Interactive Primary Newsletter 26 "Don't talk to me about life" or all about a Robot Arm Quote by Marvin the Paranoid Android - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Why Robot? The word robot was coined from the Czech robota meaning drudgery (see supermarket shelf filling) and was first used in Karel Capek's play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots). The Oxford Dictionary definition of a robot is :- a machine with a human appearance or functioning like a human. a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. a person who works mechanically and efficiently but insensitively. (see supermarket shelf filling) This last definition was used by Erich Fromm in The Sane Society (1955) where he suggested that society was approaching a crossroads where - "The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots." Human interest in the mechanical copying of animal or human actions goes back many centuries. From the work of Hero's 'Automatic opening temple doors' (60AD) to the automata of fourteenth century clocks and thence to Citroen's TV advert for the Renault Picasso. Early in the 18th century Vaucanson designed and built his famous duck. Even within today's technology this would be a marvellous accomplishment, for the period it must have seemed to possess magical qualities. Contemporary descriptions of the duck give it the ability of moving its body, flexing its wings so that all the feathers work in unison, quaking, drinking water, eating grain, and excreting the results - all in perfect mimicry of the living animal. Lend a Hand