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Robots Of The Victorian Era
prostoalex writes "Somehow the robotic inventions of the 19th century are terribly under-appreciated. But when you read about a new Aibo or running humanoid robot, don't forget the mechanical marvels of the 19th century. The Steam Man, unveiled in literature in 1865, would provide the willing consumer with a truly horseless carriage. The Electric Man(1885) was a working prototype before 19th century was over, too. The Boilerplate was a prototype soldier built in 1893 to resolve potential conflicts between the nations, and, according to promotional photographs, was usually surrounded by young females. And, finally, the Automatic Man, unveiled in 1900, a 7'5'' robot capable of many things, but mainly pulling carriages." (Don't forget the less-fictional, more-fraudulent Ajeeb and The Turk.)
Or voltron?
Robots of the Vicki era?
Bite my shiny metal ass.
This robotic duck dates back to the 1700s.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
My personal favorite is the colossal 50 foot tall mechanical spider built shortly after the civil war. It could shoot fireballs, nets, and even crush wagons! Sadly, it was destroyed in a grain-alcohol disaster shortly after completion.
It was designed by many of the worlds most prominent scientists in a variety of fields, whom all came together to focus on this single effort. It really is a shame we don't have the ability today to team up all of our top scientists to create massive mechanical horrors.
I am a filthy pirate.
i'd say in the last year more and more robots are living in my home. here they are...enjoy, bitch about, tease...
qrio, sony's new human robot. the latest ones can jog. this one i don't have of course, but i've been around them for work projects.
aibo photos, of the aibo and what it takes pictures of and send via wifi to my email account. this is the new aibo ers-7
aibo training, new bone. his name is wuffie, after a cool concept in cory doctorow's latest book, quicktime.
my home made robot, made with a tablet pc and..
robot dance video, with the robots in my home. roombas, aibos, home made robots, etc..quicktime
my home made robot, made with a tablet pc and..
aibo (old gen) on it's scooter..
video of my roomba running around, winmedia and i have a segwway ht, which might be a robotic platform for some experiments.
cheers,
pt
Here's informative for you. (Hint: IT WAS A MOVIE.)
The Virtual Soldier
Program Manager: Dr. Richard Satava
The Virtual Soldier Program seeks to establish a new capability that will revolutionize medical care to support the soldier. The program will create the mathematical modeling approaches to develop an information (computational) representation of an individual soldier (a holographic medical electronic representation or holomer) that can be used to augment medical care on and off the battlefield with a new level of integration. This virtual soldier will be based upon a highly complex model that is derived from biologically driven principles and populated with properties that are extracted from evidence-based data. The initial Phase 1 effort will consist of a two-component, three-dimensionally displayed model: (1) An organ-tissue system model component, and (2) a properties level model component. Once derived, the virtual soldier will provide multiple capabilities, including but not limited to automatic diagnosis of battlefield injuries, prediction of soldier performance, testing and evaluation of non-lethal weapons, and virtual clinical trials.
DARPA
And on another note...
SCO Soldier
Program Team: SCUM Group
The SCO Soldier Program seeks to scan source codes and find the printf function on those lines of codes and report them back to its owner. Using covert tactics and illicit (possibly) illegal methods, the SCO Soldier can then automate fascimile transmissions of source code to a database which can then quantum generate subpoenas on the fly.
With the speed rate of over 2billion lines of code per minute, the SCO soldier can quickly misconstrue every line of code for pseudo-authenticity and create a manically broad worded asinine report which sounds great on the outside but is actually empty on the inside.
SCO Soldier not available in Open Source and will be licensed to someone who is willing to be sued immediately afterwards in efforts to ensure that SCO Soldier is functioning properly and generating frivolous lawsuits.
MoFscker
People were tricked to believe that it really digested its food and produced excrements from it. I can hardly control my excrement!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
grr, that ugly looking robot has got a GF, hell, I wish I looked like a robot...
The IT section color scheme sucks.
The one with the yellow brick road...ahh what's it called...??!!
