Robots in American Popular Culture
Images for Chapters in Part One
Robots are part of the visual arts, each concept typical of the time and place. It was not possible to add the hundreds of images I referenced in my book. This site makes up for that lack, with two centuries of images of robots easily squeezed in.
Each image is keyed to a chapter and its page number. This page contains the Introduction and the ten chapters of Part One.
Click here for Part Two and its chapters.
Scroll horizontally through the slideshow to work through an individual chapter; scroll vertically down to page to find each of the sixteen chapters and the introductions, or click on the Chapter icons below.
INTRODUCTION
The Robot Pre-Computer
CHAPTER 1
The Robot and the Android: The Origin of the Species
Page 11
Karel Čapek, author of R.U.R.
CHAPTER 2
The Heimlich Maneuver: Early Fictional Robots
Page 21
Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
CHAPTER 3
Is It Mechanism or Soul? Robots on the Stage
Page 35
The Times of London, December 22, 1795
CHAPTER 4
The Wonderful Walking Mechanical Men
Page 46-8
Steam man, 1868, Zadock Dederick and Isaac Glass
CHAPTER 5
“Quiet, Please. I’m Talking”: The Westinghouse Family of Robots
![1927-02-23 Elimira [NY] Star-Gazette 1 i](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3a61d0_2a24ee32f76f4120b254f6dd19a9b5d7~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_524,h_511,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/1927-02-23%20Elimira%20%5BNY%5D%20Star-Gazette%201%20i.jpg)
Page 64-7
Roy Wensley and Herbert Televox, 1927
CHAPTER 6
Iron Monster Turns Traitor
Page 74
Otto Whitman (or Widman), with Occultus, 1911
CHAPTER 7
Buck, Flash, Tillie, and Mickey: Robots in Comics Strips
Page 90
Hans Horina, Professor Dodger And His Automatic Servant Girl (November 17, 1907)
CHAPTER 8
A Tribe of Living Mechanical Men!!: Robots in Comic Books
Page 110-11
"The Adventures of ‘Spargus and Chubby,"
The Funnies #2, November 1936
CHAPTER 9
Utterly Alien and Non-Human: The Robot in Golden Age Science Fiction
Page 129
A. Merritt, "The Metal Monster,"
Argosy All-Story Weekly, August 7, 1920, cover by Glen White
CHAPTER 10
The Automation!: Robots in Movies
Page 148
The Electric Leg, UK 1912
Directed by Percy Stow