Word: robots
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...infantry. One after one they were destroyed, the beleaguered German advance squads often blowing them up before scuttling back to their heavy forts. Behind them they left land mines which, when the French artillery did not find them in time blew up the advancing tanks. Also encountered were robot machine guns, operated electrically by remote control. Swarming through the Warndt Forest between Saarbrücken and Saarlautern, the French found the woods "full of destruction and traps of all kinds." But by week's end that forest and the Bienwald farther east was theirs. Several Moroccan regiments...
Professionals criticize the free lances for using popular stereotypes (the "robot" Germans, the "individualistic" French, the "cowardly wops," the "bemused" Russians). They point out that before the World War the German Imperial Army was drilled to the teeth, yet the German mechanical marvel did not fall apart before the attacks of the "individualistic" French and British. Always good military technicians, the Germans teach their men infiltration tactics, stress individualist action by small groups of soldiers, encourage initiative all through the ranks...
...does not take supernatural intuition to detect him. He answers questions like a robot, not thinking for himself, but speaking words put into his mouth. He uses cliches like the "psychology of the business man"--Wolff's contribution to Economics A--until the grader, coming across it for the twentieth time, cannot help but see its origin. And cannot help but grade accordingly...
...recent months rumors have reached steelmakers that Pittsburgh's Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., whose stockholders have fared thinly in recent years, had developed a photoelectric indicator ("robot eye") which, by judging the color and brilliance of a Bessemer heat better than human eyes can, made it possible to turn out steel with Bessemer rapidity but of a uniform quality comparable to that of the open-hearth product. The J. & L. researchers guarded their secret vigilantly, declared darkly not long ago that two other companies had tried to swipe...
...vocal impulses in the wording of a command are not delivered just right, Elektro may apparently disobey. In Pittsburgh last week the robot made nice publicity for himself by disobeying his master. His designer, Engineer J. M. Barnett, practicing signals for reporters, ordered him to raise one arm. Instead he started walking backward, kept on walking backward even when commanded to stop by the engineer, who grew a little excited-and still less careful of his phrasing. Elektro might have backed through a wall had not Robotmaster Barnett shut off his supply of electric power...