Where Does the Word Robot Come From?

DAVEN HISKEY 5
Petyl asks: Where does the word robot come from?
The word robot was coined by artist Josef
!apek, the brother of famed Czechoslovakian
author Karel !apek. Karel !apek was, among
other things, a science fiction author before
there was something officially known as
science fiction, in subject matter along the
same vein as George Orwell. He introduced
the word in a play called R.U.R. The full title
translating into English as Rossums Universal
Robots, which debuted in January of 1921.
While writing this play, he struggled to come
up with a word to name the robots, initially
settling on labo"i, from the Latin labor. He
discussed this with his brother, Josef, and Josef suggested roboti, which gave rise to the English robot.
Roboti derives from the Old Church Slavanic rabota, meaning servitude, which in turn comes from rabu,
meaning slave.
The robots in R.U.R. were not mechanical, as we think of robots today; they actually werent all that
different from humans themselves. They were biological beings created to do work for humans, more or
less indistinguishable from humans in appearance and even with full cognitive abilities. Eventually the
robots become ubiquitous, taking over pretty much every job for mankind. At a certain point, they get tired
of doing all the work for the lazy humans who contribute nothing to the world and whose population is
dwindling from forgetting how to reproduce, so decide to kill everyone off, which they do, excepting one
human who still works with his hands, so he is spared.
Just before they finish killing all the humans, the makers of the robots destroy the formula for creating new
robots. The robots then task the remaining single human with coming up with the formula using whatever
means necessary (even killing robots to dissect them). He fails, but two of the robots end up falling in love
and were left with the impression that theyll reproduce together and become the foundation for a new
civilization.
The robots in this story then more resemble what we now would call androids. If youre curious, the first
documented mention of the word android is in the 18th century Ephraim Chambers Cyclopaedia, Albertus
Magnus is recorded as having made a famous androides. Android derives from the Greek #$%&' (andro-),
meaning man, and the suffix -()%*+ (-eides), meaning form, likeness, appearance, or resemblance; hence
the definition of android being automaton resembling a human being.
The android reference in the Cyclopaedia supposedly (with emphasis on supposedly) made by German
philosopher Albertus Magnus was an artificial being he made using the angels from the netherworld and
the powers of the philosophers stone that he created from the metals and material unknown to this
world, The project was said to have taken him 30 years to achieve and when he completed the android
his student, St. Thomas, supposedly destroyed the diabolic being and denounced it as a tool of Satan
and blasphemy to God.
The famed aphesis of the word android, droid, was coined by none other than George Lucas and first
appeared in Star Wars: A New Hope. Lucas recently managed to hastily trademark the word before
Verizon was able to do so, thus Verizon now has to pay Lucas for the use of the word with their Droid line of
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phones. You can read more about this here: The Word Droid is a Registered Trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd.
If you liked this article, you might also be interested in this one: The First Known Robot was Created Around
400-350 BC by the Mathematician Archytas and was a Steam Powered Pigeon.
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