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[technato]

Can We Copy the Brain?

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Why We Should Copy the Brain

Trying to create consciousness may be the path to understanding this most deeply mysterious human attribute By Glenn Zorpette

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Can We Copy the Brain? syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

Can We Copy the Brain?

null

Why We Should Copy the Brain

Trying to create consciousness may be the path to understanding this most deeply mysterious human attribute By Glenn Zorpette

.article-page #side-module{ top:0; } .gating-message:before { position: absolute; height: 100%; width: 100%; content: “”; background: linear-gradient(to top, rgba(255,255,255, 1) 0%, rgba(255,255,255, 0) 50% ); bottom: 102%; left: -2px; } .gating-message { border: 2px solid lightgray; border-radius: 10px; background-color: #f5f5f5; margin:20px 0; position:relative; } .gating-message h2{ color:#000 !important; font-size:26px; font-weight:bold; line-height:30px; } .gating-message-body { text-align: center; padding: 15px; } .gating-message-button { background-color: #03a6e3; background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom,#03a6e3 0,#03a6e3 100%); color: white; font-size:18px; }

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Can We Copy the Brain? syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

AT&T releases white box specifications into Open Compute Project

Ahead of deploying white boxes into thousands of its cell sites over the coming years, AT&T has released its white box specifications into the OCP. While AT&T has been working with several vendors on its white box implementations, putting its specifications into the Open Compute Project will bring even more companies into the developmental fold. Instead AT&T releases white box specifications into Open Compute Project syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

AT&T releases white box specifications into Open Compute Project

Ahead of deploying white boxes into thousands of its cell sites over the coming years, AT&T has released its white box specifications into the OCP. While AT&T has been working with several vendors on its white box implementations, putting its specifications into the Open Compute Project will bring even more companies into the developmental fold. Instead AT&T releases white box specifications into Open Compute Project syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

Through-Silicon Transistors Could Make Stacking Chips Smarter

3D stacking saves space, time, and energy, but it takes some smarts to do it best

Through-silicon vias (TSVs) are the standard way to stack chips these days. They’re basically micrometer-scale vertical wires embedded in a sliver of silicon that link one chip, such as a processor, to another, such as a memory chip, stacked atop the first. That way signals don’t have to travel very far between the two chips. Done right, they should save time, energy, and space. But, at the moment, they don’t add any intelligence.

Engineers in Germany want to change that by making TSVs smart. Their answer is a “through-silicon transistor,” and if they’re right, it should let designers actively control which signals are allowed to go from one chip to another. The implications aren’t just more intelligent control of the flow of information—through-silicon transistors could also keep sensitive chip designs safe from prying (electron-microscope enhanced) eyes.

[technato]

Through-Silicon Transistors Could Make Stacking Chips Smarter

3D stacking saves space, time, and energy, but it takes some smarts to do it best

Through-silicon vias (TSVs) are the standard way to stack chips these days. They’re basically micrometer-scale vertical wires embedded in a sliver of silicon that link one chip, such as a processor, to another, such as a memory chip, stacked atop the first. That way signals don’t have to travel very far between the two chips. Done right, they should save time, energy, and space. But, at the moment, they don’t add any intelligence.

Engineers in Germany want to change that by making TSVs smart. Their answer is a “through-silicon transistor,” and if they’re right, it should let designers actively control which signals are allowed to go from one chip to another. The implications aren’t just more intelligent control of the flow of information—through-silicon transistors could also keep sensitive chip designs safe from prying (electron-microscope enhanced) eyes.

