchboard was a plate-glass case about a foot square and two
feet high. It was standing on a table. And in it, just under the top, were the
eyes. Two eyes, undeniably human, glared at me.
| Dramatically he jerked the cord that
swept away the canvas from the twenty-foot-high thing it had hidden. And as I
saw what the canvas had concealed, I
gasped and started back a pace.
It was a colossal man, of iron. Or, I should say, it was a grim metal travesty of a man. Two stories up, brushing the roof of the lofty laboratory, was the thing’s "head”—a steel cylinder two feet in diameter and a yard high. In this, to carry out human resemblance, were cut eye-holes. The cylinder was set, like a hat-box atop a hogshead, on a larger cylinder that made up the torso of the monstrous thing. Through the top of the larger cylinder ran a heavy casting, a beam which protruded a yard on either side. These protrusions were the "shoulders” and from them hung cylindrical arms, jointed, and ending in two-clawed pincers that took the place of hands. The whole rested on two ponderous steel columns of legs, and the legs ended in "feet” which were solid metal pyramids with pivot joints at the apices for ankles. "Watch it," said Klegg proudly. He stared at it fixedly, his forehead wrinkling as if in terrific mental concentration. (I found out later that this was sheer theatrics; thought no more profound than a wish for pancakes for breakfast was enough to work the mechanism.) In an instant the monstrous robot was set in ponderous motion. The iron man slowly lifted its right leg, slowly extended it in a forward step, and as slowly set it down. The left leg followed suit. In two strides the enormous thing was almost on top of us. With a cry I leaped aside to avoid being crushed. But it stopped there, obedient to Klegg’s will. |
| Technovelgy from Iron Man,
by Paul Ernst. Published by Weird Tales in 1933 Additional resources -
|
What keeps it from falling over? A gyroscope, run by storage batteries in its chest.
I don't need to tell you, gentle reader, that it all ends badly. The scientist is murdered after he installs the brain in the robot.
Yes, there was mayhem and destruction.
Glinting dully in the reflected light of
street lamps and electric signs was the
iron man, stalking down the street ahead
of me.
Two stories up swayed the cylindrical
head in which were the artificially preserved heart and the mad brain. "Two
stories tall the figure teetered down the
street, like a reeling tower. A three-yard
step. Five seconds while the counterbalanced weights slid in accordance to the
magnetic controls, lifting the other leg
high and lowering it in advance. Another
step. Five seconds. Another step. And
with every step a crashing boom of
twenty tons of metal banging down on
stone paving—or on an automobile or
human body.
Slowly the tower of the body leaned
forward like a falling cliff with each advancing step, straightened as the stride
was taken, leaned backward as the next
was begun. Its giant arms, ending in the
mighty pincers, clanged against its metal
sides as it moved. Back and forth, back
and forth, with each forward lunge carrying it farther toward the heart of the
downtown district—and the theater and
supper crowds teeming there.
The iron man, twenty tons of invulnerable metal, stalking through the
crowded city—directed by the maniacal,
revengeful brain of the mad Tuzloff!
Twenty tons of steel, guided by a soft
gray lump of pure hate in a salt solution!
What horrible possibilities were there!
Street-cars knocked over and demolished, trolley poles broken off like celery
stalks to trail live wires on the pavement,
horrible red blotches everywhere on the
slippery street—a tornado could not have
left a plainer path...
('Iron Man' by Paul Ernst)
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
'These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern...'
'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
