The French film director Julien Duvivier produced “Le Golem” as a sequel to the Paul Wegener film of 1920. The word comes from the Czech robota, which means tedious labor.
HISTORY OF AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS MOVIE
Among those, is a now famous movie made in 1920 and marks the beginning of the modern robot era.Ĭzech film director Paul Wegener’s Golem releases “The Golem: How He Came Into the World” (also released as “The Golem”, 1920 in Czech released in English in the USA in 1921), one in a series of “golem movies”Ĭzechoslovakian playwright Karel Capek, with likely literary references to the idea of Golem and possibly countryman Paul Wegener’s silent movies, introduces the word robot in the play R.U.R. The Meyrink novellette inspired a series of expressionistic silent movies in the early 20 th century. Mary Shelley also was likely influenced by the idea of a golem when she wrote the novel Frankenstein. The folk stories were first published in Gustav Meyrink’s 1915 novel “Der Golem” based on folklore documented by Judah Low ben Bezalel. But because the Golem was a creation of man and not God, it was imperfect and had failings, including hurting its master. The Golem was created in a way that it could do no harm to man, a theme that is carried on in modern robotics and was codified in the 20 th century by Isaac Asimov. Golem was created by man for the purpose of serving man in the field, doing the tedious work to allow man to have more time for leisure. The myth is that Golem was a manmade version of God’s creation of Adam from clay.
It is the third in a series of automata / clocks at the cathedral and was built by Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué from 1836-1843.Īnother popular idea for a man-servant fabricated from inanimate matter was the golem of central European Jewish folklore.
An existing example of automata can be experienced at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg, France. Early examples are clocks programmed for mechanical actions at specific times (like the latter day cookoo clock) and a statue that could stand from a sitting position and pour drinks for the Pharaoh Ptolemy II by Ctesibius of Alexandria in the 3 rd Century BC the noted scientist and engineer Ibn Ismail ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari of northern Mesopotamia (Iraq) designed and built a working automata boat with four programmable humanoid automata musicians in 1206 AD Around 1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed an automata knight for the robotic conduct of warfare.
The word Automaton was a plural version and came to mean a self-operating machine and is sometimes extended to include robots.Īutomata were conceived and built at a very early time in recorded history. In ancient times, the percursors to robots were Automata, the word which was originally an Italian renaissance term for a mechanical device, usually powered by water, windpower or clockwork. A History Timeline of Industrial Robotics