Children's Educational Books On Robots

Fact: The most exciting thing about the old How and Why Wonder Book about "Robots and Electronic Brains" (publication date 1963) is the cover. (See it here.)

Reading really old books can often give interesting perspectives on the present, and the ancient How and Why books (from all the way back in the '60s) is no exception. It is also a good way to actually learn about some of the basics of computing... although if you want that, there are almost certainly better modern sources.

One of the most amusing and idiosyncratic features of this particular old book is that it calls any random robots that are mobile and have work arms "MOBOTs." It seems to further assume that in the future, all robots that perform dangerous, exotic work for people will probably also be called Mobots. Sadly, there seem to be no references to the original Mobot on the internet, although Wikipedia redirects the search term to "mobile robot," which is what it's short for. (The closest thing on Wikipedia in terms of time and name to Mobot was actually Mowbot, the first lawnmowing robot. No joke.)

The book also talks about teaching machines, an amusing anachronism far less fascinating than its neighbor in that article, the pigeon-guided missile. Of course, the teaching machines described in the book are at least a little bit different than the ones described in the article, so I dunno.

Then there's the Robots book from the "Modern Technology" series. Published in 1986 (the year my sister was born), this book likewise focuses on then-modern ideas of robots and the then-near future. It's a bit less jarring in that respect, and itself almost quaint.

It's also rather boring.

Don't get me wrong-it actually has pretty good information on robotics and the like. It even has photographs of many robots that are obvious progenitors of today's sophisticated humanoid robots, as well as a picture of a "seeing eye robot." (It also hints at Japan's dominance in robotics, although it doesn't refer to it explicitly.)

But I find it a bit hard to believe that it could really make a kid excited about robots, especially these days.

There was another book I was going to talk about a little bit, but it belongs to my kid brother, and got itself thoroughly lost last week. Sadly, that was the fun one.

-Signing off.