Originally published at: The legendary Steam Man of 1868 was a human-like robot that could pull a cart | Boing Boing
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Eat yer heart out, Boston Dynamics!
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“Zadoc P. Dedrick” what a name.
The Wikipedia article cites a 2007 book on a line claiming there was another inventor, Isaac Grass, but Internet Archive seems to have removed their copy of it. One of the other sources also has Grass and mentions that the boiler on legs was named after, “a man from Leicester in England, who became famous for his obesity.”
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“…it marched around Military Park into a beer garden where it was put on display, at 25 cents per head, while it went through its paces.”
This sounds like a dream gig tbh.
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But did he have intelligence?
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Could it play chess?
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Dang it, I looked up the patent out of curiosity and of course it turned out to have a racist caricature in the image. That’s a downer.
But lots more information and mostly-not-racist images can be found here:
I seriously doubt that this thing could do a mile in 2:15 like some newspaper ads claimed, though. The fastest that a human has ever managed that was about 3:43. Or maybe it means 2 hours, 15 minutes?
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2:15 on those roads? Yeah I’d have my doubts too.
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