[technato]

Inspur adds artificial intelligence node into OCP-compliant servers

China-based Inspur rolled out a new set of Open Compute Project-based hyperscale rack servers that included support for artificial intelligence. Inspur is the third-largest server vendor in the world and the biggest in China, according to Dolly Wu, vice president of data center and cloud at Inspur. Inspur adds artificial intelligence node into OCP-compliant servers syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

Inspur adds artificial intelligence node into OCP-compliant servers

China-based Inspur rolled out a new set of Open Compute Project-based hyperscale rack servers that included support for artificial intelligence. Inspur is the third-largest server vendor in the world and the biggest in China, according to Dolly Wu, vice president of data center and cloud at Inspur. Inspur adds artificial intelligence node into OCP-compliant servers syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

PCCW’s Hughes: The nirvana of automation starts small

Carriers’ quest for automation is nothing new, but the processes and technologies are now aligned to make it happen, says PCCW’s David Hughes. Speaking at last week’s Light Reading NFV and SDN conference, Hughes said telcos have historically struggled with automation because their networks have always been tied to physical resources. PCCW’s Hughes: The nirvana of automation starts small syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

PCCW’s Hughes: The nirvana of automation starts small

Carriers’ quest for automation is nothing new, but the processes and technologies are now aligned to make it happen, says PCCW’s David Hughes. Speaking at last week’s Light Reading NFV and SDN conference, Hughes said telcos have historically struggled with automation because their networks have always been tied to physical resources. PCCW’s Hughes: The nirvana of automation starts small syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

Microsoft Announces Experimental Release of ROS for Windows 10

Microsoft takes a step back into robotics by bringing the Robot Operating System to Windows

At ROSCon 2018 in Madrid this weekend, Microsoft showed up with a small booth and a TurtleBot 3. The TurtleBot wasn’t doing much, just sitting on a table, but it was sitting on the table while running ROS Melodic Morenia on Windows 10. Were it released onto the floor, it would have used its lidar to locate people and drive towards them, as a proof of concept that Microsoft has successfully gotten ROS to work in Windows.

This isn’t just an isolated demo, either. In a blog post, Lou Amadio (Windows IoT principal software engineer at Microsoft), says that “Microsoft is working with Open Robotics and the ROS Industrial Consortium to bring the Robot Operating System to Windows.” Hooray!

[technato]

Microsoft Announces Experimental Release of ROS for Windows 10

Microsoft takes a step back into robotics by bringing the Robot Operating System to Windows

At ROSCon 2018 in Madrid this weekend, Microsoft showed up with a small booth and a TurtleBot 3. The TurtleBot wasn’t doing much, just sitting on a table, but it was sitting on the table while running ROS Melodic Morenia on Windows 10. Were it released onto the floor, it would have used its lidar to locate people and drive towards them, as a proof of concept that Microsoft has successfully gotten ROS to work in Windows.

This isn’t just an isolated demo, either. In a blog post, Lou Amadio (Windows IoT principal software engineer at Microsoft), says that “Microsoft is working with Open Robotics and the ROS Industrial Consortium to bring the Robot Operating System to Windows.” Hooray!

[technato]

New Technologies Impacting the Smart Factory

The electronics influencing changes in manufacturing — from robotics to the IIoT to 3D printing and laser marking and engraving.

Not all factories are ready to go the way of lights-out manufacturing, where autonomous robots occupy a factory and don’t require lights at all; where it is just rows of machines functioning in the dark.

But that doesn’t mean technology isn’t changing and influencing the way a modern factory operates and what products it can create. From the industrial internet of things (IIoT), to 3D printing, to robotics, to the rising use of industrial lasers, integrating new technologies into a factory makes manufacturing more autonomous, cheaper and more efficient.

IIoT is seen as a game changer for the modern factory. Connected factories are capable of monitoring and controlling virtually anything in the manufacturing process, and can be managed either from the factory floor or remotely. Connectivity accelerates automation and also enables manufacturing to take advantage of cognitive analysis, machine learning and big data, providing insight into the efficient manufacturing for various devices and optimization of equipment maintenance and use. The overall result is effective factory management that both increases quality insurance and mitigates costs. By 2020, according to market research firm Gartner, IoT tech will be included in 95 percent of all electronics for new product designs, including the use of IoT in the industrial space to build these devices.

3D printing has garnered a lot of attention over the last few years thanks to its ability to build virtually any type of device or product in an inexpensive manner. For a while, 3D printing was limited to the manufacturing of plastics, printing that material layer by layer. However, the technology has improved to where numerous companies have the capacity for 3D printing metal, concrete and other materials for applications such as replacement automotive parts, airplane wings, concrete bridges, full residential housing and much more. There are even farms of 3D printers being established that can run all day and night, having minimal interaction with human workers as they crank out devices and parts.

