Westinghouse Electric Corporation

Westinghouse Electric was founded in Pittsburgh in 1886 by George Westinghouse and grew into a giant of American heavy industry, making generators, steam turbines, appliances, broadcasting stations and later nuclear reactors. Its robots were never products but publicity for its electrical controls, built at the appliance works in Mansfield, Ohio, through the 1930s.

The last and best of them was Elektro, built in 1937 and 1938 by a team including J. M. Barnett, Jack Weeks Sr. and Harold Gorsuch. Seven feet tall and 265 pounds, with aluminium skin over a steel frame, it moved its head and arms, walked on voice command, spoke about 700 words from a 78 rpm record player, blew up balloons and smoked cigarettes, with photoelectric eyes. It starred at the 1939 New York World's Fair and was joined in 1940 by Sparko, a robot dog that barked, sat and begged. Elektro toured North America in 1950, appeared in the 1960 film Sex Kittens Go to College, and was later recovered and restored; replicas stand in museums including The Henry Ford.

The company itself is gone: it bought CBS for USD 5.4 billion in 1995, became CBS Corporation in 1997, sold its power business to Siemens and its nuclear arm to BNFL, and survives as a licensed brand and a separate nuclear company.