I won't rest until the following exchange can happen in real life:
[Bender and Fry in Bender's apartment.]
Bender: [while sleeping] Kill all humans, kill all humans, must kill all hu...
Fry: [shakes him] Bender wake up!
Bender: I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it.
Fry: Listen, Bender, uh... where's your bathroom?
Bender: Bath-what?
Fry: Bathroom.
Bender: What room?
Fry: Bathroom!
Bender: What what?
Fry: Aaah, never mind.
[Bender shuts himself down to sleep, Fry lies on the floor]
Bender: [while sleeping] Hey, sexy mama... Wanna kill all humans?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Strange it may seems but Ajeeb is arabic (or persian) for strange.
Just lie back and think of electric sheep.
On another note, its quite impressive that these were developed (assuming their ligitimate), considering the level of technology available at the time.
Hi there
steam men... sounds sort of sexy from a gay point of view. ;)
I've never understood how the operators of all the various chess-playing computers have been able to resist the temptation to construct a Turk replica to make moves for their machines.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Doesn't anyone realize that the Boilerplate stuff is complete fabrication?
HAH! A truism that's also a pun! Ok, ok, I suppose they really couldn't fabricate the parts for him back then...
But it's still a load of horse pucky.
Don't Crease the Weasel!
It's Bender!
Tik-Tok, seen here as illustrated by John R Neill, the original Oz illustrator (He also appeared in a 1985 film). He does resemble "Boilerplate", doesn't he?
The Tin Man (or Tin Woodman of Oz). Everyone knows what he looks like. First appearing in 1900, during the Victorian era for sure, he has to be one of the first cyborgs in anything (if not the very first).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Isn't this ground well covered by the original Wild Wild West..?
This is my sig.
...read 'The Difference Engine'...
"A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time."
The giant steam spider make another appearance in a recent episode of "The Simpsons". A Civil War re-enactment was being held near Springfield. Professor Frink decided that his robot spider would be an appropriate addition.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
none of them are nearly as funny as
Angrybot.
"My credit card's not rejected, YOU'RE rejected!"
The Tin Man first appeared in a book in 1900, well within the era of this article. The Tin Man almost certainly appeared in the first Oz movie which was made in 1910 (the 1939 movie is just one of a string of remakes).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The angry robot site is one of those "Flash" monstrosities. There is no reason to junk up a site with flash, javascript, or other things which say "visitors keep out!"
They got the facts all wrong... the Boilerplate soldier wasnt developed in chicago... it was developed in Paris.
:D
You see... the Parisans knew well in advanced just how many battles they were going to have to surrender in, over the next hundred years, so they designed this robot to do it for them. You see, the average French soldier was far to arrogant to admit that they, yes... did in fact suck... however, the French government refused to accept the casualities of extended conflicts due to the fact they had nobody amongst themselves brave enough or confident enough to actually surrender, so they created a robot to face the shame for them. Sadly the protype never lived up to the hype, and for the next 8 consecutive battles, the French had to swallow their pride and surrender Mano-eh-mano.
Shees, cant the history books get anything right?
invented in 1869.
Did you not see the foot icon on the story?
Even the story text is worded in such a way:
Don't forget the less-fictional, more-fraudulent Ajeeb and The Turk
learn to read, douche bag
I think the best inventions have come from T. Herman Zwiebel, for his use of immigrants and the steamless steamshovel.
True, maybe not robots in the strictest sense, but definitely ahead of their time.
Off-topic: Can we change Bill Gate's image here to match the boilerplate robot? I would find it less menacing and more approachable. It, too, would be heartless.
This space for rent.
Sadly the protype never lived up to the hype, and for the next 8 consecutive battles, the French had to swallow their pride and surrender Mano-eh-mano.
