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"Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together."
- Ray Bradbury
 |
| Mechavalet | ||
| An entirely automated dressing assistant. |
| A closet door slid into a wall. A slender machine, five feet tall and with sixteen long metal tentacles rolled across the room on soft rubber wheels.
It looked like a mechanical monster from another world, but it was merely a very efficient machine to undress the house's masters—a mechavalet. The mechavalet paused behind the woman's back. Sixteen rubber-tipped metal tentacles reached out. The machine normally undressed a person with smoothness and gentleness. This time the house made it operate as roughly as possible.
 (Mechavalet from 'The Angry House' by Richard R. Smith) The sixteen tentacles moved swiftly and the machine tore the woman's dress to shreds before she could even scream. |
| Technovelgy from The Angry House,
by Richard R. Smith. Published by Startling Stories in 1955 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the electrical valet from The Lord of Tranerica (1939) by Stanton A. Coblentz and the dressing machine from Roll Out the Rollov! by Christopher Anvil.
See also the automatic valet from Looking Forward: A Dream of the United States of the Americas in 1999 (1899) by Arthur Bird, the butler-valet robot from The Jester (1951) by William Tenn, the robant from The Impossible Planet (1953) by Philip K. Dick, the consumption robots from The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl, the robutler from The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge (1970) by Harry Harrison and the autobutle from The Godmakers (1972) by Frank Herbert.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Angry House
More Ideas
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Tech news articles related to The Angry House
Tech news articles related to works by Richard R. Smith
| 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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'...small electric motors at the principal joints worked the prosthetic framework by means of steel cables...'
'Living protoplasm incorporated into the Ampek F-a2 recording system...'
'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.
