Mechanical Willie (Aug, 1934)
Great strides have been made in reducing the size of Mechanical “Willies” in the last 70 years.
Mechanical “Willie” Combines Crooning With Housework
CROONING in mellow baritone on command and manipulating a vacuum cleaner with almost human skill, “Mechanical Willie,” laboratory robot, may prove a novel servant.The product of Westinghouse engineers, Willie salutes, raises flags, smokes, sits, stands and bows at the operator’s orders. Words spoken via a receiver are transformed by a photo electric cell into light beams which transmit impulses to his operating mechanism.
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Aren’t mechanical willies outlawed in most of the southern states?
Oh come on, even in ’34 this had to be a joke!
You can be sore if its a Westinghouse!
[...] http://blog.modernmecha… [...]
#2:
No – this isn’t a joke, this was an actual promotional device developed by Westinghouse, one of many Westinghouse developed “robots” to demonstrate and showcase their electronic controls research, development, and products. For the time, the system developed by Westinghouse for remote automation, data acquisition, and control was very state-of-the-art. For more information, see:
http://www.amazon.com/R…
http://en.wikipedia.org…
http://www.davidbuckley…
http://www.freetimes.co…
http://www.worldsfairco…
does mechanical willie have anything to do with the wandering weenie?
[...] since the Mechanical Willie, a robot that Westinghouse unveiled in 1934 and that crooned in a ?mellow baritone and manipulated [...]
[...] have all the technology promised by classic 80′s science fiction movies. I discovered Willy in a Google [...]