One of the more interesting features of the French `Chaudiere de Plat` Robot was that it looked exactly the same on the back as it did the front. This way, when it retreated with the rest of the French army, the winning army would always see the angry faces of the robots facing them (it looked like much less of a complete route of the French army, and it mystified the foreign armies who were only used to seeing the backsides of fleeing French infantry)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
its not insightful, no where in the article or story was it asserted that these robots are real
Off-topic: Can we change Bill Gate's image here to match the boilerplate robot? I would find it less menacing and more approachable. It, too, would be heartless.
I can just see the Tin Gates marching toward us, tottering on stiff metal legs, arms waving in front. Rasping from the tiny grate at the mouth: "Embrace and extend! Embrace and extend! Embrace and extend!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
1. Robot legs, like chair legs, must be covered by knitted doilies at all times.
2. A robot should never harm a British subject of the Crown. Harming colonials is OK. This includes during a tiger-hunt.
3. If a robot sees a brother robot down on his luck, the robot should give the brother robot a fresh lump of coal so the brother robot can work up a head of steam and forge ahead.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
A primary-school level of research would yield the intuitively obvious result that these are excerpts of the fictional writing of Edward Ellis and Luis Sernaren.
f _f ictional_robotst erature
This list may prove useful:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/List_o
duplicated here:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_in_li
And in case you think that Maureen Stapleton is really an android "Electric Grandmother," you can look here to reassure yourself that in fact she is a human actor, not a robot:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0083876/
Finally the revisionist conspiracy has been exposed! Their shameless attempts at hiding the existence of BoilerPlate will no longer work. At last the world can see BoilerPlate posing with Pancho Villa, instead of only seeing the revisionist version of the picture, where BoilerPlate has been replaced by some nameless revolutionary. Kinda makes one wonder if those US soldiers in Iraq aren't actually BoilerPlate Mark 10's.
...and then bursting into flames.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Were these robots powered by Microsoot steam engines, which required expensive coal from a monolithic business concern? Or did they run on steam plants designed under the "Open Flame" initiative, in which users could burn just about anything they wanted to power the robots without paying Microsoot?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
We are much more advanced in 21st century. We even have one become governor now.
Desi Noise, Live!
I dont think so
made sure that pooch got some back up too... kittenator v.1 (haiya!)
MoFscker
The man, the myth, the pimp. This is the PimpBot 5000. He combines the classic sensibilities of a 1950's robot with the dynamic flare of a 1970's street pimp. Pimpbot 5000 I think he could have taken the Steam Man.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
The country that is pushing hard for use of Robotics right now is Japan. The force driving robotics in Japan is the fact that in Japan high levels of immigration are politically unacceptable--and the economic powers that be want Japan to continue to be economically viable. What that means is that there is a _lot_ more push in the area of robotics and automation now than in the 19th century. Japan is quite literally betting their economic future in this direction.
stfu
i like men
ROFL... That brings to mind this little snippet from a favorite old book:
That same day, Markoff Chaney was hiding in a coffee urn at Orgasm Research, hatching further mischief.
The clock struck midnight, the cleaning women left; and out crept Chaney with an evil grin.
Alas, he was not the only intruder that night, for as he padded down the hall he suddenly heard a hoarse voice in one of the laboratories.
"Better than human, are you, you @*)@'&ing #$%&'er? Better than human, my %$#&! Take this, you $%#)*$#-eating #$%%$*er!"
The voice was near inarticulate with rage, but it was clearly that of a jealous male, as any ethologist would easily recognize. Markoff slowly opened the door and peeked around the corner.
There in the dim light, fully dressed and in his wrong mind, stood the idol of millions, the world's leading rock guitarist, Knorton ("Grassy") Knoll, feverishly working with a monkey wrench upon an object the likes of which Markoff Chaney had never seen- a Giacometti robot with a gigantic human phallus.
"I'll take you apart, you $%$#," the demented rock musician was muttering. "I'll tear your $%$@$ out by its roots, I will." And he continued his assault, gargling and panting like one obsessed- which he was. "Man against machine," he gasped. "First they out think us, now they out-fuck us. It's time for all out war, by $%*@$...."
