Elektro, the Moto-Man, Is a Friendly “Frankenstein” (1939)

Remembering reading about Elektro as a kid — had a whole children's book from the 70s detailing various robots that presented them as in-use for a range of activities from security to factories, which in retrospect seemed selling the capabilities quite a bit.

Surprised that this wasn't a Mechanical Turk-style set up, but it did seem to actually respond to "voice commands," though with some clever (if brittle) hacks:

> An operator gave voice commands to Elektro through a microphone, but the robot didn’t actually understand the words. According to an article in the August 1939 issue of Radio-Craft magazine, the voice commands were carefully timed syllabic codes, which were turned into electrical pulses by a grid-glow tube [PDF]. The pulse opened a shutter in front of a lightbulb, sending a flash signal across the room to a photoelectric tube in the robot’s control unit, located offstage. This “electric eye” translated the signal into an electric current and transmitted it through telephone relays to start Elektro’s gears whirring.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/elektro-the-motoman-had-the-bi...

There's more here on Westinghouse's robots – https://youtube.com/watch?v=YV_JmTS8EsY – including footage of Elektro, a robot that... smoked cigarettes!

The book “Robots of Westinghouse” has a lot of information on Elektro and several predecessor robots Westinghouse built. The book is uneven and needed an editor, but the technical content is fascinating. Elektro was built largely with components (motors, relays, wiring) taken from Westinghouse appliances. There is a picture showing a bundle of cables like those used on kitchen appliances, with braided cloth cords and Bakelite plugs at the end. My mother’s electric skillet had one of those power cords.

I recently visited Elektro in Mansfield. My dad went to the 1939 World's Fair but does not remember seeing the robot.

Meat Beat Manifesto sampled that robot a lot for the Original Control releases. Seeing the name again, immediately puts the sample, “if you use me well, I can be your slave,” back in my mind.