Word: automatonism
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...making of a mechanical man, a Robot, has intrigued the minds of men for centuries, but only now, in the twentieth century, has man stopped merely talking of it and actually constructed a talking, moving, automaton," said Captain W. H. Richards, the famous inventor, to a representative of the CRIMSON in a recent interview...
...Robot moves with human-like movements, talks distinctly and is built in the semblance of a six-foot man. The most remarkable thing about this automaton, is his ability to answer any question within reason. Captain Richards explained that each question had a key number, such as 74, the sound waves of the seven and four combined making a certain rate of vibration on a wire inside the man, which vibrations cause him to give the correct answer...
Died. Peter J. Hill, onetime chess champion; of old age; in Worcester, Mass. Small of stature, concealed within the "chess automaton," Ajeeb, at the oldtime Eden Musée, Manhattan, Peter J. Hill used to baffle and beat chess champions of international fame. Sometimes he suffered violence in his niche. One defeated chess-woman, enraged, stuck a hatpin into the mouth of the robot, wounded the body of silent Peter J. Hill...
...inventor could make a machine to play chess, he would have little trouble in producing a thinking machine. Yet, last week, the French Academy of Sciences admitted Leonardo Torres y Quevodo, mathematician from Madrid, to associate membership because he effectively demonstrated a chess-playing machine. Senor Quevodo's automaton meets all emergencies of the game when less than half of the chessmen are on the board; is even able to stop playing in case its human opponent cheats...
...easily can a false inference be drawn. It is not completely true that the Harvard student is an unsocial animal, that he prefers to take his food from a shelf and his friendship from an arm rest. Not even the maligned graduate student is exactly that near the automaton--not even the faculty member. And the real reason for the decline and fall of the Memorial Hall dining room is easily apprehended. In the first place, Memorial Hall, when the dining room closed, was no longer central; in the second place, Memorial Hall had no adequately equipped staff of dieticians...