Yeesh.

So after the magical sophistication of Bow Shooting Boy we move into the 20th century. There is a brief stopover at the turn of the century for Tesla's radio controlled boat, but I started reading all the stuff and Tesla's just too big a subject for tonight. I give you instead, Elektro. Built by Westinghouse in 1937 for what reason I don't know. It was, no doubt, a promotional device, and Westinghouse dragged it all over the States for years, showing it off at fairs and expositions. I'm not convinced that it did the company much in the way of drumming up business. I mean, did anyone ever go "Hey, there's Elektro (with a "k"), make my next TV a Westinghouse!" Seriously it drew thousands of curious, astonished and nervous Americans who were staring at a world war just around the corner.

So, heres a few facts about the boy: Stood seven feet tall, weighed 265 pounds, could move by voice command, and talk, sort of. It played a 78rpm record of about 700 words delivered in robot speak. It could wave its arms and rotate its head. And for you kiddies out there it could smoke. For some unknown reason its photo electric eyes could distinguish colours. (It just gets more and more useful.) Someone decided to give this robot a chance and built a robot dog companion called Sparko for it in 1940.

Amazingly it was still being paraded about in 1950! It gets weirder. Elektro starred as Thinko in the 1960's classic Sex Kittens go to College. In the film he played a robot that could handicap horses. Elektro didn't do well after that. It was taken apart and pieces of it went south. Westighouse employees were quick to see the cultural significance of the example of the robot maker's craft and hung on to significant chunks of it. The result is on display at Westinghouse's robot exhibit of Mansfield's Memorial Museum.

Of the many things Elektro could say was this gem "My brain is bigger than yours."

Look up, way up.

I'm off for a bit, maybe just today, from the robot thing because I just found out that on this day in 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was brought into force. Thank heaven. Originally just the US, USSR and and the UK signed on, odd since the latter hasn't had too many space shots that I can see. Whats even odder is that to date there are nearly a hundred countries that are party to the treaty.

Claiming to be the "law" when it comes to space, this treaty lays out what you can and can't do up there. No nukes are allowed, and definetly none on the moon (or any other object for that matter). Same goes for any other kinds of weapons, however the law is surprisingly fuzzy around laser technology, suggesting there could be peaceful uses for mind frazzling death rays.

Just to ease my mind, I did some snooping and found a copy of the treaty. Some of the countries that signed it include: The Holy See, Luxembourg, the Seychelles and mighty space explorers, the Swiss.

Karakuri ningyo man.

Hisashige Tanaka was a Japanese engineer/artist living in the Edo period (1603 to 1868). He actually lived from 1799 to 1881. He built the tricky, playful robots called Karakuri Ningyo, and probably created the most intricate and detailed examples.

He is best known for the Myriad Year Clock, or Japanese perpetual clock. But what I'm interested in is the Bow Shooting Boy, or Yumi-iri Doji, a mechanical wonder that took the art of robot making to the highest level. A young archer would pull an arrow from his quiver, load his bow and shoot a target in the bullseye.

He built these mechanical dolls from early on and even travelled the country in his early 20`s showing them off to the delight of all. In fact he created a puzzle box when he was 8 that couldn`t be opened until he revealed the secret. To give you an idea of the level of detail he worked at, his Yumi-iri Doji would even smirk when it was a good shot or look sad when he missed!

Hisashige was practical too. When the Japanese economy tightened up in the 1830`s and obvious luxuries were looked down upon, he moved to the manufacturing centre of Osaka to work on more useful household devices. Among them a collapsable candle, and the invention that started his climb up the industrialist ladder, the Mujin-to lamp. He spent so much time staying up late working on his inventions he probably got pissed off and invented it to save his eyesight. The genuis of the lamp was an air pump that created pressure in the oil reservoir, forcing it into the wick. The result was an intense light for the size of the lamp. In the end he turned the nighttime into productive time for the Japanese.

He founded his own engineering company,Tanaka Seizosho, in 1875. After several permutations and mergers it turned into Toshiba Corporation in 1978.

Captain Hercules Vinegar

Henry Fielding was just just 47 when he died, this day, in 1754. English novelist, dramtist and satirist, Fielding was a constant thorn in the side of ruling governments of the day. In fact, during one period in his early career when he wrote for the theatre, his pen was so savage that a law was created to blunt it, called the Theatre Licensing Act. In actual fact it was simply brutal censorship by the then Prime Minister, Robert Walpole. Any new play had to be approved before it could hit the stage. Along with Fielding's Tom Thumb, plays causing a fuss then included John Gay's Beggars Opera and Henry Carey's Chrononhotonthologos.

He wrote because he needed the money, and since he got himself censored, and plays did not bring in the cash anymore, he returned to his first vocation, law. He didn't so well at that and money became tight. In fact, money would remain a constant worry in the Fielding house.

He loved satire and didn't have the time of day for Walpole, so while his plays were quieted, his novels weren't. The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild is an example of his hatred of the liberal ruling class.