Robot use in factories has grown substantially over the past five years; they can now be found on factory floors, in manufacturing warehouses and in logistics. There’s currently an emphasis being placed on collaborative robots, or cobots, that work hand-in-hand with human workers toward a common goal. Some cobots are just mechanical arms that can be used for tasks such as welding or circuit board molding or connecting electronics; others are larger machines that can do heavy lifting or even cook food. A recent study by MIT showed that a robot working with a human in a factory is more efficient than just a singular robot or a singular human working alone. The study also found that this scenario reduced unproductivity by 85 percent. Smart factories are leaning toward the use of cobots to save humans from needing to perform dangerous or hazardous tasks, yet also preventing robots from entirely replacing the human workforce. While still in the early stages of adoption, cobots are expected to create disruptive opportunities in the manufacturing sector.

Credit: Epilog Laser

Figure 1. A laser’s ability to mark products with a specific code or ID brings value-added features to a smart factory, and is a way to prevent counterfeiting of materials.

Meanwhile, the rising use of industrial lasers in manufacturing can be seen in applications such as laser material processing, laser micromachining, laser marking and laser engraving. Laser technology gives factories the ability to bring added value to the products they create. Examples include engraving custom names or logos; barcoding multiple products simultaneously; adding identification marks to prevent counterfeiting; and producing a variety of laser marks on a number of materials, such as bare metals, coated metals, anodized metals and plated metals. In each case, the work can be done with incredibly fine detail. Laser engraving also helps to protect intellectual property thanks to its ability to add serial numbers, time stamps, part numbers, component labels, data matrix code markings, branding and industry-specific codes – in each case, providing a high-quality mark that can be easily read by barcode scanners or other inventory-tracking tools that are vital to a smart factory. In addition, laser systems can be connected to a factory network as a manifestation of the IIoT, presenting new possibilities for system maintenance, monitoring, operation, remote troubleshooting and product support.

Credit: Epilog Laser

Figure 2. Laser engraving can create high-quality marks that can be easily read by barcode scanners, RFID scanners or other inventory-tracking tools.

For more information on how to integrate laser cutting and engraving into your factory, visit Epilog Laser.��

New Technologies Impacting the Smart Factory syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

New Technologies Impacting the Smart Factory

The electronics influencing changes in manufacturing — from robotics to the IIoT to 3D printing and laser marking and engraving.

Not all factories are ready to go the way of lights-out manufacturing, where autonomous robots occupy a factory and don’t require lights at all; where it is just rows of machines functioning in the dark.

But that doesn’t mean technology isn’t changing and influencing the way a modern factory operates and what products it can create. From the industrial internet of things (IIoT), to 3D printing, to robotics, to the rising use of industrial lasers, integrating new technologies into a factory makes manufacturing more autonomous, cheaper and more efficient.

IIoT is seen as a game changer for the modern factory. Connected factories are capable of monitoring and controlling virtually anything in the manufacturing process, and can be managed either from the factory floor or remotely. Connectivity accelerates automation and also enables manufacturing to take advantage of cognitive analysis, machine learning and big data, providing insight into the efficient manufacturing for various devices and optimization of equipment maintenance and use. The overall result is effective factory management that both increases quality insurance and mitigates costs. By 2020, according to market research firm Gartner, IoT tech will be included in 95 percent of all electronics for new product designs, including the use of IoT in the industrial space to build these devices.

3D printing has garnered a lot of attention over the last few years thanks to its ability to build virtually any type of device or product in an inexpensive manner. For a while, 3D printing was limited to the manufacturing of plastics, printing that material layer by layer. However, the technology has improved to where numerous companies have the capacity for 3D printing metal, concrete and other materials for applications such as replacement automotive parts, airplane wings, concrete bridges, full residential housing and much more. There are even farms of 3D printers being established that can run all day and night, having minimal interaction with human workers as they crank out devices and parts.

