New Talents

Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. last week announced that it had constructed, and would exhibit at the New York World's Fair, a new electromechanical man. His name: Elektro. In either profile or full-face he looks not unlike Actor John Barrymore, and with a total of 26 tricks in his repertoire, he is probably the most talented robot ever built.

Elektro is seven feet tall, weighs 260 Ibs., is clad in gleaming aluminum. He is operated by 48 electrical relays (circuits actuated by current variations in other circuits) which control his eleven motors by remote control. He can walk forward or backward, with a peculiar limp (only one leg bends at the knee and both huge feet are equipped with rollers). He can salute with either hand. He can count up to ten on his fingers, bending each finger individually. By means of photoelectric cells equipped with color filters, he can tell red from green. He can talk and sing (by voice recordings played through an amplifier). He can suck smoke from a cigaret placed in his mouth, and exhale through his nostrils.

Best of all, Elektro obeys orders. He converts the sound vibrations of prearranged commands into electrical impulses, as a telephone does, and these impulses set him in motion. He is quite indifferent, however, to what words are used; the number and spacing of the syllables are what he pays attention to.

If vocal impulses in the wording of a command are not delivered just right, Elektro may apparently disobey. In Pittsburgh last week the robot made nice publicity for himself by disobeying his master. His designer, Engineer J. M. Barnett, practicing signals for reporters, ordered him to raise one arm. Instead he started walking backward, kept on walking backward even when commanded to stop by the engineer, who grew a little excited--and still less careful of his phrasing. Elektro might have backed through a wall had not Robotmaster Barnett shut off his supply of electric power.

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