1749 saw the publication of Tom Jones, his greatest work. Written in the picaresque style, the novel still holds up. Its detailed accounts of the day and robust sense of humour make it worthy of any bookshelf. Other lesser known works credited to him include a real odd piece about a female transvestite called The Female Husband, where this person is brought to court because he/she tried to marry another woman.

His interest in law and things conseravtive got him appointed London's Chief Magistrate. He took the post very seriously and together with his little brother John worked hard to make London safer and criminal justice, well, more just. It is said that he and John created London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners.

Quack.

Just so you know, it was Karel Capek, a Czech writer, who came up with the word "robot" in 1920. Prior to that they were called "automata or automatons". He gave the world this word and stoked their imagination with his play R.U.R - Rossums Universal Robots. Actually, gave is the wrong word; the word "robot" was the invention of his brother Josef, from the original Czech word "robota" or forced labour. (so many quotation marks). One day I'll get back to this idea and write about the play etc etc, but I really wanted to get to a truly important piece about a robot duck.

Jacques de Vaucanson, a French inventor/engineer, born 1709, made robots that actually mimicked the bones, tendons and muscles of the real article. Originally he studied to become a surgeon, where, no doubt he gained the expertise and insight needed to create his inventions. He was very curious about the various systems in the body and wanted to recreate them in his robots.

Good timimg for him, because the early to middle 1700's was the time to build mechanical oddities. His first creation, not that unlike Al Jazari's musicians from 500 years earlier, was a shepard that played a Pipe and Tabor, a rather cool but kooky little flute and drum combo. Both instruments are designed to be played by one hand- you play the flute with one hand (the holes are all within reach) and the drum is tied to the waist or side and struck with a drum stick in the other hand. His little beauty was life size, it had to be loud, and was impressive in detail. The hands were covered in a skin like glove to give the illusion of moving fingers. Here's the cool part, it could be programmed to play over a dozen songs.

If this didn't get him press, his Digesting Duck sure did. This device from 1739 had 400+ parts and could do all the duck stuff- flap its wings, drink water, eat seeds and grain from a dish and poop. Because de Vaucanson was such a anatomical perfectionist the duck represented the digestive cycle with but one flaw. The robot fowl could not really turn the food into crap so it had a compartment of tasteful crap like pellets (it was often demonstrated to the wealthy elite of Europe) that came out after the correct interval.

Have a look at the cross section drawing above. I love the little arrow coming out of the ducks bum, in case we might be confused by the direction.

Beep.

So this is weird. I was combing the Inet looking for likely story ideas when I came across this CBC article about a Georgia Tech professor who looked at the attraction people have for vacuum cleaners. Ok, ok. The little Robot vacs called Roombas. I won't go on about it here because this article is much better written than anything I could come up with. Here's the link: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/10/02/roomba-study.html

But I got going on about it and had to find out what some of the first robots were like. Once again I'm off on another tangent. I'll be back to musical instruments soon.

Ibn Ismail ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari, we'll call him Al-Jazari, made several robots, or automata, around the year 1200. Power for the machines was limited to clockwork mechanisms, water flow (from one vessel to another) or animal power. Electrical power was a few years away. One real big example of his early work is the elephant clock. Its actually a water clock placed on top of a real big wooden elephant. The body of the beast hides the mechanism and water. The top part is the exciting bit.

Later on he built the most robotic (at least to our idea of what a modern robot should be)of his mechanical inventions. These were true humaniod automata. And they were programmable. A camshaft ran through the device, and depending on where the bumps, or pegs were placed on the shaft, the robots, in this case a band of musicians, would alter what they "played". Mainly it was drums or cymbals that were struck. You essesntially got a different group of noises, but still, it was controllable.

A buck or two.

Actress Lois Maxwell, famous for her role as Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond films including The Spy Who Loved Me, View to a Kill and Dr. No died today. She was 80 years old. The Canadian born actress left home at 15 to join up and was touring Europe in a song and dance troup as a member of the Army Entertainment Corps when they figured out she was a minor. She was so good no one wanted her to be sent back so she enrolled in Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. It turned out to be a good career move.

After the war she went to Hollywood and worked with Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan in That hagen Girl, earning her a Golden Globe. Then she appeared in a Life Magazine spread featuring up and comers of the day with another aspiring actress - Marilyn Monroe.

Rome called and she lived there in the 50's where she worked in film and met her husband, Peter Marriot. Next its a move to London and a family was started. It was during this time that she was appraoched about what was to be her iconic role, the flirtatious secretary to M. She lasted through 2 Bonds, Sean Connery (argueably the best) and Roger Moore (most prolific).

Canadian born, she returned to Canada after her husband died in 1973 and worked in film and television, wrote a newspaper column and just hung out and chilled.

She moved back to England and thence to Fremantle Australia, where she died. Roger Moore said at one time "I think it was a great disappointment to her that she had not been promoted to play M. She would have been a wonderful M."