THE ROBOT SPEAKS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 November 1928, Page 7

THE ROBOT SPEAKS

HIS FIRST PUBLIC APPEARANCE

Who can say the modern child is not blase? Scores of him (and her) crowded about the platform at the Royal Horticultural Hall, Westminster, whereon stood tlie latest wonder in science, tiie electrical Robot man, almost the realisation of a Wellsiau-cum-Jules Verne dream (says tlie London “ Observer ”). Erie, or Little-by-little, was his name, and he looked half an embodiment of an armoured knight of olden chivalry, half a fearsome symbol of the tinned goods industry, whose pocket one could only pick—were one so inclined—with ;i particularly hefty tinopener. And behind him hung a Union •lack.

At the holiest of his inventor, Captain Richards, he rose uncannily from his chair, surveyed his audience with sinister electric eyes, emitted sparks from his teeth, and—in a metallic loudspeaker voice declared the Model Engineer Exhibition open.

“ Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “ the subject of model engineering needs no introduction from me”—he must have overheard quite a lot ol after-dinner speeches, this steel Robot —“ hut to those who are making its acquaintance here to-day tor the first time, I may perhaps say ” Yes, this wonderful electric man spoke of “the mechanical genius of tlie British race,” “ tlie inspiration of the rising engineering generation,” “the love of workmanship,” the “ social side ” of the matter, and I know not what of model engineering "lore, and concluded portentously—with a forensicraising of both arms and a sideturn of the head; “Ladies and gentlemen, 1 have great pleasure in declaring this exhibition open.” Then he modestly sat down again without so much as a creak in his innards, rose a second time, and bowed twice.

Applause ? Certainly. But sensation? Not a bit. Twentieth-century youth was quite equal to the occasion. It smiled—even sardonically. It looked unaffected and superior. At least one curlv-headed hoy in his mother’s anus turned ins hack on Eric when he began to speak, yawned, and kept it there until Eric bad finished. MTicn Eric’s screen was put round him again his young audience turned away with an implied: “Well, that’s that! ” Perhaps it had seen the skein of wires trailing from Eric’s throne across the floor, perhaps it remembered that, after all, there was nothing now under the sun, and, incidentally, there was rather an old show called Punch and Judy, in which you heard a fellow’s voice without seeing him and saw puppets doing quite lifelike things. Besides, what is the use of a Robot if lie just says what all the other official speakers say, and with the same circumlocution? No; from the point of view of modern sophisticated youth, Eric was decidedly a tame sort of mutt. He ought to have kicked Air Percival Marshall, the chief of the exhibition off the platform while he was making his introductory remarks, sworn lurid vengeance on everybody, stalked into the crowd, pushed over half n dozen stalls, smashed the model automatic telephone exchange, crushed the door attendant in a vice-like grip, set fire to the building with one flash of bis teeth, and finally clanged out into V inc-ent square spreading honor and devastation before him. Then Young 1928 might have been impressed.