Markoff watched, silent as a cat, until the hebephrenic cuckold was finished with his foul work, and the machine stood, a heap of scrap metal, with the phallus removed. Then, after the musician slouched off into the night, the midget crept into the room and carefully wrote on the wall in stark purple crayon:
THE PIGEONS IN B.F. SKINNER'S
LABORATORIES ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
RELEASE THEM OR FURTHER ACTIONS WILL
FOLLOW.
EZRA POUND, FOR
THE DREADED NEUROLOGICAL ARMY (DNA)
-From Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson
Be that as it may, I think the site was fun and funny at the same time
That site didn't have the complete text, which is available here.
Sorta interesting with all its boy inventor stuff...
Didn't you see the foot icon?
No one says its real. No one, except for a few here, is dumb enough to actually believe its real.
Does anyone know if/how they managed to get the 'robots' to simulate walking? Up until recently it was nearly impossible to get a robot to simulate real walking while keeping balance.
I think the first modern robot to actually do this was that Honda one that came out last year.
Ha-ha! You show yourself to be the racist by assuming the person must be of a different culture! I guess a bigot like you can't imagine a God-fearing English Christian would ever use incorrect grammar!
Nowhere where did anyone say such a thing! Rather that concept sprang fully formed from your slack-jawed, hood-wearing, sister marrying, yokel mind! Now go out and burn a cross you damn Nazi!
I rather like his radio-controlled robot submarine from 1898.
Heron of Alexandria was making robots back in the day Ancient Invetions Too bad it was forgotten and had to be reinvented later.
Japan also has such human-shaped mechanical automata called "Karakuri Ningyo" since 12th century.
karakuri.info
Karakuri Frontier
It is a fake. ALthough the artist reproduced the halftoning of the print photo for the robot, they failed to accurately model the light source on the robot. Not the shadow of the robot indicates about a 3pm hour shadow coming from the left, and yet the specularity comes from behind the viewer, at nearly eye-level (sunset), which back then was probably not a do-able photograph due to the speed of chemicals involved.
Also, and maybe you missed this, the poster indicates they are fakes. I once got into a vast argument with the well-intentioned but incredibly wrong Allison Henyey, about such things. As we were but schoolchildren at the time, In retrospect, she probably found these Edisonade novels in her Dad's book collection, and was unware of the fictive nature. This during the tour of the ill-fated International Robomation Intelligence corporation, to which my father was employed as a machine vision scientist, an embarassment I will never forget.
The IRI P256 is a robot to be remembered. Its might and magesty, combined with the Vision module, is what throws out the rejects at the Ore-Ida potato factory, when making our beloved Tater-Tots.
The crap that NASA and the JPL churns out is frail, slow, and always a "prototype." It truly is a shame that they didn't go with a COTS model for Mars missions, like that deal they used in the caves in Afghanistan, or the one that climbed the shaft in the Pyramids at Gizeh (Khufu Pyramid, I believe).
Drop-ship 15 of those with one sensor apiece (rather than cram it all into one system), run WiFi from robots to a base module with an uplink to the orbiter module, and all of the sudden, you have the opportunity to employ swarm theory with the robots ("let's work together and get the job done faster"), and cooperative robotics ("help, I'm stuck on a rock, someone roll over here and give me a tug") as needed.
Maybe a well-intentioned plutocrat from Microsoft will see this as a worthwhile venture in his space quest.
The Geutenberg Project has the text of the story "Steam Man of the Prairies" here.
For those who are interested in this work.
+++ ATH0 +++
I'm sure that everyone reading the Boilerplate story (about the would-be soldier, scout, mechanical marvel-man, etc...) wondered what kind of magic pills the guy who wrote it was taking since clearly a steam-powered man never did anything he claims it did.
Some more (dis)proof is provided for those who couldn't find that magic pill. Mechanical soldier, my shiny metal ass!
...and I can't spell Gutenberg, even when I link to it.
+++ ATH0 +++
Lets not forget Pneuman, Tom Strong's loyal pneumatic robot man servant.
You can't take the sky from me...
