Contents
Foreword 7
Introduction 10
Ben Russell
1
Being human: minds reflected in machines 18
2
In whose image? Ancient and medieval automata 32
Focus: the clockwork monk 48
3
Automata, androids and life 50
Focus: the automaton lathe 68
4
Robots in the family: Captain W H Richards and his mechanical men 70
Focus: Cygan, the mechanical man 84
E R Truitt
Andrew Nahum
Andrina Richards Lever and Deborah Richards
5
Pioneers of cybernetics: Grey Walter’s robot tortoises and the Ratio Club 86
Owen Holland and Phil Husbands
Focus: toy robots 100
6
Humanoid robots and the promise of an easier life 102
Becoming human: a visual history of robots 118
Notes 164 Further reading 167 Contributors 168 Picture credits 168 Acknowledgements 170 Funder credits 171 Index 172
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Phil Loring and Helena Moosberg-Bustnes
Judy Wajcman
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mathematician Alan Turing. In this article, arguably the
mechanical parts, and brains to sailing ships. Huxley, in
most famous paper in the history of robotics, Turing
contrast, made only the single mention of Vaucanson’s
introduced an entirely unorthodox sort of intelligence
automata that we discussed above. No other machines
test, now known as the ‘Turing Test’, which determined
appeared in his paper. Huxley’s calculus was simple:
whether or not a machine could pass for intelligent.22
animals and humans were mere automata, and automata
Even though the keyword was intelligence rather than
were all more or less the same. For James, the world of
consciousness, reflecting the evolution of psychology
consciousness and the world of machines were not two
toward intelligence, Turing’s argument was motivated by
separate spheres of existence. He saw us not as ingenious
the same Jamesian desire to learn how to live in a world
automata, but as thinking beings, mechanical in some
inhabited simultaneously by minds and machines.
respects, organic in others, endowed by natural selection with conscious and adaptive behaviour. We might say that James wished to inhabit the
The next stage in human evolution Until the latter half of the 20th century, the value of
worlds of consciousness and machines simultaneously, and
actual real-life robots – or automata, as they had usually
to encourage his readers to do the same. It is tempting to
been called – lay almost solely in their ability to surprise
imagine what he might have made of a world, like our
and amuse the onlooker. 23 They were all, in effect,
own, where robots and humans coexist. If we fast-forward
toys. When Huxley provoked his audience by describing
71 years, to 1950, we find that the same journal, Mind,
animals as Vaucansonian automata, or when James
in which James’s paper appeared, went on to publish
compared a frog’s movements to those of a jumping-
‘Computing machinery and intelligence’ by the British
jack, both men were invoking an image of ingenious but
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MINDS REFLECTED IN MACHINES
in his 1879 paper. He also compared ingrained habits to
27
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Sony’s AIBO robotic dog, launched in 1999 and the most advanced consumer robot of its time.
useless mechanical contrivances. The introduction of
would be replaced by robots. As decades went by, however,
industrial robots that could lift, weld, pick and place,
and the limits of actual robots became clearer, they came
however, changed people’s perception significantly.
to be seen not as a replacement for human labour but as
After that point, machines could demonstrably perform
a complement, doing the jobs people could not, or did not
certain types of job better than humans could, with
wish to, do.24
more consistency and precision and without getting tired. This lent force, at first, to fears that all manual labourers
Years of further research and development have led to robots that more truly complement us. The early 21st century has witnessed the introduction of robots for disarming bombs and conducting search and rescue operations, as in mining disasters.25 These robots are team-mates with their humans, often in a manner akin to service animals. They are frequently named, treated with a measure of individuality by their users and genuinely mourned when destroyed. The same technology has also been used to create domestic robots that can do mundane tasks like vacuuming floors, mowing lawns and delivering packages, as well as so-called social robots that resemble pets, for example Paro, the robotic seal designed to provide comfort and companionship for older people with advanced dementia.26 Social robots marketed to children, including Sony’s AIBO robotic dog and the speaking hamster-like Furby, have helped usher in what psychologist Sherry Turkle calls a ‘robotic moment’, when humans feel comfortable enough with robots to use them to help fill in frayed parts of the social fabric.27 Robots, in the sense of humanoid or animal-like devices, may after all be a distraction. The real progress in artificial intelligence today may be taking place in the massive systems that underlie Google or Spotify or Amazon, the back-end big-data systems that are hard to visualise except when they enable marvels like self-driving cars, instant translation and clever
ROBOTS
music suggestions or product recommendations on our ‘smart’ phones. What this means is that our concerns about human–robot interaction should be seen as one part of a much wider landscape of concerns about how technology mediates 28
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human interactions. How can we organise the world
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An automaton brain? Babbage’s designs and Ada Lovelace’s writings anticipated the power that computers would attain. This is Difference Engine No.1, 1832, which was intended to automate particular arithmetical procedures.
19th-century automata became more impudent and reflected the bawdy humour of the music hall. Here is ‘Le Marquis Buveur’ (The Drinker Marquis), who drunkenly struggles to fill his cup.
