Imagine, it is the 1960s and you are a child. It is your Birthday today, and you have almost finished unwrapping all your presents. This last one, from your Uncle, is very small, but his smile suggests it will be awesome. You had asked for a robot, but you know you probably won't get it - they are very expensive after all. When you unwrap your last present though, you are thrilled to see a tiny robot. It is the smallest you've ever seen, and so clever the way its arms wind it up.
When I took this little robot toy to show the children, they were thrilled. They always love the old toys I bring to show them, and are endlessly fascinated to see 'moving' toys which don't need batteries to work. They were intrigued by the mechanism of this little robot, which has wind up arms instead of a key. The children had only seen keyed toys before, and were surprised to see that there were other mechanisms before batteries.The thing which surprised the children most though was just how far back the history of robots dates.
Although robots are often seen as a symbol of modern life and the future, they have a surprisingly long history, possibly dating right back to ancient times. There are stories of artificial humans which could walk, sing, dance and communicate from ancient China, as well as evidence that simple robots existed in ancient Greece. Some of these robots, known as automatons, were birds and others were humans, some of which could apparently speak. Aristotle even thought that automatons might bring about equality in the human race by doing away with the need for slaves! The Asian world continued with its interest in automatons throughout the middle ages, but in the western world interest appears to have waned, or at least there are no records of automatons. Leonardo da Vinci did design a humanoid robot though, in about 1495. This automaton was a knight which could move its arms and legs, sit up and move its head and jaw. After this, between 1500 and 1800 there were many automatons created, some of which could apparently even fly! These 'robots' were purely for entertainment though, like the much more modern toy I showed the children. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that automatic machines began to be created to perform specific jobs, like weaving.
Of course, none of these robots looked or probably even acted like we expect modern robots to. More modern robots were a creation of the 20th century, as was the word robot. The word was popularised in a 1921 Czech play Rossum's Universal Robots. Apparently the word comes from the Czech robota, which means servitude. The 1920s were an important time for robots, with the first to ever appear on film (not a real robot, but played by an actress) appearing in the 1927 film Metropolis, the worlds first robot as we know it being created in the same year in the U.S (its name was Televox and it operated through the telephone system) and Japans first robot, Gakutensoku, being created in 1928. Throughout the 20th century, robots continued to improve and after 1950 they rapidly became more and more complex, and they continue to do so today, including in robotic toys.
