"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
robots of the yellow emperor
Solomon's "servants of brass" / "djinn bound into metal forms"
Pygmalion
the mechanical maid
the talking head of Sylvester II (“Dicitur etiam fecisse caput aëneum quod responsa reddebat ad quaesita.”)
Kempelen's mechanical Turk
Golem
E.T.A Hoffman's Olympia
Frankenstein
During their summers in spa house "Poniatowski" in Trenčianske Teplice (Slovakia), Karel Čapek worked on a new play featuring artificial beings. Unsatisfied with his working name "laboři", he asked his brother Josef for ideas. Josef immediately suggested roboti—a word rooted in forced labor—and Karel adopted it on the spot, giving the world the term "robot".