and gentlemen, let me present the most famous robot of the 1930s:
Elektro, the Westinghouse Motoman. This gigantic golden
mechanical man performed daily before packed houses at the
Westinghouse pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Mention
the word "robot" to anyone before 1950 and odds are he'd be thinking
of Elektro, which is interesting when you think about how quickly he
slipped out of popular culture. By the '60s, it was difficult to even
find photographs of the old tin. Bad agent, I guess.
Standing on a
platform high above the crowds, Elektro would go through his paces under voice control of his operator, who spoke his
commands into a
telephone handset as a light flashed in a hole in Elektro's midriff. Elektro
needed his operator to enunciate every word in a slow, stilted voice.
This seemed strange, since it appeared as if Elektro
could apparently understand colloquial English, but what he was really
reacting to was the pattern of sounds that the
operator spoke rather
than the words.
With a loud
electrical whine, Elektro would walk about the stage in a slow slide
that betrayed the rollers on his feet. Despite his bulk, he was
pretty much a hollow tin, as his operator could turn Elektro with a
light push of one hand. Other exciting things that Elektro could
do was move his head and arms, count on his fingers, recognise colours, smoke cigarettes, and talk.
Is that Vegas I hear calling? Elektro was basically a
service that actually performed the duties spoken to him by his
operator. Even at this time, Elektro was answering to services and
duties usually done by humans. Elektro was, among many things, a
robot, a child recognizing colors and counting, a live answering
service, a clown blowing up balloons, a man of the time, smoking like
it had no repercussions and more. What other duties would Elektro have
dabbled in had he been around longer?
William Jennings Bryant,
Elektro was not. His
delivery was at odds with his tendency to call people "Toots" and make
bad jokes. Well, you can't really blame him, seeing as he had a
brain of only "forty eight electrical relays."