Robocop… circa 1924

With the vast expanse of the Internet, you can come across some pretty amazing… and unbelievable… finds. Such as this description for a “Radio Police Automaton,” aka Robocop done steampunk.

Originally, I found it via a Reddit link from Wired. But had to do a web search due to some technical problems at Reddit. The search lead me to the website of one David S. Zondy who had the images of the Gernsback-bot (a “Gernsbot”?) on his site.

Hugo Gernsback’s take on Alex Murphy. Only three years after Karel Čapek introduces the world to the word “robot” with his play “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (which came only one year after his brother, Josef, coined the word), Hugo puts his idea of a radio-controlled mechanical cop down on paper, complete with illustrations:

As if the bot wasn’t intimidating enough, looking like it might be a good twelve feet high at least, Hugo added some non-lethal armaments:

For fighting mobs use is made of tear gas which is stored in a tank under pressure and which alone will quickly disperse a mob if neccssary. The arms are provided with rotating discs which carry lead balls on flexible leads. These act as police clubs in action.

Ouch.

In addition, they would also have headlight “eyes” and a loudspeaker “mouth,” and caterpillar-tread “feet” to advance on a mob while the police controllers operating the bots are safe “behind the lines” in their radio cars observing the action.

Wonder where the US military got the idea for a robot army from? Gernsback’s bot looks like a killer weekend project, just not many applications for such an army. Fortunately, we’re a long ways away from seeing police or soldier robots…