New Online Science Fiction Dictionary Pushes Back Origin of the Word 'Robot' to 1920 (archive.org) 44
"Fans of science fiction learned last week that the word 'robot' was first used in 1920 — a full three years earlier than originally thought," according to a blog post at Archive.org.
They call it "a major SciFi discovery hiding in plain sight":
The "massively important yet obvious" change in date was confirmed with a search of the Internet Archive, which has a digitized first edition of the Czech play, R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots, published in 1920. There on the title page, hiding in plain sight in an English-language subtitle to the work, is the earliest known use of the word "robot."
This important piece of information is one of many little-known facts captured in the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. The project was completed this year by historian Jesse Sheidlower, who credits two things that enabled him to publish this project, decades in the making. "One, we had a pandemic so I had a lot of enforced time at home that I could spend on it," explained Sheidlower. "The second was the existence of the Internet Archive. Because it turns out the Internet Archive has the Pulp Magazine collection that holds almost all the science fiction pulps from this core period...."
The comprehensive online dictionary includes not only definitions, but also how nearly 1,800 sci-fi terms were first used, and their context over time...
The project began nearly twenty years ago at Oxford English Dictionary as the Science Fiction Citations Project.
This important piece of information is one of many little-known facts captured in the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. The project was completed this year by historian Jesse Sheidlower, who credits two things that enabled him to publish this project, decades in the making. "One, we had a pandemic so I had a lot of enforced time at home that I could spend on it," explained Sheidlower. "The second was the existence of the Internet Archive. Because it turns out the Internet Archive has the Pulp Magazine collection that holds almost all the science fiction pulps from this core period...."
The comprehensive online dictionary includes not only definitions, but also how nearly 1,800 sci-fi terms were first used, and their context over time...
The project began nearly twenty years ago at Oxford English Dictionary as the Science Fiction Citations Project.
Wikipedia is your friend (Score:3)
It has been there all along all those years.
I remember Asimov talking about it in 1970 or so, he also used 'robotics' for the first time ever.
Very minor (Score:5, Informative)
Everybody already knew that R.U.R. was the first use of the word robot and everybody knew RUR was first published in 1920, with the first English edition in 1923.
The question was, what was the first English use of the word? The answer is that the title of the Czech first edition had the words in "Rossum's Universal Robots" in English. So, that English subtitle of the Czech play was the first use in English, in 1920; not the first English edition of the play in 1923.
Re:Very minor (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would have thought automaton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] was the first use of the word robot, robot just being slang for that as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Most of our stuff comes out of Greco-Roman literature of various sorts because for us that is the oldest that survived in any significant quantity. Could have been lots of stuff tens of thousands of years ago, it did not survive.
The elements of our literature are all there in Greco-Roman history. Mainly because the others did not survi
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Cover collection (Score:2)
Also, there's this [flickr.com].
Not that breaking news.. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a SciFi fan, and studied this play in the high school in the 80s..
We were told by the English Teacher at the time, that it was the earliest use of the word Robot in the English Language.. So what the title should actually be is "A new small group suddenly finds out that 1920 is the first time the word 'Robot' was used".
Are we going to have another story when the next subset of SciFi fans discover this date?
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Yeah like...they could have asked anyone who's been reading Asimov (and any preface to his Robot/Empire/Foundation novels) since forever. This is not a discovery.
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Have you read this 1920 edition? It's in Czech. The only part that's in English is the title: "Rossum's Universal Robots". If you studied the play in English, you probably were using the 1923 translation.
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Considering Wikipedia has listed R.U.R. as being written in 1920, and premiering on the stage in 1921 for over a decade, it's hardly like this is unknown information in English, either.
Also, my copy of R.U.R. lists the original publication date in addition to that edition's copyright.
Re:Not that breaking news.. (Score:5, Informative)
Have you read this 1920 edition? It's in Czech. The only part that's in English is the title: "Rossum's Universal Robots". If you studied the play in English, you probably were using the 1923 translation.
The word "robot" wasn't translated from Czech. It's a Czech word. (In Czech you form plurals by adding the letter "i", so the Czech plural of the word was and is "Roboti"). Here's a 2011 article about this 1920 origin, when it was already common knowledge.
https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22... [npr.org]
Well, it comes from an Old Church Slavonic word, rabota, which means servitude of forced labor. The word also has cognates in German, Russian, Polish and Czech. And it's really a product of Central European system of serfdom, where a tenants' rent was paid for in forced labor or service.
And he was writing this play about a company, Rossum's Universal Robots, that was actually using biotechnology. They were mass-producing workers using the latest biology, chemistry and physiology to produce workers who lack nothing but a soul. They couldn't love. They couldn't have feelings. But they could do all the works that humans preferred not to do. And, of course, the company was soon inundated with our orders.
