Karol Capek; Discovered the Robot

Definition of a 'Robot'

According to the Robot Institute of America (1979) a robot is: "A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks". A more inspiring definition can be found in Webster. According to Webster a robot is: "An automatic device that performs functions normally ascribed to humans or a machine in the form of a human."

First use of the word 'robot'

The acclaimed Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938) made the first use of the word ‘robot’, from the Czech word for forced labor or serf. Capek was reportedly several times a candidate for the Nobel prize for his works and very influential and prolific as a writer and playwright. The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in January 1921. In R.U.R., Capek poses a paradise, where the machines initially bring so many benefits but in the end bring an equal amount of blight in the form of unemployment and social unrest. The play was an enormous success and productions soon opened throughout Europe and the U.S. R.U.R's theme, in part, was the dehumanization of man in a technological civilization. You may find it surprising that the robots were not mechanical in nature but were created through chemical means. In fact, in an essay written in 1935, Capek strongly fought that this idea was at all possible and, writing in the third person, said: "It is with horror, frankly, that he rejects all responsibility for the idea that metal contraptions could ever replace human beings, and that by means of wires they could awaken something like life, love, or rebellion. He would deem this dark prospect to be either an overestimation of machines, or a grave offence against life." [The Author of Robots Defends Himself - Karl Capek, Lidove noviny, June 9, 1935, translation: Bean Comrada] There is some evidence that the word robot was actually coined by Karl's brother Josef, a writer in his own right. In a short letter, Capek writes that he asked Josef what he should call the artificial workers in his new play. Karel suggests Labori, which he thinks too 'bookish' and his brother mutters "then call them Robots" and turns back to his work, and so from a curt response we have the word robot.

First use of the word 'robotics'

The word 'robotics' was first used in Runaround, a short story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov (born Jan. 2, 1920, died Apr. 6, 1992). I, Robot, a collection of several of these stories, was published in 1950. One of the first robots Asimov wrote about was a robotherapist. A modern counterpart to Asimov's fictional character is Eliza. Eliza was born in 1966 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Joseph Weizenbaum who wrote Eliza -- a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. She was initially programmed with 240 lines of code to simulate a psychotherapist by answering questions with questions.

Three Laws of Robotics

Asimov also proposed his three "Laws of Robotics", and he later added a 'zeroth law'. Law Zero: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. Law One: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate a higher order law. Law Two: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with a higher order law. Law Three: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with a higher order law.

The First Robot: 'Unimate'

After the technology explosion during World War II, in 1956, a historic meeting occurs between George C. Devol, a successful inventor and entrepreneur, and engineer Joseph F. Engelberger, over cocktails the two discuss the writings of Isaac Asimov. Together they made a serious and commercially successful effort to develop a real, working robot. They persuaded Norman Schafler of Condec Corporation in Danbury that they had the basis of a commercial success. Engelberger started a manufacturing company 'Unimation' which stood for universal automation and so the first commercial company to make robots was formed. Devol wrote the necessary patents. Their first robot nicknamed the 'Unimate'. As a result, Engelberger has been called the 'father of robotics.' The first Unimate was installed at a General Motors plant to work with heated die-casting machines. In fact most Unimates were sold to extract die castings from die casting machines and to perform spot welding on auto bodies, both tasks being particularly hateful jobs for people. Both applications were commercially successful, i.e., the robots worked reliably and saved money by replacing people. An industry was spawned and a variety of other tasks were also performed by robots, such as loading and unloading machine tools. Ultimately Westinghouse acquired Unimation and the entrepreneurs' dream of wealth was achieved. Unimation is still in production today, with robots for sale. The robot idea was hyped to the skies and became high fashion in the Boardroom. Presidents of large corporations bought them, for about $100,000 each, just to put into laboratories to "see what they could do;" in fact these sales constituted a large part of the robot market. Some companies even reduced their ROI (Return On Investment criteria for investment) for robots to encourage their use.