Object No: 1862-89
The 19th century saw a new rowdier style of automata, often displayed by showmen, in fairs or even lowly amusement arcades. These successors were altogether more impertinent. The automata of each age, it seems, reflect the performative styles of its theatre and arts. These popular 19th-century machines no longer sigh and emote: they relate more to the humour of the music hall than to salons, polite society and philosophical speculation. They are vernacular, impudent, ironic and not burdened with too much meaning or sentiment. Examples of these irreverent machines include a befuddled aristocrat who sways around trying to connect his bottle to the glass, a dandy preening in front of the mirror and a butcher cranking a machine making sausages, which emerge straight into the mouth of a greedy bourgeois. Automata even served the needs of common commerce, and an irritatingly fit gymnast gyrates around horizontal bars to advertise Valda pastilles to cure (and prevent) colds and much more. In the Musée des Automates at La Rochelle, a later automaton-maker has even created a retrospective automaton of Jacques de Vaucanson, bewigged and frock-coated, oiling his famous duck with an outsize engineer’s oilcan. Perhaps this later chapter in their history, when for a while, their seriousness and importance. David Brewster, the 19th-century scientist and writer, considered that their principle object was ‘a mere desire to amuse by mechanical exuberance’. Others decried them as playthings – ‘parlor magic’ – or carped that ‘at no time does it seem to have crossed the minds of these ingenious men that their inventions could have been used to provide new sources of power or to make industry more efficient’.18 Current history, of course, differs, now seeing these automata as enormously interesting and philosophically
AUTOMATA, ANDROIDS AND LIFE
automata became popular entertainments, obscured,
provoking. More than that though, they were influential both in their own times and later on in the progress of
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4 Robots in the family: Captain W H Richards and his mechanical men Andrina Richards Lever and Deborah Richards
THIS chapter explores the story of Captain W H Richards and his robots: Eric, made in 1928, and George, built in 1932. For a long time the story of this trio has been lost, and even now it survives only in fragmentary form. However, we two cousins, Deborah in the UK and Andrina in Italy, have grown up with a keen awareness of our shared family history, one that is to a large extent unique: Eric and George were among a handful of the very earliest robots, as understood in the modern popular imagination, to be built in the 20th century. Their story is an intriguing one, taking in not just technological innovation and a rich family story, but another enduring feature of the history of robots: their role as performers and objects of spectacle. In this 1928 image, Alan Reffell adjusts Eric’s knee, while in the background W H Richards works on some other components at his work bench.
OPPOSITE
Captain W H Richards as portrayed in the family archives, c.1914. His military career began in the army with the Devonshire Territorial Regiment, where he was known to be a fine marksman.
RIGHT
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Lilliput, the first toy tinplate robot, Japan, 1938.
Focus: toy robots
SINCE the Second World War, robots
embodied both our robot fears and
have featured strongly in our dreams of
fantasies. Toy robots could wield guns or
tomorrow. We have imagined the shape
lasers, while ‘Atomic Man Robot’s’
of things to come, and robots have loomed
packaging portrayed a devastated city,
large, helping us, making life easier and
beneath a nuclear mushroom cloud. But
allowing us more leisure time, and more
conversely, many others made reference to
comfortable homes and lives. These
space exploration, or incorporated
dreams have been shared, not just by
domestic technologies like television
scientists and engineers, but by
battery-operated model was launched.
film-makers, authors, product designers
Two years later came a robot with radio
and consumers. One of the most
control. Manufacturers competed by
public mind that robots should have a
numerous products of their imaginings
introducing more movement, lights,
humanoid form, and that they should be
has been the toy robot.
sound, bright colours and stunning
tall, broad-shouldered and powerful – very
packaging. They made robots for
far from the actual shapes many robots
the toy robot industry. The first toy robot,
American companies such as Cragstan
were taking in factories and other places
‘Lilliput’, angular and bright yellow,
or Marx, in comparison to which the US
around the world.
was made there in 1938. Thereafter,
Ideal Toy Corporation’s ‘Robert the Robot’
companies like Horikawa and Yoshiya
of 1954 was rather sombre, perhaps
produced an immense variety of designs:
even a little crude.
Japan was, and still is, the centre of
early tinplate robots had clockwork
All of these toys helped reinforce in the
These toys helped mould peoples’ expectations of robots; they at once
ROBOTS
mechanisms, but in 1955 the original
screens or even motor car engines.
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Robert the Robot, by the Ideal Toy Corporation, 1954.
BELOW
Object No: 2015-403
BELOW, RIGHT AND OPPOSITE
A selection of toy robots from Japan and Hong Kong, including ‘Star Strider’ and ‘Television Spaceman’, 1959–80. Object Nos [left to right]: 2015-432, 2015-451, 2015-409, 2015-438, 2015-418, 2015-412
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The thrill of a show
Automaton spider, attributed to Tobias Reichel, Dresden, c.1604 This shiver-inducing spider was designed to scuttle across a table or cause a fright, having first been wound up so that the legs would be moved by a tiny cam mechanism. The spider was made during the lifetime of philosopher RenÊ Descartes. Descartes distinguished people from animals, controversially arguing that while we had both bodies and souls, animals had only their bodies – they were just automata.
BECOMING HUMAN: A VISUAL HISTORY OF ROBOTS
Object No: L2016-2147
136
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Automaton table clock, England, 1645 – 55 This clock is surmounted by a working figure of Father Time. Every 15 minutes, his right arm beats time on a sand-glass to the sound of a small bell as he looks around. Clocks were closely associated with automata, sometimes having mechanical figures marking the hours with miniature performances. Object No: L2016-2149
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RoboThespian 3, Engineered Arts, UK, 2013 RoboThespian was the first full-sized humanoid robot that anyone could buy. It was intended from the outset to be a robot actor. Its creator, Will Jackson, has wryly commented that acting is ripe for automation as actors are paid a lot to do very little, but to do it repeatedly. RoboThespian relies heavily on its expressive eyes and body language to engage with its audience. Object No: 2016-326
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