Bert Treacle
Bert Treacle answered
Robot comes from the Czech word robota which means ‘slave’ or ‘forced worker’. The word was popularised and given it current context by the Czech writer Karel Capek when he wrote the play Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1920. Although the play got terrible reviews, its larger contribution to science and culture was the term robot. … Read more
Bert Treacle
Bert Treacle answered
Although robots might appear to be a futuristic concept, clockwork automatons were popular in both Japan and Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, with devices such as the chess-playing Turk and the Japanese tea-serving doll amazing those who encountered them during those periods. In the 1890s, Thomas Edison mass-produced a walking, talking doll which … Read more