Hidden Motors Give Life to Prehistoric Monsters

Saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, and dinosaurs, inhabitants of the earth millions of years ago, have been reproduced mechanically by the New York firm of Mess-more and Damon for exhibition this summer at the Chicago World’s Fair. Within a huge hemisphere of metal, they will give visitors a glimpse of the world as it was long before man appeared. (P.S.M., June ‘32, p. 16.) Controlled electrically, the mechanical monsters swing their heads, roll their eyes, breathe, snarl, roar, and grunt in realistic fashion. A complicated mass of cogs, wheels, bellows, and silent motors produces the life-like sounds and motions. Beneath the canvas and papier-mache hide of each animal there are from one to sixteen electric motors. An operator controls the actions of the exhibits. At the World’s Fair, they will be seen in an environment of prehistoric vegetation.

Does anybody know how this worked? My guess is that there is a guy in a robot suit. I have serious doubts that in 1938 they could build a robot articulate enough to manipulate the pieces even if it was fully remote controlled.

Robot Checker Player Is Undefeated

OWNED by Frank Frain, of New York, N. Y., a mechanically created robot is said to have played in more than 25,000 checker matches without being defeated. Sponsored by a well know radio manufacturer, the “Magic Brain Checker Player,” as the robot is known, is making a tour of the country. Standing six feet tall and weighing 500 pounds, the robot disdainfully sweeps the checkerboard clear of checkers if its opponent attempts to cheat.

Robot Cow Moos and Gives Milk

Hidden Motors Give Exhibit for World’s Fair the Movements of a Living Animal

AN ELECTRIC cow that chews a cud, breathes, moves its head, winks its eyes, moos, and gives real milk will form one of the exhibits at the World’s Fair next summer.

This robot animal has just been completed at the New York City workshop of Messmore and Damon, specialists in creating mechanical beasts that range from prehistoric dinosaurs to modern puppies. It is an exact reproduction of a Holstein milk cow, the hide which covers the papier-mache body being that of the real animal. This particular Holstein was chosen as a model because it had a large black spot on one side. In the reproduction, this spot forms a door that can be removed if anything goes wrong with the mechanism inside.

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Are you a ROBOT - OR DO YOU THINK FOR YOURSELF?

DARE you throw off the shackles of tradition and orthodoxy? Do you close your eyes and say, “What was good enough for those before me is good enough for me?”

For centuries the knowledge about himself has been kept from man— suppressed. Today the Rosicrucians. a NON-RELIGIOUS Brotherhood, offer every man and woman the opportunity of a frank study of life’s mysteries. Do you know the facts about thought formation. Law of vibration, life on other planets, whether there is a soul?

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ROBOTS STAGE REALISTIC PRIZE FIGHT

Mechanical men stage an exciting boxing contest in a new game invented for amusement resorts. Two contestants play the game, each controlling one of the boxers with a hand wheel. Animated by a system of electro-magnets, the figures swing their gloves up, down, or sideways and duck with surprising realism. If one of the dummies is struck by an upward-swung glove at a certain critical point on the chin, it falls to the floor, as shown in the photo below, and a knockout is scored.

Lady Robot Used to Write Window Display Advertising
IN THIS mechanical age machinery is being substituted for human beings in every possible and conceivable situation. One of the latest and most unique pieces of machinery to be put to use to supplant human agency is the almost human advertising contrivance, the window sign writing robot. A practical application of the device is shown in the photo of the mechanical lady at the right, which writes on the display blackboard before her perfectly intelligible advertisements, to the amazement of passers-by. Though the mechanical lady is somewhat devoid of personality, her ability as an unthinking machine makes up for the lack.

The secret of the device lies in the remote controls of the arms. The operator sitting behind the screen writes on a piece of paper before him what he desires the mechanical lady to write, and the system of levers and cogwheels transfers the same motion to the robot’s arms. A diagram of the mechanism of the contrivance is shown beneath the photo. Versatility is the chief feature of the mechan-, ical lady. After she recommends some product or other, the blackboard is shifted for the next advertisement.

Robots in Ragtime
THE Japanese have come up with something new in toys. It’s a mechanical orchestra and its tinny music has captured the hearts of the youngsters.

Jiro Aizawa, an ex-Kamikaze plane designer, is the creator. Loath to discard his mechanical training after the war, he turned to experimentation with robots, a subject in which he had long been interested. His results are quite amazing.

The orchestra’s actual music is produced by a phonograph record synchronized with the movements of the players. In its repertoire are: Buttons and Bows, Beer Barrel Polka and Rumba Tamba.

Talking Robot at a recent Paris auto show also walked, shook hands, flickered its eyelids and purled its cheeks. How it answered questions is a secret. Skeptics say a man nearby answered through a mike.

ROBOT ORCHESTRA
ONE of the world’s most unique orchestras—made up entirely of robots—plays nightly at the Robot Club in Antwerp, Belgium. Designed and constructed by the club owner, Zenon Specht, the electrically-controlled musicians can play anything from tangoes to bop, changing their expressions to suit the mood. The customer is provided with three songs for a nickel and then the robots sit down. When another nickel is fed to them, the boys get up and swing out three more numbers. Their motion is controlled by perforated tapes looking like player piano rolls.

Excellent article focusing on robots and computers (they didn’t really distinguish between the two at this point). Topics include: self-driving cars, robot elephants, prime number crunching computers, automatic factories, automatic sewing machines, etc. It even mentions self replicating Von Neumann machines.

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The ROBOTS Are Coming!

Our civilization is being invaded by a horde of mechanical men who are determined to change our way of life. But there’s no need to worry. It’s all in the spirit of good fellowship.

By Lester David

A STRANGE, awesome army of Things is invading the planet Earth!

This is not science fiction but cold fact. The Vanguard of this army is here already and has secured a firm beachhead. A vast body of others is on the way.

These weird monsters are busy altering your world even now. Within the next several decades, after they are firmly entrenched in farm, home, laboratory and factory, your work, your habits, your entire life will be unrecognizable.

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Mechanical Radio Man Talks, Sings, Walks, and Rolls Eyes

A YOUNG engineer in Berlin, after four years of work, has just perfected what is the strangest type of man ever to appear on this earth. The thing, shown in the photo at the left, outdoes Frankenstein in everything save looks. So perfect is it mechanically that it can move its lips, eyes, hands, legs, and even wag its ears.

Directions from the monitor are projected into the “brains” of the mechanical man by radio waves. Perfect synchronism makes it possible for the man to speak and gesture at the same time, so that as an attention-getting advertisement it works well. The brains of the “man” are a super-sensitive radio receiving set.

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What to do for a splitting backache…

… automated caveman gets a rear-end drive

Despite his wide-open situation, the caveman on the preceding page is feeling no pain.

With fellow tribesmen, he will soon be settling down for a stay in the Ford Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. Members of the “clan grin, groan, and grunt, view a giant bear with alarm, point, push, and haul a dead mammoth, draw wall pictures, and create fire. One of them invents the wheel.

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