"I Can Whip Any Mechanical Robot" by Jack Dempsey (1930s)

The 1979 book Wasn't the Future Wonderful? features the above two-page spread of Jack Dempsey challenging a robot. Unfortunately, the book doesn't specify the publication or date except that it's from the 1930s and probably from Modern Mechanix. Below is an excerpt from the piece.

I can whip any mechanical robot that ever has or ever will be made.

Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical, maybe you will say it's just the voice of a "has-been," but I assure you that neither is true.

Engineers can build a robot that will possess everything except brains. And without brains no man can ever attain championship class in the boxing game.



See also:
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Robots: The World of the Future (1979)
The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)
The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)
Mammy vs Robot (Charleston Gazette, 1937)
Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)
All's Fair at the Fair (1938)

The Robot is a Terrible Creature (1922)

The October 16, 1922 edition of The Bee (Danville, Virginia) ran a syndicated story about the Karel Capek play R.U.R. The play introduced the world to the word "robot" from the Czech "robota," which literally means "forced work." Below are excerpts as well as the article as it appeared in The Bee.

If any industrial genius, like Henry Ford, ever turns his energies to the manufacture of Robots we're all goners, as the saying is.

The Robot is a terrible creature of synthetic flesh, bone and skin. He is in the image of man and has all the attributes of man except spirituality and laziness. One Robot having been completed and assembled he can be turned to the task of manufacturing arms and legs of other Robots. After they are assembled he can be sold in wholesale lots to various industrial concerns and to nations as soldiers against the Robot armies of other nations.

Or maybe you would like a Robotess as stenographer. She wouldn't chew gum because she has no taste. She wouldn't waste time with lip-stick and primping because she has no sense of beauty. She'd never ask for a raise because she has no use for money.

The Robot symbolizes the present-day spirit of mechanicalism used to forecast the revolt of humans against the human-created artifices that mock the powers of nature.

Or perhaps the play presents the theory of a coming genesis, the anticipation of a future cycle of human evolution in which man shall be confounded by the Creator he has mimicked.


See also:
The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Mammy vs Robot (Charleston Gazette, 1937)
Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)
All's Fair at the Fair (1938)

The Mechanical Man of the Future (1928)

On December 9, 1928 The Ogden Standard-Examiner (Ogden City, Utah), along with many other papers, ran a syndicated story about the mechanical man of the future. Much like the insistence that giant robots would soon fight our wars, this article clearly must be taken with a grain of salt.


The mechanical man, brazen-lunged creature of dreadful portent is among us! A few years from now you may rub elbows with him in the subway, turn out in the street to let him pass upon his ruthless way, or even, if you are a malefactor, find yourself pinioned in his grip of cold steel and compelled with unreasoning inflexibility toward a place of confinement.

What can the mechanical man do? Plenty! He can walk, and he can talk. He can stand, sit, bow, and otherwise comport himself after the fashion of a human being. But he can do more than that. He can shake hands and breathe, telephone, operate practically any electrical device, and perform any number of duties advantageous to mankind.

See also:
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Mammy vs Robot (Charleston Gazette, 1937)
Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)
All's Fair at the Fair (1938)
That Synthetic Food of the Future (Ogden Standard-Examiner, 1926)

The Robot Rebellion (1982)

In all the futurism books written for children, this may be the most hilariously disturbing two-page spread I've seen. This image, from the book Fact or Fantasy (World of Tomorrow) depicts robots that have determined humans are no longer necessary and now must be hunted down.

I can just see some little Billy or Susie in the early 80s reading that, "...allied to robots of superhuman strength, these computers might take over the world and see no place in it for ourselves." The aforementioned child then proceeds to poop their pants.

See also:
Mars and Beyond (1957)
Donald Duck's "Modern Inventions" (1937)