Before the digital age, a cigarette-smoking android was America's first celebrity robot
Long before programmable computers, the late 1930s offered a glimpse of a mechanical future. This video explores the history of automatons and the era of Elektro the Moto Man, a wisecracking, moonwalking android that captivated the public.
The concept of autonomous machines spans millennia, from the mechanical women crafted by the Greek god Hephaestus to the sophisticated clockwork figures of the Middle Ages that could sing or play chess. While the term 'robot' only entered the lexicon via Karel Čapek’s 1920 play, Rossum’s Universal Robots, the dream of sentient machinery predates modern technology.
The video highlights a pivotal moment in the late 1930s with the appearance of Westinghouse's Elektro the Moto Man. As the world's first celebrity robot, this android performed feats like moonwalking and smoking cigarettes, providing a theatrical precursor to the programmable machines that would eventually emerge during the digital electronics revolution of the 1960s and 70s.
Source: The Incredible Westinghouse Elektro Android
