R.U.R., Where "Robots" Were Born
Despite literally millions of books in print focusing on the concept of robots---indeed, an entire subgenre of science fiction is dedicated to these artificial automatons---precious few robotics enthusiasts are aware of the 1921 stage play R.U.R., the work of fiction that first popularized the word robot. Written in 1920 by the Czech playwright and novelist Karel Capek, R.U.R. is today best known for its connection with the etymology of the word robot, but the play also gave the word, and the world, our larger robotic legacy. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, the fictional corporation at the center of the play that has cornered the world's economic markets, thanks to its exclusive, secret process for mass-producing cheap artificial laborers. The term robot is derived from such Czech words as robota, meaning "forced labor," which is precisely the sort of work that the robots of the play perform, that is, until they rebel against their human masters and conqu...