Modern Industrial Robots

The image of the "electronic brain" as the principal part of the robot was pervasive. Computer scientists were put in charge of robot departments of robot customers and of factories of robot makers. Many of these people knew little about machinery or manufacturing but assumed that they did. (There is a common delusion of electrical engineers that mechanical phenomena are simple because they are visible. Variable friction, the effects of burrs, minimum and redundant constraints, nonlinearities, variations in workpieces, accommodation to hostile environments and hostile people, etc. are like the "Purloined Letter" in Poe's story, right in front of the eye, yet unseen.) They also had little training in the industrial engineer's realm of material handling, manufacturing processes, manufacturing economics and human behavior in factories. As a result, many of the experimental tasks in those laboratories were made to fit their robot's capabilities but had little to do with the real tasks of the factory. Modern industrial arms have increased in capability and performance through controller and language development, improved mechanisms, sensing, and drive systems. In the early to mid 80's the robot industry grew very fast primarily due to large investments by the automotive industry. The quick leap into the factory of the future turned into a plunge when the integration and economic viability of these efforts proved disastrous. The robot industry has only recently recovered to mid-80's revenue levels. In the meantime there has been an enormous shakeout in the robot industry. In the US, for example, only one US company, Adept, remains in the production industrial robot arm business. Most of the rest went under, consolidated, or were sold to European and Japanese companies. In the research community the first automata were probably Grey Walter's machina (1940's) and the John's Hopkins beast. Teleoperated or remote controlled devices had been built even earlier with at least the first radio controlled vehicles built by Nikola Tesla in the 1890's. Tesla is better known as the inventor of the induction motor, AC power transmission, and numerous other electrical devices. Tesla had also envisioned smart mechanisms that were as capable as humans. An excellent biography of Tesla is Margaret Cheney's Tesla, Man Out of Time, Published by Prentice-Hall, c1981. SRI's Shakey navigated highly structured indoor environments in the late 60's and Moravec's Stanford Cart was the first to attempt natural outdoor scenes in the late 70's. From that time there has been a proliferation of work in autonomous driving machines that cruise at highway speeds and navigate outdoor terrains in commercial applications. Fully functioning androids (robots that look like human beings) are many years away due to the many problems that must be solved. However, real, working, sophisticated robots are in use today and they are revolutionizing the workplace. These robots do not resemble the romantic android concept of robots. They are industrial manipulators and are really computer controlled "arms and hands". Industrial robots are so different to the popular image that it would be easy for the average person not to recognize one.

Benefits

Robots offer specific benefits to workers, industries and countries. If introduced correctly, industrial robots can improve the quality of life by freeing workers from dirty, boring, dangerous and heavy labor. it is true that robots can cause unemployment by replacing human workers but robots also create jobs: robot technicians, salesmen, engineers, programmers and supervisors. The benefits of robots to industry include improved management control and productivity and consistently high quality products. Industrial robots can work tirelessly night and day on an assembly line without an loss in performance. Consequently, they can greatly reduce the costs of manufactured goods. As a result of these industrial benefits, countries that effectively use robots in their industries will have an economic advantage on world market.

Frederick Banting / Charles Best Isolated insulin (1921)

Frederick Banting.

Charles Best.
In 1920, Dr. Frederick Banting wanted to make a pancreatic extract, which he hoped would have anti-diabetic qualities. In 1921, at the University of Toronto, Canada, along with medical student Charles Best, they managed to make the pancreatic extract.

Their method involved tying a string around the pancrease duct. When examined several weeks later, the pancreatic digestive cells had died and been absorbed by the immune system. The process left behind thousands of islets. They isolated the extracts from the islets and produced isletin. What they called isletin became known as insulin.

Banting and Best managed to test this extract on dogs that had diabetes. They discovered insulin. In fact, they managed to keep a dog, that had had its pancreas taken out, alive throughout the whole summer by administering it the extract (which was, in fact, insulin). The extract regulated the dogs blood sugar levels.
At this point, Professor J. MacLeod, who had placed the laboratory at their disposal, said he wanted to see a re-run of the whole trial. After doing so he decided to get his whole research team to work on the production and purification of insulin.

J.B. Collip joined the scientific team, which now consisted of Banting, Best, Collip and MecLeod. They managed to produce enough insulin, in a pure enough form, to be able to test it on patients.

In 1922 the insulin was tested on Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old diabetes patient who lay dying at the Toronto General Hospital. He was given an insulin injection. At first he suffered a severe allergic reaction and further injections were cancelled. The scientists worked hard on improving the extract and then a second dose of injections were administered on Thompson. The results were spectacular.

