1937 Oct 17 San Antonio Light - San Antonio Tx

A Distinguished German Scientist9s Vision of a New Civilization of Robots Made Alive by Light and Sound to Replace Humanity

BERLIN, Oct. 12. • REJAKING painfully, its joints rusty, the last robot to survive the civilization which man is making to replace the dwindling: crop of babies, would crawl along to a heap of scrap-iron, the cemetery for defunct robots. "Rain, ceaseless torrents of rain, would bring the MECHANICAL UOBOT. A Metal germs of the only -disease Octopus Which Combines AH Tools and which could possibly afflict Carries Its "Brains" In tho Parrota mechanical man; Rust." Nosed Piucer-Shaped Head. Thus wrote the distinguished German scientist of a generation ago, Professor von Schmidt, as he concluded a long-forgotten book on a robot civilization which has recently been resurrected and has assumed entirely new importance with the men who make war a business. In the past twenty years a deadly fighting machine has been constructed and perfected which may lead to the destruction of the human race. As fast as nations manufacture poison gas and machine guns, scientists work day and night making mechanical men to SOLDIER ROBOT. POLICEMAN ROBOT. TEACHER SERVANT do the drudgery and gruelArmed With the Its Head Contains a ROBOT. ROBOT. ling tasks, even fight the Latest Instruments Complete Short-Wave Its Bound Equipped wars, so that human beings of Destruction, Receiving Set ConSteel Head to Do All may be saved for the more Soldier's Head-Gear trolled from Police Is Crammed Household important job of raising Is a Death Ray. Headquarters. With Facts Drudgery. babies. Which Us Arms But Professor von Schmidt saw the possibility of robots Forget becoming so wellor Mix Vacuum developed mechaniROBOT-DE-LUXE. Tills Mechanism Is Conceived as Up. Clennors. cally that they will tho Master of All the Lesser Worker Robots by a Delicate Control System Based on Light and Sound Waves. a u t o m a t i c a l l y be able to control each other, and will outlive and perhaps wipe out their creators, man. They may become such perfect "supermen" that they will despise their inferior inventors and keep them locked up in r e s e r v a tions and escape-proof prisons until the race dies out. As terrible and fantastic as all this may sound, thoughtful men in Europe think.it 13 becoming a likelihood with inventions a l r e a d y perfected by science. Indeed, a peep at this world of the A Policeman Robot and a Teacher Robot Lead the Fight Between a Robot-Dc-Luxo and a Rebellious, Striking Worker f u t u r e has been Last Man to a Reservation for "Those Inferior Robot, as Posed by tlio Brilliant European Photographer. Ichac. given in some exSavages," the Members of the Human Race. tremely interesting work, act and live as long as the state. pictures, a few of their star would, perhaps which are shown on this page. There would bo no taxes—but it have to be made in the robot system, billions of years. Each robot would be an unpleasant place for huWhen the new civilization arises, the but this could be done by the turn of a or group of robots might be man beings to live. earth will begin to look like the barren screw or the addition of a wheel. controlled by an individual floor of the ocean, peopled by strange Once the robot civilization got unthe robot secretary would star, the various degrees of der way thera would be no place for creatures with multiple arms and legs, beControlling the "robot-de-luxe." One of these light energy received from glaring headlights for eyes and queer would the human race In it. They would be control all the robot seceach star giving the robots "Inferior savages" to the robot's way antennae-like projections for heads. retaries in a country in a special their individual wave-length of thinking:. "Imagine anyone susThey will be able to talk to each other, field of work. These robots-deof energy. Thus the new ceptible to disease!" the robots would not with vdcal cords, but with radio luxe would be sensitive to the civilization would seem im- say, and promptly exile their human code flashes sent out on a mutual needs of the community. If, for perishable, its parts creators to reservations and escapeshort-wave receiving and sending set example, a machine were to show would merely wear out proof islands. somewhere in their massive steel heads. that the supply of steel was and be replaced. Farms and fields of cattle will be running low, the robot-de-luxe With all work being done for them, O n e s c h o o l o f no Incentive for creative effort, hureplaced by mines and wells boring would swing into action and start thought, the Eugenlst, mans would soon die out. There would deep into the earth. Huge dynamoes the secretary robots which which believes the ro- be stretches of months and perhaps will furnish robots with the necessary control the workers in mines food—or/ better, fuel—for their exis- and coal fields. As soon as the bots can not only bo years in which not a single child was tence. Oil, steel and electricity may signal is flashed, workerm a d e dependent on born. People would become superflu-light and sound waves, ous, a sort of "pre-robotic" survival, be the only garden commodities on the robots start with pick and market. goes so far as to say as a live dinosaur would be a pre-hlsshovel extracting ore from the they can be given ele- toric survival today. The robot world will be strictly mine. The ore is carried on a ments of human life. divided into "classes." Each class will chain belt to the smelter, The end of the Eugenist robot would The A n t l - E u g e n l s t come have its special work to do. There where it is refined. Mechanafter tho death of the last school believes that ro- man. soon will be no overlapping of jobs. Each ized transportation carries the The peculiar living substance of bots can never be given the robot's brain will be designed to do a single metal to factories, where it is would be In the forany other kind of en- mula of one body poured into molds, fitted into job as perfectly as it can be done. man. The robot would be ergy than that which The lowest claas will be the "worker- Joints and p e r f e c t e d by a patented creation, as the German they receive from elec- ones arc. There would be French, robots." They will do the simple jobs master-robots into workertricity, gasoline and robots. Tills mining system Tho Last