Found: The 19th century silent film that first captured a robot attack

"The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress' website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer."

"In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, "probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image." (The word "robot" didn't appear until 1921, when Czech dramatist Karel Capek coined it in his science fiction play R.U.R..)"

""Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots," said archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger, in an email to NPR. "Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new.""

The Library of Congress discovered and restored a 45-second silent film by renowned 19th-century French filmmaker Georges Melies titled Gugusse et l'Automate (Gugusse and the Automaton). Made nearly 130 years ago, the film depicts a child-sized robot clown that grows to adult size and attacks a human clown with a stick, who then destroys the machine with a hammer. Library of Congress curator Jason Evans Groth identified it as probably the first instance of a robot captured in moving image, predating the word "robot" by 24 years. The film arrived at the Library's conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia, donated by Michigan resident Bill McFarland, whose great-grandfather William Frisbee collected films and projectors in the late 19th century to share with audiences across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York.

Read at www.npr.org