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
.