Robot, Attacked by Rain. Humanity^ Avenger, Sinks Down on tho Scrap Heap of Dislike pushing a buttbn or running an American, German, Chinese and Rusother kinds of fuel. integrating Baltics of His Kind, Victim of Bust, (ho Only Disease to Which elevator. At the National Institute of by robots has already been sian robots, all of a different color, All the unnecessary language and way of doing things. tho MechnnlcalMcn Are Subject. Patented Robots at Weissensee, Ger- tried and perfected. human things would be They 'would be psychologically condiThroughout the entire system of ro- with an Iron hand would be the "die- might start a series of robots in acmany, such robots have already been perfected. Some have been made bots would be the master robots, de- tator-robot." This might look like a tion. This peculiar word might bring cut out of the construction. There tioned to hate each other's country and would be no appendixes or other use- every part of the war machine would which will go out, mount a tractor and signed to do a special, highly mechan- huge central telephone exchange with an airplane to the roof, drive a man plow a field of given dimensions. They ized job, like assembling the parts of wires running out to every part of the around tho world and come back to its less parts. The fingers of the worker- bo theirs to control. They would be do the work as well or b.etter than lesser robots. Master robots would be land. It would connect with all the original destination, without accident robots would never be made for piano- the only creatures on earth who would playing or painting portraits. They know how to operate wireless, airfarmers do. They nevef waste time the chemists and engineers of the now robots-de-luxe and mechanical brains, or ever wavering from its course. would be made for turning a screw or for lunch, nor do the furrows ever zig- world: Their work would not bo crea- and would be the central distributing Another word like "abracadabra" hammering a nail. Tho best workers, planes, machine guns and poison gas. zag. Important as an economic factor tive in any sense, but would consist of point for the nation's orders. Its might build a man a house. Such roBut with all the bodies that man can Is the fact that they can do a job as a series of actions, more or less com- mechanism would run on the principles bots have already been Invented. The In the minds of the dictators, would be devise for robots, \Vlth all the "perfect" the cheapest ones to construct. They simple as plowing a field for twenty- plicated, like mixing a chemical for- of the photo-electric cell and sound walls of the Houses are circular, howwould be perfect but simpler even than thinking machines and sensitivity to four hours a day and year after year mula, which the lesser robots could vibration. ever, but the inventor thinks people man. The construction would be so light and sound, man has failed to connot do. without ever breaking down. Nature's last weapon of decay: The photo-electric cell Is a beam of will get used to them. simple that when one of the robots quer jsiext above the worker-robot in the Rust! Connected with the robots-de-Iuxe light which, if interrupted by the Some scientists believe that robots "class" system is the "secretary-robot." would be the mechanical "brains" of slightest motion of an object passing can be made so sensitive to sound that broke down after a rather dull life of When the secret of making robots These receive and give but orders. One the new civilization. These would through It, starts a motor connected they will react to tho noise of a pin three or four hundred years it would died with the last man, the mechanical robot secretary could control all the gather and correlate all the facts on a. with tho cell. In the robot system a. dropped 6,000 miles away, or so sensi- be put into a grinding machine and creatures would bo unable to perpetuplowing, planting, reaping and harvest- certain problem and would Be able to human being would only have to wave tive to light shooting from the rays of Its good parta given to other robots ate their own kind. Tho world would and used over and over again. ing activities of worker-robots in a give the correct answer to It. Such his hand before a light cell marked star 20,000,000 light years away that There would bo no dissatisfaction in become a gigantic heap of scrap Iron community for years. Like the work- robots have already been invented. One "food" on the dictator-robot to have a athese Nature's barrage of rain—with sources of energy jvill be the only ers, they never tire and never break "brain," for example, can solve any course dinner, dellclously cooked and ones necessary for putting tho mechan- a world with everyone conditioned for under hla proper Job and built physically to mounds of rusty robots as the only down. Their parts wear but, but the mathematical problem, even calculus, well served before him In a few ical men into action. do it as well as it could be done. Thoro memorial to man'a plan to replace hulife span oj a robot today is a full tho highest branch of mathematics, in minutes. It is not hard to Imagine creatures would bo no mediocre workers, no manity. Tho last rusty robot would sixty years, nearly twice thn average a few minutes. Tho machine doesn't The dictator-robot could also be designed to receive their energy from slackers or bullies, politicians would bo fall amongst his rusting brothers. length of tho human working span. think, but It eliminates the kind of made to react to an oral code, some- the rays of a star. In many military scarce, and no one would over have Only the old jlnglo would perpetuate To fit certain natural conditions which thought that takes the keenest mathe- thing like shorthand spoken aloud. A encampments today guns are set off any causo to complain. Tho profit man's place "In tho sun:" could not be helped, like dry, unfertile matical minda months and years. word like "sesame" spoken into a mi- on tho hour by the rays of the sun. system of capitalism would be abol- "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, earth, chemical adjustments might Ovor tho class system and ruling it crophone attached to a dictator-robot Thus it would be that robots would ished, for ovory robot would work for It's better to wear out, than go to ruat."

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