Robot use in factories has grown substantially over the past five years; they can now be found on factory floors, in manufacturing warehouses and in logistics. There’s currently an emphasis being placed on collaborative robots, or cobots, that work hand-in-hand with human workers toward a common goal. Some cobots are just mechanical arms that can be used for tasks such as welding or circuit board molding or connecting electronics; others are larger machines that can do heavy lifting or even cook food. A recent study by MIT showed that a robot working with a human in a factory is more efficient than just a singular robot or a singular human working alone. The study also found that this scenario reduced unproductivity by 85 percent. Smart factories are leaning toward the use of cobots to save humans from needing to perform dangerous or hazardous tasks, yet also preventing robots from entirely replacing the human workforce. While still in the early stages of adoption, cobots are expected to create disruptive opportunities in the manufacturing sector.

Credit: Epilog Laser

Figure 1. A laser’s ability to mark products with a specific code or ID brings value-added features to a smart factory, and is a way to prevent counterfeiting of materials.

Meanwhile, the rising use of industrial lasers in manufacturing can be seen in applications such as laser material processing, laser micromachining, laser marking and laser engraving. Laser technology gives factories the ability to bring added value to the products they create. Examples include engraving custom names or logos; barcoding multiple products simultaneously; adding identification marks to prevent counterfeiting; and producing a variety of laser marks on a number of materials, such as bare metals, coated metals, anodized metals and plated metals. In each case, the work can be done with incredibly fine detail. Laser engraving also helps to protect intellectual property thanks to its ability to add serial numbers, time stamps, part numbers, component labels, data matrix code markings, branding and industry-specific codes – in each case, providing a high-quality mark that can be easily read by barcode scanners or other inventory-tracking tools that are vital to a smart factory. In addition, laser systems can be connected to a factory network as a manifestation of the IIoT, presenting new possibilities for system maintenance, monitoring, operation, remote troubleshooting and product support.

Credit: Epilog Laser

Figure 2. Laser engraving can create high-quality marks that can be easily read by barcode scanners, RFID scanners or other inventory-tracking tools.

For more information on how to integrate laser cutting and engraving into your factory, visit Epilog Laser. 

New Technologies Impacting the Smart Factory syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[technato]

Video Friday: Japan’s New Humanoid Robot HRP-5P, and More

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):

ROSCon 2018 – September 29-30, 2018 – Madrid, Spain

IROS 2018 – October 1-5, 2018 – Madrid, Spain

International Robot Safety Conference – October 9-11, 2018 – Detroit, Mich., USA

Japan Robot Week – October 17-19, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

Collaborative Robots, Advanced Vision & AI Conference – October 24-25, 2018 – Santa Clara, Calif., USA

ICSR 2018 – November 28-30, 2018 – Qingdao, China

Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

[technato]

Video Friday: Japan’s New Humanoid Robot HRP-5P, and More

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):

ROSCon 2018 – September 29-30, 2018 – Madrid, Spain

IROS 2018 – October 1-5, 2018 – Madrid, Spain

International Robot Safety Conference – October 9-11, 2018 – Detroit, Mich., USA

Japan Robot Week – October 17-19, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan

Collaborative Robots, Advanced Vision & AI Conference – October 24-25, 2018 – Santa Clara, Calif., USA

ICSR 2018 – November 28-30, 2018 – Qingdao, China

Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.

[technato]

Elektro the Moto-Man Had the Biggest Brain at the 1939 World’s Fair

This voice-controlled robot could walk, talk, and smoke, and it captivated crowds

a.Link2RobotsSite { text-decoration: none; }

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be very glad to tell my story. I am a smart fellow as I have a very fine brain of 48 electrical relays.” This is how Elektro the robot introduced itself to crowds at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Standing 2.1 meters tall and weighing 118 kilograms, Elektro performed 26 different tricks, including walking, talking, counting, and singing. It had a vocabulary of approximately 700 words, although its responses were all prerecorded and played back from 33⅓-rpm records. One of Elektro’s pet lines was, “My brain is bigger than yours.” At 25 kg, it certainly was.

