Word Origin: ROBOT

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The word robot was first used by  the influential Czech playwright Karel Capek.  The word originates from the Czech word “robota” which means forced labour or serf.  The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in January 1921.

In R.U.R., Capek poses a paradise, where the machines initially bring so many benefits but in the end bring an equal amount of blight in the form of unemployment and social unrest. The robots in R.U.R were not mechanical in nature but were created through chemical means.

The word ‘robotics’ was first used in “Runaround”, a short story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov

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