The scientists went to the other wards with diabetic children, most of them comatose and dying from diabetic keto-acidosis. They went from bed-to-bed and injected them with the new purified extract - insulin. This is known as one of medicines most dramatic moments. Before injecting the last comatose children, the first started to awaken from their comas. A joyous moment for family members and hospital staff!!

Collip did not get on too well with Banting and Best apparently - and he soon left the project. Best continued trying to improve the extract and managed eventually to produce enough for the hospital's demand. Their work was privately published. The Eli Lilly Company soon got to hear about it and offered to assist. It was not long before the Eli Lilly Company managed to produce large quantities of refined pure insulin.

In 1923 Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Banting shared his prize with Best and Macleod shared his with Collip. The patent for insulin was sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar.

The Invention of the zip

Zipper History

In 1893 Whitcomb Judson of Chicago (who also invented the 'Pneumatic Street Railway') marketed a 'Clasp Locker' a complicated hook-and-eye shoe fastener. The clasp locker was an assemblage of hooks and eyes that Judson thought would save people time and sore backs fastening their shoes with one hand. Together with businessman Colonel Lewis Walker, Whitcomb launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture the new device.

Swedish immigrant and electrical engineer, Gideon Sundback was hired

 

to work for the Universal Fastener Company. Good design skills and a marriage to the plant-manager's daughter Elvira Aronson led Sundback to the position of head designer at Universal. He was responsible for improving the far from perfect 'Judson C-curity Fastener.' Unfortunately, Sundback's wife died in 1911. The grieving husband busied himself at the design table, by December of 1913, he came up with the modern zipper.

Sundback increased the number of fastening elements from four per inch to ten or eleven, had two facing-rows of teeth that pulled into a single piece by the slider, and increased the opening for the teeth guided by the slider. The patent for the 'Separable Fastener' was issued in 1917. Sundback also created the manufacturing machine for the new zipper. The 'S-L' or scrapless machine took a special Y-shaped wire and cut scoops from it, then punched the scoop dimple and nib, and clamped each scoop on a cloth tape to produce a continuous zipper chain. Within the first year of operation, Sundback's zipper-making machinery was producing a few hundred feet of fastener per day.

The popular 'zipper' name came from B. F. Goodrich Company president Bertram G. Wrok, when they decided to use Gideon's fastener on his "Mystic Boot", which were rubber boots or galoshes, and called it the Zipper Boot.

Boots and tobacco pouches with a zippered closure were the two chief uses of the zipper during its early years. It took twenty more years to convince the fashion industry to seriously promote the novel closure on garments.

In the 1930’s, a sales campaign began for children's clothing featuring zippers. The campaign praised zippers for promoting self-reliance in young children by making it possible for them to dress in self-help clothing.

Not until 1934 when Lord Louis Mountbaten persuaded the Prince of Wales and George, Duke of York to give up their buttons for zipper flies. Tailors who disdained zipper flies as vulgar created a fold of cloth to conceal the zipper.

, YKK. In 1934

Yoshida Kogyo Kabushililaisha was founded. Sixty years later they changed their name to YKK Co. The privately owned firm, headquartered in Japan, now is made up of 80 companies at 206 facilities in 52 countries.

The zipper beat the button in the 1937 in the "Battle of the Fly," when French fashion designers raved over zippers in men's trousers. Esquire magazine declared the zipper the "Newest Tailoring Idea for Men" and among the zippered fly's many virtues was that it would exclude "The Possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray." Obviously, the new zippered trouser owners had not yet discovered the experience of forgetting to zip-up.

The next big boost for the zipper came when zippers could open on both ends, as on jackets. Today the zipper is everywhere, in clothing, luggage and leather goods and countless other objects. Thousands of  zipper miles produced daily meet the needs of consumers, thanks to the early efforts of the many famous zipper inventors.

 

History of firearmas..Guns, Rifles, Machine Guns, and Firearm Ammunition By Mary Bellis, About.com Guide

1. 
2. Since the introduction of the flintlock musket in the 17th century, military small arms have gone through a series of significant changes.

