The Future Then
The mailmobile, the cigarette-smoking mechanical man, Al Capone's would-be robot army and more retro robots from PopSci's archives

Cowbot: May 1933 Messmore and Damon, a New York-based workshop specializing in in mechanical animals, exhibited their lifelike electronic cow at the World's Fair in 1933.

Read the full story in "Robot Cow Moos and Gives Milk"

We've all heard of Roombas, robot submarines, and creepy humanoid robots, but have you ever heard of Elektro, the cigarette-smoking robot from the 1939 World's Fair, or the Budweiser-fetching Omnibot 2000 from 1986? Wrapping up National Robotics Week, we've combed our archives for a primer on the past century's most amazing robots.

Granted, not all of them survived the passage of time and modern technology, but we're holding out for engineers to revive Omnibot 2000, the Scotch-pouring mechanical butler; and Snail, which uses computerized directions to put out fires around the city. Click through our gallery to check out the cutest, creepiest, and most dangerous 'bots from back in the day.

9 Comments

this is great, retro robots are the my favorite.

Oh man. My dad and his coworkers bought an Omnibot 2000 for their boss for Christmas. My dad, being the one who knew the most about computers/programming, got to bring it home so he could teach it to seat people. So for a brief time, we had a robot in the house.

Better than the beer fetching robot maybe someone could make a kegbot. Half keg half robot beer dispenser that will come to you. I'd buy one of those.

There was nothing "electronic" about the Messmore and Damon cow. It was merely electric.

Robots hve been such a long time dream for humans, I hope we get there in the next few years.

Yes we have advanced on the hardware side of developing these robots but its the software that keeps us from having a truly smart robot. 1robotcompanion . com

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That is a fantastic way to tell the Cow's internal mechanism of getting milk from it. Really, liked it.

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