Category Archives: Robots
Smart Machines Rising
A number of this week’s milestones in the history of technology highlight the role of mechanical devices in automating work, augmenting human activities, and allowing many people to participate in previously highly-specialized endeavors—a process technology vendors like to call “democratization” … Continue reading
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Photography, Robots
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Birth of Intel and First Robot-Related Death
July 18, 1968 Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore found microprocessor manufacturer NM Electronics in Santa Clara, California. In deciding on a name, Moore and Noyce quickly rejected “Moore Noyce,” homophone for “more noise” – an ill-suited name for an electronics company. Instead they used … Continue reading
Posted in Computer history, Robots, This day in information, Typewriters
Tagged Intel, Texas Instruments
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Triumph of the Robots
Today in 2004, Dan Pulcrano of the Metro published “Triumph of the Robots: When Google tweaks its search rankings, whole economies tremble in fear”: The rapid ascent of invisible robots is a unforeseen twist in the sci-fi playbook. The theme of … Continue reading
Robotics and the Birth of Silicon Valley
“The life of William Shockley—Nobel Prize winner, inventor of the junction transistor, and founder of the seminal silicon electronics laboratory—has been well chronicled. But recently, while digging through the Shockley archives at Stanford University, researcher David C. Brock made a … Continue reading
Posted in Automation, Business history, Computer history, Robots, Social Impact
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General Meetings of The Boston Computer Society (Video)
“These are a few brief samples from more than 20 hours of The Boston Computer Society General Meetings. Each meeting featured a leading personal computer industry visionary introducing a new product or technology to the world’s largest personal computer user … Continue reading
Posted in Apple, Artificial Intelligence, Computer history, Robots
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A Robot in Every Home?
Today in 1984, a factory robot in Jackson, Michigan, crushed a 34 year-old worker in the first ever robot-related death in the United States. The robot thus violated Issac Asimov’s First Law of Robotics, “A robot may not injure a human being or, … Continue reading
Posted in Robots, This day in information
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The Dirty Lives of Robots, 1794-2012
1794: “Wonderful exhibition !!! Signor Gulielmo Pittachio, the sublime wonder of the world!!! condescends to inform the public at large, and his friends in particular, that he has now opened his grand hall of exhibitions at Westminster… In the course … Continue reading
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Robots
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