A Catalogue of Useless Facts

"Robot"

"Robot"
- etymology / literature / theatre -

​​The first known usage of the term "robot" (referring to a programmable automated machine) is the 1920 play "R.U.R." ("Rossumovi Univerzalni Roboti", or "Rossum's Universal Robots"). Written by Czech author Karel Capek, the play features artificially-made humanlike workers called "roboti" who begin as little more than appliances, but end up overthrowing their makers and destroying nearly every human on the planet.

The robots of "R.U.R." were not mechanical like later variations. They were still synthetically made, but with a mostly-organic makeup more akin to a clone than the modern idea of an automaton.

The term itself comes from the Czech word "robota", meaning "serf labor" or "tedious work".

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Sources ▼

https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/sf/r.u.r.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.