Where does the word 'robot' come from?
Curated from: sciencefocus.com
Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:
3 ideas
·1.33K reads
5
Explore the World's Best Ideas
Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.
The word 'robot'
- 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the entry' robot' into the language.
- In 1920, Czech writer Karel Čapek wrote a play, R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots. R.U.R. refers to the name of a company devoted to making artificial people where they do the work humans prefer not to do. "You will be free and supreme: you will have no other task, no other work, no other cares than to perfect your own being…"
- In the play, the utopia doesn't last. In R.U.R.'s wake, the robots revolt, turn on their masters and slaughter everyone on the planet.
38
481 reads
"Robot" enters the Oxford English Dictionary
R.U.R. was first performed in Prague in January 1921 and was such a success that an English-language adaptation was on Broadway in 1922.
By 1923, the play had been translated into thirty languages. By the end of that decade, the Oxford English Dictionary defined "robot" as "a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically."
41
492 reads
"Robots" comes from the Czech word "robota"
Karel Čapek first thought of calling his artificial people "labors," but was not satisfied and turned to his brother Josef for advice. Josef suggested the Czech word "robota," which referred to a system of forced serf labour.
When Čapek wrote R.U.R., he was known as one of the leading anti-fascist commentators of the 1930s. His writing, ideas, style, and attitude brought him to the attention of the Nazis, who named him "public enemy number two" in Czechoslovakia.
40
366 reads
IDEAS CURATED BY
Evie Gold's ideas are part of this journey:
Learn more about personaldevelopment with this collection
Cultivating a growth mindset and embracing challenges
Developing adaptive thinking and problem-solving skills
Effective learning frameworks and approaches
Related collections
Similar ideas
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates