On Jan. 25, 1921, Karel Čapek’s play “R.U.R.”—short for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”—premiered in Prague. It was a sensation. Within two years it had been translated into 30 languages, including ...

Some references state that term ‘robot’ was derived from the Czech word ‘robota,’ meaning ‘work,’ while others propose that ‘robota’ actually refers to ‘forced workers’ or ‘slaves.’ Some references ...

One hundred years ago, a play titled “R.U.R.,” by Karel Čapek, debuted in Prague and gave us the word “robot.” Since then, androids have been dreaming of electric sheep, and we’ve been having ...

In 2021, robots can be forklifts or machine tools, surgical instruments or bomb defusers. As a viral video showed this month, a new, human-shaped model from Boston Dynamics can even dance to the ...

Two things keep Karel Capek’s “War With the Newts” from getting the recognition it deserves: its cover and its title. The best translation’s cover design, black text on teal, has all the panache of a ...

“Robot!” was what the painter Josef Čapek, his mouth full of paint brushes, said to his brother Karel, the writer, when asked what name he could give to an artificial assistant of mankind in the play ...

Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. In the spring of 1988, Japanese publisher Kodansha released a revealing English-language book ...