Where we're going, we don't need batteries.
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Not as dark as we thought.
Like 'throwing matches on a pile of kindling'.
And it's coming from exactly where you think.
Smarter pest control.
One of the first authors to imagine a kind of robot, this time made of meat, was a woman: Mary Shelley. His Frankenstein Monster (1823) addressed the fear of a Faustian pact with Promethean echoes. Eighty years later, another woman conceived another mechanical robot but made of wax at a time when plastic or steel did not yet exist: Handcuffs are made to order, of Alice W. Fuller (1895).
The first robot considered as such, and in the real world, would arrive a little later: in 1939. Its name was ELECTRO.
ELEKTRO, the first android
ELECTRO, this is the nickname of the first robot in history and was conceived by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Elektro was two meters tall, weighed 120 kg, could walk by voice command and say 700 words (thanks to a 78 rpm phonograph). In addition, he smoked cigarettes, blew up balloons, and moved his head and arms.
Joseph Barnett, an engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation, used cutting-edge technology to create this first humanoid
Its body consisted of a steel gear and cam skeleton, and its photoelectric "eyes" could distinguish red and green light. Its brain consists of 48 electrical relays that function like a telephone switchboard.
Elektro was on display at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and returned the following year with its companion sparki, a robot dog that could bark and sit.
Elektro participated in films such as: Sex Kittens Go to College from the year 1960, and appeared in the newspaper comic strip The Amazing Spider-Man. In 1992, the dance band Meat Beat Manifesto produced the song "Original Control (Version 2)" which included fragments of Elektro's monologues, quoting lines such as "I am Elektro" and "My brain is larger than yours."
An Elektro robot was seen in the November 24, 2019 episode of Mr.Robot , located in a Queens Museum storage room that was near the site of the Original 1939 and 1964 World's Fair.
It is currently owned by Mansfield Memorial Museum. In 2013, Elektro was displayed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
Someday, perhaps, we will be surrounded by robots made of atoms, or maybe bits (given our tendency to dematerialize the world). Be that as it may, perhaps we will disappear, engulfed by a new way of life or a viral conception of exponential reproduction. That's enough for another science fiction story, like the one I'm telling you here:
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The news
This was the first robot in history and could say up to 700 words out loud and smoked cigarettes
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
In 2016, the number of patents filed in the United States was three times higher than those registered in 1995. In other words, it is good news for Americans.
However, the number of new patents (mechanical devices, composite materials, new medicines, etc.), in that same period of time, the figure for India was 7 times higher. And China's figure was 72 times higher..
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For decades, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has been the world's most important agency dedicated to protecting innovation, but this could change in a few years, as it predicts Mauro F. Guillén in his book 2030: Traveling towards the end of the world as we know it:
The clash also takes place between companies. Those that come from emerging markets are getting larger every day, while European and American companies are reducing in size, with some notable exceptions, such as technology companies. But even within the technology sector, Chinese and Indian companies are growing, not only because of the size of the population they serve, but also because there are more connected people using their digital services.
Because in China and India there are already more users of broadband, social networks and mobile payments than in the United States. And this gap is not going to stop increasing..
Alibaba is a larger company than Amazon, Didi has just taken over Uber's operations in China and India boasts of employing more technicians and engineers in the information technology sector than the United States.
The world is changing more and more rapidly. The middle class has stagnated, or even shrank, in Europe and the United States, but is growing wildly in China and India. Within a decade, the differences will begin to be abysmal. We will have to start learning languages, or even move to another country.
–
The news
The number of patents does not stop growing, but it does so especially in China
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.