Elektro
Elektro was a 2.1 meter aluminium humanoid built by Westinghouse for the 1939 New York World's Fair. It walked on rollers, spoke about 700 words played from records, blew up balloons and smoked cigarettes. It is the best known pre computer humanoid and shaped the popular image of the robot.
Daderot via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
We have not sat down with this one. The score below is computed from the data we hold, and the facts on this page are sourced. It is not on sale, so there is nothing to recommend.
How the score is built
Capability is what the machine physically does. Value compares it with others at a similar price, not with the whole market. Buyability asks whether you can really order one. Ecosystem is the software and community around it. Proof is what it has done in the field, which is where most humanoids score badly and should.
- Status
- Retired
- Category
- historic
- First revealed
- 30 April 1939
- Form
- bipedal
- Height
- 210 cm
- Weight
- 120 kg
- Payload
- n/a
- Degrees of freedom
- n/a
- Battery
- n/a
- Runtime
- n/a
- Walking speed
- n/a
- Actuation
- electric motors, relays and photoelectric cells; walked by rolling on wheels under the feet
- Units deployed (est.)
- not disclosed
- Teleoperation
- yes
Where it stands
Museum piece at the Mansfield Memorial Museum, Ohio; last operated in the 1950s and 1960s.
What stands out
- Star attraction of the 1939 and 1940 New York World's Fair
- Speech from 78 rpm records, about 700 word vocabulary
- Survives in the Mansfield Memorial Museum
Autonomy, observed
None; all behaviour was pre recorded and triggered by an operator
Controlled by an operator's voice commands counted as relay pulses
Hands, sensors, brain
- Hands: fixed fingers; could move arms and head
- Sensors: photoelectric cells, microphone
- Compute: relay logic triggered by spoken word count
Price and volume
never for sale
One Elektro; a robot dog Sparko was added in 1940
Milestones.
Westinghouse shows Elektro at the New York World's Fair
Westinghouse exhibits Elektro, a 2.1 meter, 120 kg aluminum humanoid that walks on rollers, speaks about 700 words from 78 rpm records and smokes cigarettes. It is the best known pre-electronic humanoid and set the popular image of the robot for decades.
Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.
A short history of the humanoid, from Elektro to the order button
Our record holds 111 dated milestones since 1939. Sixty-eight of them are from this decade, and what changed was not the walking. It was the price tag.
Sources
- 01ElektroWikipedia
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