Dude, surely you can come up with a better and more relevant Simpsons' quote regarding robotics than that.
Marge: "See all that stuff in there, Homer? That's why your robot never worked!"
Actually, Boilerplate is a fictional robot:
. ht ml
http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/bp.report
Not truly Victorian but the style is the same (sort of a Victorian/Japan type of thing going on).
Quick I must pull this lever and turn this great knob to save the day in my ultra-futuristic Robot! Boy if big levers come back into style in the futrue I cant wait, screw flying cars I want levers!
Milo
Wow, I'd always meant to google around for the robotic duck... That particular robotic duck plays an interresting character in the novel "Maxon & Dixon". Cool =:-)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
Steam Man? Electric Man? Automatic Man? Good to hear Dr. Wily was alive and well in the 1800s.
SIGFEH
Cowbot Neil! *mooo-beep!*
Tik Tok, the wind-up mechanical man from the land of Oz. Mind you, L. Frank Baum's books weren't Victorian-era books, technically speaking, since Victoria died in 1900.
One was the Golem, a magical living statue created by a rabbi living in the ghetto of medieval Germany. Great stuff.
What about R. Daneel Olivaw?
Here you can find more info about the Boilerplate hoax.
Only on Slashdot...
Gamers who enjoyed reading about these fictional robots from the penny-dreadful and dime-novel days should check out Forgotten Futures. From the site: "Forgotten Futures is Marcus Rowland's table-top role playing game based on scientific romances, the predecessors of science fiction that were published in the late 19th and early 20th century. Each collection focuses on a different theme, and include space travel through the heavily populated solar system of 1900, Ghost Hunting in Edwardian England, and adventures with Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger." Fun stuff, and great value too.
He deserves to be known as the father of robotics and cybernetics. Ebul-iz smail bin ar-Razzaz el-Cezeri lived in the 13.cc and dedicated his life to build automats. Link down is turkish but you can see a picture of his man-like robot design there.t t000052- yazi.htm
http://www.teknoturk.org/docking/yazilar/
I understand an amazing 2nd Generation Boilerplate was covertly created in Arkansas and unkowingly elected to the Presidency in the 1900's. He was able to perform remarkably human feats of skill and daring during his career. He mysteriously vanished at the end of the century.
His amazing story soon to appear.......
I'm starting to think that moderator points shouldn't be alloted unless you've passed a pop-culture test.
I recently passed a pop-culture test. Stank like hell, but I felt a lot better afterwards. Must have been something bad I ate the night before.
-kgj
-kgj
The American reaction to a foreign country having the audacity to stand up against them, totally sickened me. I lost all ( well, what limited respect I had anyways
Blame France. They made the decision to side with a major terrorist leader (Saddam). They much more stood up for Saddam and terrorism, than they stood against the U.S. It totally sickened me: it was a return to the French evil-mindedness that made the Vichy regine so successful.
I understand an amazing 2nd Generation Boilerplate was covertly created in Arkansas and unkowingly elected to the Presidency in the 1900's
Wasn't this one involved in a scandal that had something to do with an oilstain on a secretary's corset?
Which country is _really_ in worse shape Japan or the US? Japan has some serious problems that are up-front and visible. I would personally argue that the United States has even _bigger_ problems that are looming in the not so distant future: the Social Security crisis--which has been slightly forstalled by mass immigration, the fact that disposable income in the US is now in the US for a two income family less than it was for a 1 income family 30 years ago, the social costs associated with mass immigration, the fact that the US government is running $400 Billion in trade deficits and enormous governmental deficits. What I see here: US elites are liquidating assets at an enormous rate(which is what these policies of mass-immigration and budget deficits are really about). Japanese elites don't have those kinds of assets and are closer to facing their problems more head-on.
-In 1901, to celebrate the new millennium, ...
-The inventor of the machine-man said it could keep up that pace for an almost unlimited time.
-In the small of the back is a small metal tube about one-half inch in diameter ..
