Robots in Literature - Early Uses

Early Uses

The earliest examples were all presented as the results of divine intervention and include: The dry bones that came to life in the Book of Ezekiel (Chapter 37); three-legged self-navigating tables created by the god Hephaestus (Iliad xviii); and the statue Galatea brought to life by the prayers of her creator Pygmalion.

More recent humaniform examples include the brooms from the legend of the sorcerer's apprentice derived from a tale by Lucian of Samosata in the 1st century AD, the Jewish legend of the golem created like Adam from clay, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. These tales include an indictment of human folly at presuming to take on the role of creator.

Notable mechanical representations of humans include the life-sized singing puppet Olimpia in the short story "The Sandman" by E.T.A. Hoffman in 1816 and a bipedal anthropomorphic mechanism in The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis in 1865. These examples are stories about human-controlled mechanisms without autonomy or self-awareness.

In Lyman Frank Baum's children's novel Ozma of Oz, the first-ever introduction of a humanoid-appearance mechanical man that would satisfy the later "humanoid robot" definition occurred in 1907 - some fifteen years before the word "robot" was coined - with Tik-Tok, powered with a trio of clockwork movements for his thinking, movement and speech, none of which he could wind up himself.