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"What I have in my stories is ethics. Ethics and morality are very different cups of tea. I adhere to a very strict rigor of personal ethics and I demand it of those around me as well."
- Harlan Ellison
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| Robot | ||
| A (usually human-shaped) artifact with the same kinds of abilities as a human - this is the first use of the word 'robot'. |
This play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) premiered in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1921. The word "robot" comes from the Czech word robota, which means "drudgery" or "servitude"; a robotnik is a serf who performs menial labor.
| Domin: "Practically speaking, what is the best kind of worker?" Helena: "The best? Probably the one who-- who-- who is honest-- and dedicated." Domin: "No, it's the one that's the cheapest. The one with the fewest needs... [Young Rossum] chucked out everything not directly related to work, and [in] doing that he virtually rejected the human being and created the Robot." |
| Technovelgy from R.U.R.,
by Karel Capek. Published by Not Available in 1920 Additional resources -
|
Although today we usually think of the word "robot" in association with some sort of electromechanical being made of metal and spare parts, the artifact in the play R.U.R. is closer to what we would call an android. The robots were fabricated in a biological manner.
They remember everything, while at the same time thinking of nothing new; one of the characters remarks that "they'd make fine university professors."
Capek himself credits his brother Josef Capek as the originator of the term "robot". The play was issued in an English translation in 1923, introducing the term to the English-speaking world.
The New York Times on 13-Aug-1922 printed this announcement from the upcoming production of the play:
It appears that Isaac Asimov, rightly famed for his collection of stories about robots, was the originator of associated terms like "robotics" and "roboticist".
The idea of an artificial person is quite old. The ancient Greek legend of Cadmus, who sowed dragon teeth that turned into soldiers, is one example. Another is the story of Pygmalion, an artist so great that one of his beautiful sculptures, Galatea, came to life. The Greeks also tell of Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods, who created metal mechanical figures; the mythical mechanical creation Talos defended Crete.
Capek himself recognized that his "robota" were recreations of the golem, a creation of Jewish folklore. The golem is formed of earth or clay in a roughly human shape and then animated by religious or magical forces.
The Greek genius Ctesibius of Alexandria created clocks that activated simple automata at set times in the third century B.C. His machines and automata were described in a First Century A.D. document by Heron of Alexandria.
See the term andy from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick for another look at non-mechanical robots. Also, compare to the autonomous digging machine from The War of the Worlds (1898) by HG Wells and to the steam man from The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868) by Edward S. Ellis.
"The drama deals with an invention of Dr. Rosum, who succeeded in producing a human automaton, which differed from man only for the fact that it had no soul nor power of reproducing itself. These robots were by all means better for use in factories and in armies, making cheap labor material, and not causing any troubles as strikers. The firm of Rosum, Ltd., supplied robots in thousands to all parts of the world. Later the robots organize and wage a war against the people, during which the robots destroy all human beings, and in the end destroy also the factory where they were made, killing all engineers save one. After that they realize that they must all die, leaving no children. The last man makes every effort to create soul in the bodies of robots, but without avail. Life must, however, go on on the earth, and at the end the robots make a startling discovery that they have a soul as well. They begin to feel, to laugh and to fear, and finally reproduce themselves."
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from R.U.R.
More Ideas
and Technology by Karel Capek
Tech news articles related to R.U.R.
Tech news articles related to works by Karel Capek
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- Wakamaru Robot Receptionists Hired By Temp Agency
- RunBot Learns To Walk At Human Speed
| Mornine Sales Robot |
| Bipedal Robot Floats Gently While Walking |
| YES!! Remote Teleoperated Robots predicted by Technovelgy! |
| Will Robots Ever Fold Landry? |
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