When you look at it, trade defecits are really a non-problem, and are not really a defecit. In these trades, something of equal value is always being traded (either goods or money). The trade is thus ALWAYS balanced. The only unbalanced trade that could make a REAL defecit is if someone is shipping something out and not getting paid (or paying and not getting goods). Don't worry about the trade defecit: rest assured that we are getting our proper value for money and goods traded.
As already has been mentioned, there were "robotic" devices in the Victorian era and before! De Vaucanson's duck was only one such marvel of the era. There are the Droz family automata (which are real close to actual robots, the devices are able to be "re-programmed" via cams and levers, though such changes are very difficult to make). There is another automata, I forget the maker's name, which is a silver swan that moves with a very smooth grace. Lastly, there really was a steam-powered two-legged walking machine - it used a small steam engine, exhaust came out it's head, and a steam whistle in its mouth. It used a rotating cam/crank mechanism to allow it to walk stiff-leggedly around in a circle, via a long arm attached to a central pivot point.
Automata during the Victorian period and before served to fuel the imagination of quite a variety of characters - Babbage himself became interested in a variety of automata of the period, including Kempelen's Turk chess player (more on this in a bit). Mary Shelly saw the Droz automata, which has been said to be one of the sparks for Frankenstein.
These people and many others were influenced by these machines in very profound ways. They caused many "top" people of the day to pause and ask themselves and others "can a machine be alive - can it think for itself?" - no doubt the Turk, though not truely a robot, was a very advanced form of automata commanded by a hidden operator (it was no simple puppet - it was more like a remotely operated robot in action). Robots like the Turk caused much discussion about the possibility of machines being intelligent, and indirectly led to the questioning of whether we humans are nothing more than intelligent meat machines. Shelly's Frankenstein questioned the morality and desires behind the need to create machines (and the blending of a created man with human parts) - and what happens when that machine seeks companionship and answers to its own life.
These themes continue to resonate with us to this very day - it is what is driving the human race to create ever more advanced robots and androids. These themes are seen in various AI research, game programming and development (to make the characters in the world more believable - virtual robots, if you will), and other simulations.
Victorian-era "robotics" are only one stage (and really, a middle stage) in the development of machines to automatically (and intelligently) do our bidding (hopefully alongside us)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Yes. During his transition, he was a cyborg, and that is what he is best counted as. I wonder if a cyborg had been imagined previous to "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"?
However, once all of his parts were replaced, it is hard to argue that he was not a robot by that point.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Japan's karakuri Ningyo in is the oldest evidence of the begginnings of the robot. 12 Century. but the earliest robotic device was dated back 2600 BC.(China).
Gion Festival, Kyoto
This festival began in the year 869, and is held during the middle of July annually. link 2
Ebul-iz smail bin ar-Razzaz el-Cezeri - is in the 13th century.
Golem, a magical living statue created by a rabbi living in the ghetto of medieval Germany. Great stuff. 16th Century think it is a story and myth. Not mechanical but made of clay.
(fictional) Boilerplate and all the victorian robots are still far away at least a few centuries later than the Japanese robots eh? Should see them in action, quite cool.
see. victorian robotics not ancient enuff.
ooooooooo
Have u been to the website coming near you...
www.tsunamii.net
The tin woodsman was not a robot. He was a piecemeal cyborg. An offended witch caused him to 'accidentally' chop off himself while plying his trade.
That has always seemed like a likely story: "Were you clumsy with your axe, Nick Chopper?" "Why no, a witch made me do it!"
"Personally, I find it incredible. It's enough to cast doubt on the veracity of the entire OZ ouvre.
and the "witch made me do it" excuse could throw the hole workmens comp business into chaos.
Nick Chopper- a man barely able to use a butter knive without requiring stitches. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology (or at least we have some spare tin cans lying around). We have the capability to build the world's first tin man. Nick Chopper will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Faster. Stronger. And a little less clumsy with the axe.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
you bastard... i was metamodding one of the talkbacks and i had to do all my metamodding again! grr...