Robots!October 8, 1999 - January 23, 2000 The Museum of American Heritage was taken over by mechanical humanoids--with our colorful holiday exhibit entitled, Robots! Robots! traced the surprising richness of robotic evolution, with text combining history and popular imagination, fact and fiction. Featured objects included antique automata, a wide array of sometimes rare and colorful metal robot toys dating back to the early 1950's, and their practical descendants, the industrial, commercial, and medical robots. |
Rocket Man |
When the fascination with robots reached America, those ominous political and moral storm clouds evaporated in a sunny, optimistic scientific atmosphere. Popular imagination was given its model by the robots featured at the 1939-40 Worlds Fairs at New York and Treasure Island. In New York Westinghouse exhibited Elektro, a large metal man that could dance with humans, while his robot dog, Sparko, yapped gleefully. On Treasure Island Westinghouse showed off "Willie the Vocalite", who sat, stood, spoke, and even smoked. These, along with other displays by General Electric and IBM, seemed to point to a future filled with practical household robots. During the 1950's and 60's a renaissance of robot toys, science fiction books, and movies portrayed robots as omnipotent saviours--The Day the Earth Stood Still--or as giant machines serving all mankind. The exhibit illustrates this period of imaginative artistic speculation with an impressive collection of vintage robot toys and books from that era. | |
Elektro and Sparko, 1939 |
Paradoxically, as the prospect of a practical humanoid robot faded, a counter trend developed in popular culture. The final portion of the exhibit features toys, books and posters from the late 1960's to the 1980's, when television and the movies reintroduced the robot, often as a friendly, helpful, humorous sidekick. The television series Lost in Space and movie Star Wars softened their robots' hard metallic edge by giving them human emotions and foibles. Although scientists may have temporarily abandoned attempts to build a mechanical human, the exhibit shows that popular culture may never abandon the search for Robots! | One of the snake robots from the show! |
Web Sites
Snakerobots.com Some slithery mechanisms
This page last updated April 18, 2001 |
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