The reels of film were old and battered and no one knew what was on them.
They were from before World War I and had been shuttled around from basements to barns to garages and had just been dropped off at the Library. There were about 10 of them and they were rusted. Some were misshapen. The nitrate film stock had crumbled to bits on some; other strips were stuck together.
The librarians peeled them apart and gently looked them over, frame by frame.
And there, on one film, was a black star painted onto a pedestal in the center of the screen. The action was of a magician and a robot battling it out in slapstick fashion. It took a bit, but then the gasp of realization: They were looking at “Gugusse and the Automaton,” a long-lost film by the iconic French filmmaker George Méliès at his Star Film company.
The 45-second film, made around 1897, was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot, which had endeared it to generations of science fiction fans, even if they knew it only by reputation. It had not been seen by anyone in likely more than a century. The find, made last September but now being announced publicly, is a small but important addition to the legacy of world cinema and one of its founders.
Wow 26 years before robot was even a word!
The term robot came from the Czech language in 1923. The word was coined by Czech author Karel Capek, first used in his play (English translated name) “R.U.R.”[7][8][9] The term comes from the Czech word robotnik (‘forced worker’), from robota ‘forced labor, compulsory service, drudgery,’ from robotiti ‘to work, drudge’, from an Old Czech source akin to Old Church Slavonic rabota (работа) ‘servitude,’ from rabu ‘slave’. From Old Slavic *orbu-, from PIE *orbh- ‘pass from one status to another’.[10]
This is just in the lemmy post, the film uses the word “Automate”
