The noseless telephone-face in the poster has a certain appeal.
Does this not count?
Looks like the design could be inspired by existing deep sea diving suits, such as those by Chester E. Macduffee.
The poster at the top automatically made me think of Penny Arcade’s Automata comic.
A golem isn’t a robot. More like animated mud.
if they’re going to describe it as “a mechanical figure with a human brain,” wouldn’t the silent “Oz” films with the Tin Man, starting early as 1910, mean he came first?
That’s what I was thinking. Why wasn’t the tin man the first robot?
The 1910 “tin woodsman”:
I’m flattered you used my manipulated image over the original. My robot character, from the book BOILERPLATE: History’s Mechanical Marvel, finds itself in the most interesting places!
That was the first thing I thought of as well!
Best movie non-sequitur of the week:
“Believe it or not, I have been in Madagascar and I know!”
True, although I do recall having seen some of the Golem films mentioned in an encyclopedia of science fiction films. Probably best to be considered as not really a robot, but nevertheless an important precursor which helped establish some of the ideas and themes that would later be associated with robots in fiction.
That probably depends on what animated him. If it was the magic of Oz as opposed to something more science based, I guess he’s not really a robot. I don’t recall if it was ever spelled out, although I’m far from an expert on Oz and its folk.
Loved Boilerplate and happy to give him a little shout out.
Yeah, what IS a robot? When is something a machine vs being a robot? When is a humanoid automaton a robot or something else? Was the tin man some other creature, like an animated simulacrum of a man? But why wouldn’t that type of creature BE a robot? Does it have to be humanoid to be a robot? Does it have to be constructed of parts to be a robot? Are R2D2 and C3PO robots? Are droids different than robots? What about weird things like Terminators, or the liquid terminators: are those robots?
Would we be having this conversation about Pinocchio if he were made of metal instead of wood?
Does it do serf labor? If so, then it’s a robot 