Well, when Capek named these creatures, he first came up with a Latin word labori, for labor. But he worried that it sounded a little bit too bookish, and at the suggestion of his brother, Josef, Capek ultimately opted for roboti, or in English, robots.
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> workers who lack nothing but a soul. They couldn't love. They couldn't have feelings. But they could do all the works that humans preferred not to do.
This is how George W. Bush described Mexican laborers. Living in Northern New England I looked around at Americans doing all the "jobs Americans won't do".
The plutocrats are appalling.
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The concept in the original play was much more similar to the replicants of Blade Runner than to metallic android types of robots in a lot of other science fiction.
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Yes, the '23 edition noted that the original printing was in 1920. Which led me to believe that the word originated in 1920
I'm sure the Polish used it earlier. (Score:2)
Given that it is the Polish word for "worker"...
All news about robots replacing workers, or workers being treated like robots by robots (aka Amazon), must be pretty weird if you're Polish. :)
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No, it's not. It's based on the Czech word "robota", which means "forced labor" - it's derived from the terms for serfs and slaves. But the word "robot" itself was actually invented for the play.
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Re: I'm sure the Polish used it earlier. (Score:1)
I only know a bit of russian, but I have firm memories of "nje rabotet" when approaching elevators etc. back in the '80ies.
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All of "robot", "robotnik", "robota" come from the same root verb "robic" - to do something. "Robota" means work, as in labor. I don't know about Czech, but the word by itself in Polish has nothing to do with forced labor or serfdom. You would need to add some adjectives for that.
Stanislaw Lem in one of the short stories wrote a
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Polish for Robot seems to be "robot". I wonder if this has become the term for the machine, and a different word is used for workers. Wouldn't be unheard of. The word "computer" used to refer to a human who did computations as a job after all.
Article makes no sense (Score:5, Informative)
This article is a NOP. It was already well-known that the first use of the word "robot" was in this 1920 play. Any search for "first use of the word robot [google.com]" on Google turns this fact up. What the heck is this article saying?
Fans of science fiction learned last week that the word “robot” was first used in 1920—a full three years earlier than originally thought.
Originally thought by who? Why did the author of this article think the word was first used in 1923? And where? There's no reference mentioned about what the author originally thought the date was, or why that person was so surprised to learn what was already a google search away.
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The english translation was 1923, so everyone cited that as the origin date.
However, the title was translated in 1920 before the rest of RUR.
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Thank you! How did you find that out? I really did RTFA.
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It was originally used in 1920 - in Czech. The question was the (academic, literally) question of whether that counted as "used in English", or if you had to wait until the 1923 publication of the same play in English. It doesn't change anything else about the coining of the term.
Total Clickbait (Score:2)
As others have pointed out: This has been known for many decades. SF literature in the 80's pointed to the R.U.R. play as the source for "robot", and I looked it up and read it back then.
This is obviously a clickbait headline on the part of the Internet Archive Blog (fairly disappointing). The article is entirely about the new SF online dictionary, Internet Archive pulp resource, etc., etc.
It fails to give any evidence for how this discovery is new. What was the supposed prior date? What was the supposed pr
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As others have pointed out: This has been known for many decades. SF literature in the 80's pointed to the R.U.R. play as the source for "robot", and I looked it up and read it back then.
The question wasn't about the first use of the word "robot". The question was about the first use of the word "robot" in English.
The people who trace word origin made the very obvious conclusion that the first use of the word in English was in the first English edition of the play which introduced the word.
That turns out to be not the case. Turns out that in the play, although written in Czech, contained the phrase "Rossum's Universal Robots" in English. So the word "robot" appeared in English predates
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But that play was pointed out and known back in the 1970s sci fi mag articles as first using the word in English... really this isn't news at all to scifi fans born in early 1960s or earlier.
It's not a new online SF dictionary. (Score:2)
I contributed to it back in the late 90s and early 2000s (confirming original citations of Clarke's Laws).
Not news (Score:1)
I learned this in the 1960's (Score:3)
We read RUR in high school English in 1962. Thank you Miss Hempstead.
Oh, smeg! (Score:2)
Um, what? (Score:2)
Quite a lot of people know that (Score:2)
Michael Cane's first acting role was in a stage production of RUR, I believe.
And, yes, this is old "news".
This has been long known (Score:2)
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the R.U.R "robots" were biological, not metallic.
But I'm a Tin Man, you insensitive clod!
Major SciFi discovery hiding in plain sight? (Score:1)
How is this news? (Score:2)
Moreover, I'm stunned to find out that people think it was Asimov that coined the term. What kind of sci-fi fans think this crap?
Surprisingly (Score:1)