Elektro was one of a family of robots that evolved out of Westinghouse’s switchgear business. By the early 1920s, the company had succeeded in developing fully automatic electrical substations, and its engineers were looking for ways to improve them. One operator requested a way to call the substation system remotely and initiate a change in the normal operating routine. Thus was born Televox, a set of control units that started Westinghouse down the path to developing robots.

Roy J. Wensley designed Televox to change switches in a substation in response to sounds it detected. One half of the Televox unit sat on the desk of a dispatcher at a central power station and the other at the substation. The Televox at the central station used tuning-fork oscillators to create different frequencies, which formed a code that the receiving Televox could interpret. The operator would send the code to the substation over an existing phone line. The receiver unit had to raise the telephone receiver, process the incoming codes, and then respond with the appropriate action, such as opening or closing a particular switch.

Wensley saw plenty of potential uses for the device in the public utility field. He asked the advertising department to help with publicity but was turned down. He did, however, have enough in his discretionary project budget to build a portable demonstration model of the Televox. A 1928 advertisement promoted the Televox as “a new instrument which is to become the servant of the future.” But Wensley had the intuition of a salesman and knew his box of relays and wires wouldn’t appeal to nontechnical audiences, and so he decided to dress it up a bit.

On 21 February 1928, Herbert Televox made its debut at the Level Club in New York City. This “robot” was simply a crude humanoid form (head, articulated arms, and legs) made out of wallboard with the Televox control unit forming the body. Herbert Televox’s great trick: unveiling a portrait of George Washington in honor of Washington’s Birthday. Giving a name, face, and personality to a control unit turned out to be a stroke of genius, capturing the popular imagination for the possibilities of robotics.

Photo: Mansfield Memorial Museum

Robot Family: Herbert Televox [left] was Westinghouse’s first human-form robot. The more famous member of the Westinghouse robot family was Elektro; a copy is shown in the middle, while the original is on the right.

Enthusiastic reporters exaggerated Herbert’s skills, claiming it could manage an entire home by remote control. Wensley spent a great deal of effort correcting the record about Televox’s actual abilities. Nevertheless, the publicity spurred further research. The U.S. military, for instance, investigated using Televox to fire guns remotely. Rural airports that didn’t maintain staff around the clock considered using it to automatically light up runways when planes approached at night.

In 1929, Wensley was serendipitously assigned to coordinate the engineering and marketing of refrigerators. This led him to the Westinghouse Appliance Division, in Mansfield, Ohio, where he met several likeminded engineers. They soon rolled out Katrina van Televox, Rastus, and a few other robots. With each iteration, the engineers worked to refine the machines’ movement, sound, control, and skill set.

Elektro was their ultimate creation. Built by J.M. Barnett, Jack Weeks Sr., Harold Gorsuch, and other engineers at the Mansfield plant, the robot had a torso, arms, and legs made from aluminum sheeting. Its head and hands were cast aluminum. Other parts were pilfered from the factory—power cords from irons, coffee pots, and waffle makers, wheels from vacuum cleaners.

Elektro wowed audiences, first at the World’s Fair and then on tour across the country, and it hawked appliances for Westinghouse. But you’d be wrong to dismiss it as simply a publicity stunt. The engineers who developed Elektro were pioneers, attempting to turn science fiction into reality by developing a voice-activated robot.

Everybody Loves Robots

Gif: IEEE Spectrum

Robots continue to captivate crowds, but they have changed a lot since Elektro. Check out the latest, most advanced designs in our new Robots website.

An operator gave voice commands to Elektro through a microphone, but the robot didn’t actually understand the words. According to an article in the August 1939 issue of Radio-Craft magazine, the voice commands were carefully timed syllabic codes, which were turned into electrical pulses by a grid-glow tube [PDF]. The pulse opened a shutter in front of a lightbulb, sending a flash signal across the room to a photoelectric tube in the robot’s control unit, located offstage. This “electric eye” translated the signal into an electric current and transmitted it through telephone relays to start Elektro’s gears whirring.

According to C. Bruce Hardy, who toured with Elektro in 1942–43, all of the commands that started or ended a trick followed a 3-1-2 syllable pattern, with pauses between the phrasing. For example, “Will you come / down / front please?” would start Elektro moving forward. “You have come / far / enough” would make the robot stop. Operators could vary the wording as long as they kept to the pattern. “Tell us how / old / you are” and “Count your age / with / fingers” both could trigger the same trick. But operators stuck to an orchestrated script; they didn’t jump around in the program.

