Forget Grok, this is the type of AI we want! Our anthropomorphic technology correspondent Angus Young has the details.
It was billed as Hull’s Great Exhibition. Staged over ten days in March 1935, the City of Hull Trades Exhibition in the City Hall featured 23 stands ranging from the Hull Corporation Electricity Department to Swissaire Refrigerators of Hessle Road. Additional attractions included music by the band and pipers of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, fashion parades and a display showcasing a fully-electric house.
However, the star of the show was a robot called George. “Come and see the great super electro-mechanical man,” said the official programme. “He moves and talks – is almost human. The world’s great electrical wonder, a moving, walking man. A man without soul. Come and see how he will help you to solve the problems of the future. First time in Hull.”
George was the handiwork of Captain William Henry Richards, a journalist, war correspondent and an amateur engineer. He is credited with building Britain’s first mechanical man in 1928. His invention called Eric performed the opening ceremony of the Society of Model Engineers’ annual exhibition that year. Weighing just over 45 kilograms, Eric was made of aluminium and stood in a box which housed a 12-volt electric motor. Inside Eric’s armour-plated chest was another motor with 11 electromagnets and wiring to different parts of his body. Eric could take a bow, look right and left, sit down and deliver a short recorded speech.
Naturally, he caused a sensation and Richards took Eric on promotional tours in both America and the UK before deciding to concentrate on developing a second robot who would become known as George. Boasting a more rounded physique, he made his debut at a Parisian theatre and subsequently toured Europe and the UK appearing in department stores and trade exhibitions such as the one in Hull.
Standing on his own two feet rather than in a box, George moved in the same way as his predecessor and was said to be able to answer a number of pre-prepared questions. Richards used primitive voice-activated technology to trigger the robot’s movements. He would speak into a microphone built into its body which then transmitted electrical currents to a series of moving mechanical parts. Asked what it looked like inside, he said: “Most disappointing, nothing but gears and cranks. Just like a watch on a large scale.”
Even so, the official Hull exhibition programme promoted George as a technological wonder. “There is no doubt Britain’s great super-electro-mechanical man will arouse keen interest in Hull. What this extraordinary invention means to the human race only time can tell,” it said. As it turned out, George barely survived the Second World War after being badly damaged when a Surrey garage where he was stored suffered a direct hit during a bombing raid.
It’s not clear what happened to the robot when his inventor died in 1948 but four years later George’s story took an unexpected twist when he started to appear in publicity photographs for the actress Diana Dors and her then husband Denis Hamilton. At the time, Hamilton claimed he had built the robot – which he called Robert – from spare parts he had found in the basement of their new home.
However, the robot was clearly George and the publicity shots led to a bitter row between Hamilton and members of the Richards family after which George was never seen in public again.