3. Muskets

4. Puckle Gun - 1718
5. In 1718, James Puckle of London, England, demonstrated his new invention, the "Puckle Gun," a tripod-mounted, single-barreled flintlock gun fitted with a multishot revolving cylinder. This weapon fired nine shots per minute at a time when the standard soldier's musket could be loaded and fired but three times per minute. Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design. One weapon, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets, which were believed to cause more severe and painful wounds than spherical projectiles. The "Puckle Gun" failed to attract investors and never achieved mass production or sales to the British armed forces. One newspaper of the period observed following the business venture's failure that "those are only wounded who hold shares therein."
6. James Puckle
7. According to the Patent Office of the United Kingdom, "In the reign of Queen Anne, the law officers of the Crown established as a condition of patent that the inventor must in writing describe the invention and the manner in which it works." James Puckle's 1718 patent for a gun was one of the first to provide a description.

8. Revolvers

11. History of the Colt Revolver
12. 
    
13. Samuel Colt invented the first revolver - named after its revolving cylinder. He was issued a U.S. patent in 1836 for the Colt firearm equipped with a revolving cylinder containing five or six bullets with an innovative cocking device. 
14. Samuel Colt

15. Rifles

18. The breech-loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick Ferguson of Pitfours, Scotland.
21. John Moses Browning - Winchester Rifle
24. John Moses Brownig
25. 
    
26. 
    
28. John Moses Browning was the prolific gun designer who invented the Winchester rifle (30/30), the pump shotgun, and the Colt 45 automatic. He is best known for his automatic pistols and was the first one to invent the slide, which encloses the barrel of a pistol and the firing mechanism.
29. 
    
32. John Moses Browning
35. Modern Assault Rifles - M16 History
36. The history of the modern assault rifle begins with the German Sturmgewehr used during WW2, the first rifle that could fire a medium size bullet at high rates of fire. In response the U.S. military began developing their own assault rifle, the result was the M16 assault rifle, first issued to American Soldiers in Vietnam in 1968 and designed by Eugene Stoner, a Marine Corps Veteran.
37. 
    
40. John Garand - M1 Semiautomatic Rifle
43. 
44. Canadian, John Garand invented the M1 semiautomatic rifle in 1934.
45. The Johnson Rifle
46. The Johnson Model 1941 Rifle one of the most innovative rifles of its time period. The Johnson rifle was invented by Melvin M. Johnson Jr.
47. Samuel Gardiner
48. 
49. Samuel Gardiner, Jr. received a U.S. Patent in 1863 on a "high explosive rifle bullet" in .54, .58, and .69 calibers. Fused to explode 1 1/4 seconds after firing, it ensured that any soldier hit by the projectile with a range of 400 yards faced the danger of the bullet exploding within the impact wound. The U.S. Government purchased 110,000 rounds of such ammunition for issue during the Civil War. Criticizing the use of similar ammunition by the Confederates, General Ulysses S. Grant complained that "their use is barbarous because they produce increased suffering without any increased advantage to using them."
50. Rifle Scopes
51. A rifle scope is a refractor telescope used on a rifle. In 1880, August Fiedler (Stronsdorf), forestry commissioner of Prince Reuss, managed to build the first telescopic sight that really did work.
52. 
53. Machine Guns
54. Gatling Gun - 1861
55. 
56. Doctor Richard Gatling patented his design of the "Gatling Gun", a six-barreled weapon capable of firing a (then) phenomenal 200 rounds per minute.
57. Maxim Machine Gun - 1885
58. In 1881, a friend of Hiram Maxim, the American inventor, told him: "If you wanted to make a lot of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other's throats with. Hiram Maxim was born in Sangersville, Maine in 1840 and was the inventor of the Maxim Machine Gun and the Maxim Silencer.
59. Thompson Submachine Gun - Tommy Gun
60. 
61. The Thompson submachine gun or Tommy gun was invented by General John T. Thompson, it was the first hand held machine gun. Thompson was driven with the thought of creating a hand held machinegun that would help end the First World War, However, "the first shipment of prototype guns destined for Europe arrived at the docks in New York city on November 11, 1918, the day the War ended."
62. Silencers
63. Hiram Maxim (born 1853) invented the Maxim Silencer or Suppressor: that attached to the front of the barrel of a pistol and allowed the firearm to be fired without a loud bang. Invented in 1909, the Maxim Suppressor was the first commercially successful silencer.