Although walking was one of Elektro’s trumpeted tricks, the robot didn’t really walk. Its left knee bent, with the right leg dragging behind, as it moved on wheels along a track in the stage.

Like the other Westinghouse humanoids, Elektro smoked cigarettes. An assistant would helpfully place a cigarette in a hole in the robot’s upper lip and light it. Elektro would take a few drags, exhaling the smoke in short puffs before the assistant extinguished it. After each performance, operators had to clean the tar out of the smoking mechanism’s tubing. Cigarette-smoking robots still exist today, but instead of casually lighting up, they puff away in laboratories to aid research on lung disease.

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

Robot’s Best Friend: Westinghouse introduced Sparko the dog as a companion for Elektro.

In 1941 a second hole was added to Elektro’s upper lip, but this one was for a more innocuous party trick. Elektro liked to challenge audience members to balloon-blowing competitions, seeing who could burst the balloon first. Equipped with an air hose and compressor, the robot almost always won.

Elektro’s dog, Sparko, was added to the World’s Fair show in 1940. Sparko could move forward and back, sit down, turn its head, wag its tail, and bark. Don Lee Hadley designed Sparko based on his own Scottish terrier, Bonnie. Westinghouse commissioned three dogs (the prototype plus a companion each for Elektro and another Westinghouse robot, Willie Vocalite), but none are known to survive today.

Recently, I created a biography page for Elektro on IMDb, where it now joins other robot movie stars like Alexa, Siri, and Robby the Robot. Elektro starred in The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair, a 1939 film produced by Westinghouse to help promote the company’s appliances.

https://spectrum.ieee.org//www.youtube.com/embed/Q6TQEoDS-fQ

It also appeared on the television show You Asked for It hosted by Art Baker in 1951, returning the following year as a finalist for the most popular episode of the previous year. And for several years after the World’s Fair and again after World War II, Elektro toured the country doing live performances, mostly in the housewares sections of department stores.

In 1958, a talent agent spotted the aging robot in a Westinghouse exhibit at Pacific Ocean Park, near Los Angeles, where it was playing second fiddle to a one-third-scale model of the nuclear-powered Nautilus submarine. That sighting earned Elektro a role as S.A.M. Thinko in 1960’s Sex Kittens Go to College. The Sequential Auxiliary Modulator blew a few fuses when confronted by the brilliant mind of Mamie van Doren’s Dr. Mathilda West, or possibly it was some of her other features. I suppose there’s humor in the blatant sexism of this B movie, if only the reality didn’t exist to this day in so many academic settings.

After its brief time in Hollywood, Elektro was packed into crates, sent back to its birthplace, and all but forgotten. The robot managed to survive the scrap heap and found a home at the Mansfield Memorial Museum, in Ohio, where it is now on permanent display. The museum’s director, Scott Schaut, has accumulated a tremendous archive of material related to the development of robotics at Westinghouse. He’s always on the lookout for more, although he says it saddens him to know how much history has already been destroyed. “Every day, historical artifacts are discarded or thrown in the trash without any regard to their significance to the community and the posterity of history,” Schaut writes in his book Robots of Westinghouse, 1924–Today, which reproduces numerous photos and promotional materials documenting Elektro’s history.

The book concludes with an intriguing scenario: What if Elektro had a female companion? Schaut knows of six sketches of women robots, created by Westinghouse’s robot team. They have some of Elektro’s features, such as the circular light in the chest, but they differ in hairstyle, facial expression, and bust and hip measurements. Plus, all of the lady robots are wearing dresses. Sadly, an Elektra never seems to have been built.

An abridged version of this article appears in the October 2018 print issue as “Elektro the Moto-Man.”

Part of a continuing series looking at photographs of historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.

About the Author

Allison Marsh is an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina and codirector of the university’s Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology & Society.

Elektro the Moto-Man Had the Biggest Brain at the 1939 World’s Fair syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com