Whenever doing research on past robots of the future I usually have to wade through a lot of exaggeration, distortion, and lies. The hundreds of articles that I've read from the 1920s through the present often describe robots doing things that would be incredibly difficult, even for the robots of 2009. It is much easier when I stumble upon a news story like this one, from the May 26, 1933 Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA).
That's a dude with glass goggles on his eyes. No question. Still, a fun vision of the future. You can read a few article about this California fakebot here.
Previously on Paleo-Future:
The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)
Our Dread of Robots (1932)
"I Can Whip Any Mechanical Robot" by Jack Dempsey (1930s)
Robots vs. Musicians (1931)
The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Mammy vs Robot (Charleston Gazette, 1937)
Restaurant Robots (1931)
Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)
All's Fair at the Fair (1938)
I'll bet that dude was just good at doing the robot before it was called, you know, doing the robot. He's a great historical figure in twentieth century american dance, really.
ReplyDeleteOakland is a very advanced place. This actually inspired RoboCop - the real one - not that trumped up Hollywood version.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that you could get teeth painlessly extracted for 50 cents, but a sandwich and beer was 75 cents. I remember it cost me $1100 to get my four wisdom teeth removed a couple years ago, at that rate, a sandwich and beer should cost about $413 today!
ReplyDeleteso marvellous is this mechanical man. wonder why he wasn't produced at large scale. :)
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