Mechanical Men – Wild Dreams Come True

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6815, 21 January 1929, Page 4

Mechanical Men - Wild Dreams Come True

OtJTINE wort is done more and more by machines. This is a familiar idea. But some of these machines are assuming an appear-

ance that caricatures the human form, are speaking with the human voice, and performing tasks that have hitherto required the services of creatures that think. Mr. Robert E. Martin has assembled •in “Popular Science” descriptions of some of these wonders, from various parts of the world — “robots,” we are getting to call them, after the mechanical men of Capen’s play. We are first introduced to the one who made his earliest public appearance at a London convention. Says Mr, Martin:

Machine “Ctiairmam” Declares Open am Exhibition ... Potentialities of the Robot Family... Manufactured “Brain” Solves Problems That Baffle Mathematicians ...

the case of the Edison “robot” plant, or by wireless. Thus boats have been steered without a pilot, automobiles driven safely through traffic without a human driver, and even airplanes flown without an aviator at the control lever. He proceeds: "These feats, however, have been mere demonstrations of possibilities. For general industrial application they are, as yet, too expensive and too uncertain. Wireless can not be relied upon to work perfectly at all times, and the cost of Betting up and maintaining a wire circuit over any considerable distance, where it is used only occasionally, is prohibitive. “But telephone wires go almost

“Upon the rostrum sat a large and awesome figure, not unlike the giant warrior of brass atop the mountain in Scheherezade’s tale. But this huge monster had the cold white sheen of tin, and the experienced eye could tell that aluminium was his substance. The Thing’s enormous size and the stark immobility of his face gave him a really terrifying quality. His lipless, toothless mouth agape, his hollow eyes aslant, he stared into an audience that packed the Royal Horticultural Hall, in London. "Their wonder mounted to amazement when, witji a grinding, creaking noise, the figure rose and moved his stiff arms in a superfluous gesture asking for silence. Suddenly, the black, dead eyes became alive with a ghastly yellow light. And then —he spoke!

“ ‘Ladies and gentlemen,' came a rumbling voice, ‘unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, it gives me great pleasure. . . .’ “The spell was broken. True, the voice had an unearthly sound. But the pronunciation was that of the typical educated Englishman, and the words were the time-honoured commonplaces uttered by presiding officers the world over. “In such novel fashion, the recent model Engineering Exhibition was opened in the British , capital. A scientist of note had promised to preside; but a few days before the opening date, word was received that he would not be able to appear. It was then that Captain W. H. Richards conceived the idea of constructing a man of metal to do the job. This creature not only would take the place of the defaulting chairman, but serve as a most appropriate feature for the engineering show. He set to work quickly and christened his aluminium creation ‘Eric.’ “Eric moved and had his being through the means of an electric motor, electro-magnets, pulleys, and levers concealed in his body. For raising him from his seat, causing him to bow to the audience, and resume his chair, another motor was concealed in the platform under his feet. Ingenious electrical instruments (a jealously-guarded secret of his inventor) enabled Eric to hear questions and answer in a human voice.

everywhere! And in the Televox, Wensley solved the engineering problem of utilising the vibrations of the human voice transmitted electrically over a telephone wire, and exploiting their power at the receiving end to produce oscillations in an electrical circuit.

“And now three of these robots, stationed at three reservoirs which hold the water supply of the city of Washington, report to their chiefs in the War Department, whenever called upon to do so, the depth of the water in their respective reservoirs. “In the same city is the 'Great Brass Brain’ of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and it is surely one of the most useful robots in existence. To It, every day, men put questions about the future, which it answers with such precision that tens of thousands rißk their lives, and untold millions of wealth are staked upon the accuracy of its forecasts. It 'predicts the tides for every port in the world for years ahead. “The Great Brass Brain is a form of harmonic analyser, operating mechanically instead of electrically. It occupies a space 11 feet long, six feet high and two feet wide, and does without error labour which otherwise would require fifty to one hundred human computers, working continuously and subject to the inevitable percentage of human errors. 1 ,. .

“Only a few days before Eric’s weird antics, another sensation was caused in the West End of London by the appearance in the streets of a walking robot, taken for a stroll by his inventor, Captain J. A. Roberts.”

The control of mechanism from afar by means of electrical circuits is a familiar operation, the writer here reminds us. A very faint electrical impulse will affect an electro-magnet which, by moving its armaturq over a small .distance, can be made to release energies waiting for the signal to get into action. Such an impulse may be conveyed either by direct wires, as in

"Have your thinking done while you

wait! The Product Integraph of Dr. Bush, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a robot performing this startling function. Where workers in the business world ordinarily are satisfied with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of numbers, the engineer deals with curves and graphs which represent for him the past, present and future of the things in which he deals. In other words, whereas the ordinary adding and caluclating machines are limited to handling definite numbers, or constants, the new invention deals with those indefinite and inconstant quantities known as variables. These are quantities whose changing values depend on other variable quantities. “Strange to say, the mechanical brain of the Integraph, which solves in a few minutes problems so complex that it would take an engineer from a month to a year to work them out, resembles nothing so much as the electric metre in’your home. It performs its thinking processes and reaches its dilutions by running as a motor, translating the problem into terms of electric power, and expressing the answer in the same manner. “And so the age of the robot is now really upon us. “What does, this interesting development really mean? Does it mean that, before long, most ,of the

work of the world will be done by robots Will the man of affairs soon go to his office in an automobile driven by a mechanical chauffeur, who will be directed at busy intersections (and perchance ‘bawled out,’ too!) by a mechanical traffic cop? Will that same business man, at lunch time, be waited on by a-robot-waiter and, in the evening, be guided to his theatre seat by a robot usher? Will his wife have a mechanical ladies’ maid to ‘hook her up at the back’ and his children a robot nurse to wash their morning faces and take them to school? “Perhaps. But in any event, the robot and his development on a large and scientific scale will result in at least one great benefit to mankind. In the words of a high official of the Edison Company, ‘the mechanical man and his ultimate universal practical application will rid humanity of much drudgery and thousands of uncongenial tasks.’ : “Men thus freed from unpleasant ‘chores,’ he declared, never need fear unemployment in a well-organised society, but, on the contrary, may look forward to a better opportunity for the development of their inherent talents and intellectual powers. They will receive the gift of leisure, which will enable them to apply their released energies to the achievement of a finer, fuller life than they can enjoy at present.”