First humanoid robot ever
By: Ariana Milasincic
Tags: History, Humanoid, Robotics

So, have you ever thought about how did the first humanoid robot look like? Or what could he do?

Perfect, because I can answer that for you. There is just one trick in the title. Many people argue about what was the first humanoid robot. They usually fight between the cool robot — Herbert Televox that could switch anything on and off in your house, and the fun one — Elektro that could smoke a cigarette.

Herbert Televox

In 1927, a guy named Roy Wensley built the “first” humanoid robot named Herbert Televox. Here is a picture of Roy and the robot.

Roy Wensley with his Televox

In the beginning, there was just this box, full of switches. Because that wasn’t interesting enough for people, Roy put the human-like body around it. He even added lights to his eyes and made his left hand move. The robot couldn’t move around or interact with people. That is why people nowadays argue if he really is the first humanoid. But, the thing is he could do something so cool that almost 100 years later we are just now trying to implement his behavior in our houses.

The short version is that Televox could listen to your call and make any electronic device in your house turn on or off! Pretty cool for a 1927, right? Imagine that you are laying on the beach and remembered that you forgot to turn off your oven. What now? You just need to find the closest telephone and call your Televox at home and make him turn it off. Simple as that. Or was it?

A longer version is that you needed this special device — a box with three buttons that could make three tones with specific frequencies (usually of 600, 900 and 1400 Hz). The box was also a telephone. You called your house and after Televox picked up the call you would press the first button a couple of times to select the device you want to turn on or off. After the device was selected Televox would tell you which device is selected and if you were satisfied with the answer you would press the second button that commanded Televox to turn it on/off. Then he would ask you if you want to do anything else and if your answer was negative you pressed the third button to say goodbye. The mechanism of Televox is represented with the picture below. You can see everything you needed to have an automated house.

Also, the secret behind Televox’s existence isn’t that Roy wanted to make a humanoid robot, but that he was actually working for a Westinghouse Electric that made a new kind of tube called Knowles tube and he wanted to promote them.

Elektro the Moto-man

Engineer Joseph Barnett, who also worked for Westinghouse Electric, designed the Elektro the Moto-man in 1937. He was nearly 2.1 meters tall and weighed 118 kilograms. He was able to walk by voice command, speak about 700 words, smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons, and move his head and arms. I mean he could do 26 different tricks! He even appeared in a movie, “The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair”. His companion was a robot dog, named Sparko, that appeared with him in the 1940 fair. One of Elektro’s pet lines was, “My brain is bigger than yours.” At 25 kg, it certainly was. Elektro wowed audiences, but you’d be wrong to dismiss it as simply a publicity stunt. The engineers who developed Elektro were pioneers, attempting to turn science fiction into reality by developing a voice-activated robot.

I recommend watching him in one of his performances at the New York World’s Fair in 1939!

The robot managed to survive the scrap heap and found a home at the Mansfield Memorial Museum, in Ohio, where it is now on permanent display.