By Lisa Hix — The term "robot" was coined in the 1920s, so it's tempting to think of the robot as a relatively recent phenomenon, less than 100 years old. After all, how could we bring metal men to life before we could harness electricity and program computers? But the truth is, robots are thousands of years old. The first records of automata, or self-operating machines that give the illusion of being alive, go back to ancient Greece and China. While it's true none of these ancient androids could pass...

From Boy Geniuses to Mad Scientists: How Americans Got So Weird About Science

By Lisa Hix — In her 2016 book, "Innocent Experiments: Childhood and the Culture of Popular Science in the United States," published by the University of North Carolina Press, historian Rebecca Onion explores American ambivalence toward science education over the last two centuries. As she delved into her research, Onion observed that even during the times that adult scientists have been eyed with suspicion, Americans have always loved the idea of the child scientist—specifically little white...

Someday, Robots May Save or Destroy Us All—For Now, They're Still Kinda Dumb

By Ben Marks — In the fall of 1941, with war raging in Europe and Russia, science-fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote a short story set in a far-distant future. The year is 2015, the location, Mercury. There, a couple of interplanetary miners named Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan are having trouble with a robot nicknamed Speedy, who’s been sent onto Mercury’s furnace-like surface to perform what should be a routine task. Unfortunately, Speedy has become confused by the conflicting protocols programmed into...

Where Did All These Fembots Come From?

By Lisa Hix — Today, in 1911, German activist Clara Zetkin launched the first ever International Women’s Day, to honor the political, economic, and social achievements of women worldwide. Certainly over this past century, life has improved for women by leaps and bounds—perhaps at a rate menfolk sometimes found alarming. Lately, we’ve been fascinated with the American fear of robots, something both “Robopocalypse” screenwriter Daniel H. Wilson and post-war toy robot collector Justin Pinchot discussed...

Daniel H. Wilson on Robot Uprisings and Hollywood Sci-Fi Blockbusters

By Lisa Hix — As a kid, I played with lots of robot toys, like Gobots and Transformers. Of course, robots are up there in the pantheon of pop culture icons, along with cowboys, astronauts, and dinosaurs. After I finished an undergraduate degree in computer science, I was trying to decide what to study in grad school, because I knew I didn't want to get a job programming. Looking around, I saw robotics on the list of possible research areas. I couldn't believe that robotics was a real area of study, and...

Retrofuturism: The Year 2000 and Beyond!

By Lisa Hix — In honor of the new decade, our friends over at Brain Pickings have put together a delightful collection of vintage images and videos revealing hopes and dreams of what the next millennium would look like. After World War II, in particular, as toy robot collector Justin Pinchot told me, Americans were full of optimism for a bright future when robots would do all our chores for us. (After all, we had these new-fangled washing machines, self-cooling refrigerators, and convenient...

Vintage Toy Robots: How To Spot The Real Lilliputs From the Repros

By null — In our interview with Justin Pinchot, we didn't have room for a couple of facts and photos: The original Robot Lilliput box (above) is beautiful, conveying the sense of wonder that children had for these mechanical toys. Below are a couple side-by-side comparisons to help you tell an original Lilliput from a repro. Here's how Justin described it in an email to us: "On the Lilliput, you will notice the 'Tin Tom Toy' logo on the repro is different from the 'KT' logo in a fan shape...

Attack of the Vintage Toy Robots! Justin Pinchot on Japan’s Coolest Postwar Export

By Lisa Hix — Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. In the 1960s, it was going into space. In the '40s and '50s, the frontier was technology, with a particular focus on "What's going to make our lives easier?" For the very first time, you had cars with automatic-transmissions, automatic washing machines, and perpetually cooling refrigerators. I mean, we were coming out of an era when you scrubbed your clothes on a washboard and cooled your icebox with a big block of ice. Even the first...

The New Robot Is Your Old Teddy Bear

By Lisa Hix — If you thought Teddy Ruxpin, the 1980s animatronic talking teddy bear, was creepy, you haven’t seen anything yet. According to reports, Fujitsu is working on a line of “Social Robot” teddy bears that are not only animated, they change their behavior based their interactions with humans. This video shows the bear in action. Depending on your cues, these cute-as-a-button bears will chose an appropriate response from hundreds of programmed behaviors—from laughing to waving to wiggling their...