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"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."
- Isaac Asimov
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| Robot Hands | ||
| Human-like appendages for the ends of upper limbs. |
As far as I know, the first use of the phrase "robot hands" in science fiction.
| As a man, Hugh Grimes had died nearly a thousand years before. Convicted of murder, he had been sentenced to death on January 2, 2000. But the robot of the man whose body he had destroyed had interceded for him — had even assisted in the delicate operation which had transferred his brain to the glass skull case and given him a thousand years of robot life.
Despite the intercession of Albert Bradshaw, Grimes still bated him. For at some time during the operation, the precentral cortex of his brain had been injured. And so, instead of sending the correct electrical impulses to the delicate mechanism of the robot as they! had sent them to his motor nervous system in life, they were faulty. As a result, his robot hands shook like those of a man with paralysis agitans, and one foot dragged when he walked...
...Drawing a long pair of rubber gloves over his shaking robot hands. Grimes plunged them into the solution surrounding the suspended brain, and released the clamps. |
| Technovelgy from The Iron World,
by Otis Adelbert Kline. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1937 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the mechanical hand from Buck Rogers, 2430 AD (1929) by Philip Nowlan (w/D. Calkins), microhands from Microhands (Микроруки) (1931) by Boris Zhitkov, iron fingers from The Death's Head Meteor (1931) by Neil R. Jones, waldoes from Waldo (1942) by Robert Heinlein, robot surgeon-hand from War Veteran (1955) by Philip K. Dick, robotic hand from The Door Into Summer (1956) by Robert Heinlein, interchangeable hands from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) by Philip K. Dick, surgical hand from Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964) by Philip K. Dick and office hand from The Human Blend (2010) by Alan Dean Foster.
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'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
