Flying Cars and Food Pills
Robot Articles
Robots in American Popular Culture grew out of my Flying Cars and Food Pills website. It examines the capital "F" Future from the dawn of the industrial revolution through the glory days of Golden Age science fiction and down to that Future's highest peak (and lowest valley) The Jetsons. Robots were one aspect of that Future. Collected here are links to the Robots section of Flying Cars and Food Pills, with early robot stories you can find nowhere else and articles on some fascinating aspects of the history of robots. They closely complement my book and sometimes have the space to go deeper into that subject. Articles are listed in roughly chronological order.
From 1869, a never-reprinted story about an automaton a half-century ahead of its time., with an introduction.
The first story to combine an automaton with the phonograph to make a talking robot.
An 1899 story by Elizabeth Bellamy about men and women and the "Automatic Household Beneficent Genius," with an Introduction.
Take Bellamy's plot, switch the sexes, and presto - instant story. W. M. Stannard's swipe, with an Introduction.
![19111001 [Washington, DC] Evening Star,](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3a61d0_d35f66e0f7094f94bb595423f06cf43f~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_0,y_132,w_760,h_722/fill/w_121,h_115,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/19111001%20%5BWashington%2C%20DC%5D%20Evening%20Star%2C%20.jpg)
A robot is the perfect helper, unless he never stops. Meet Percy the mechanical marvel of 1911.
For 50 years inventors pursued the dream of walking robots, many of them in the spirit of Percy, the Mechanical Man.
Houdini launched his bid for movie stardom in 1919 by battling The Automaton!
Bauhaus modernism created a dance of humans stripped to pure form and movement; cyborgs in motion.
Does Bender from Futurama look like an old robot or do all old robots look like Bender?
Pre-teen Eddie invents atomic power, rocket cars, and his robot pal Frankie Stein.
The world's most famous mouse fights robots in a imagined future.
