Early Robots - 1940s & 50s
One of the first robots was the clepsydra or water clock, which was made in 250 B.C. It was created by Ctesibius of Alexandria, a Greek physicist and inventor. The earliest remote control vehicles were built by Nikola Tesla in the 1890's. Tesla is best known as the inventor of AC electric power, radio (before Marconi), induction motors, Tesla coils, and other electrical devices. Other early robots (1940's - 50's) were Grey Walter's "Elsie the tortoise" ("Machina speculatrix") and the Johns Hopkins "beast." "Shakey" was a small unstable box on wheels that used memory and logical reasoning to solve problems and navigate in its environment. It was developed by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Palo Alto, California in the 1960s.via Adam's Robot Page
