September 20, 2007

Robot of The Week: Elektro

Elektro was built for the 1939 world's fair by the westinghouse corporation. He could walk, move his head and arms, respond to voice commands, recognize red and green light, and talked via an internal 78 rpm record player: "I-am-Elektro.... my-brain-is-big-ger-than-yours". He could also blow up a balloon or smoke a cigarette. Poor Elektro... his fame was short-lived. After the fair, he had a cameo in "sex kittens go to college", was on display at an amusement park, then sold for scrap metal. But his head was saved, and the rest of him is currently being reconstructed. See a diagram of his inner workings here

2 comments:

SpaceMan5000 said...

I remember digging this on an old VHS tape of trailers hosed by Zacherley. I thought it was cool that he could smoke a cigarette. I mean "What the fuck, he's a ROBOT, he - like - has no LUNGS, man!"

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