I was watching the Apple TV+’s show Foundation based on Isaac Asimov’s books and it reminded me of a story about the origin of the Laws of Robotics. More precisely, I tried to remember what the story was. I googled:
Who Created the Laws of Robotics?
Without surprise, the answer is Isaac Asimov. And it was a bit disconcerting that I didn’t immediately find out more about what inspired him. I had to dig a little deeper (not a lot) to find what I was searching for.
The story of Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics didn’t start with him by himself thinking that his robots needed some rules to follow. But first:
What are the Laws of Robotics?
Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics are also called the Three Laws of Robotics.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Where do the Laws of Robotics come from?
The Three Laws of Robotics were first introduced in Asimov’s 1942 short story “Runaround,” published in an issue of Astounding Science Fiction—and later collected in I, Robot (1950), The Complete Robot (1982), and Robot Visions (1990).
The story is about Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan—two of Asimov’s recurring characters—and Robot SPD-13, also known as “Speedy.” They are sent to Mercury to restart operations at a mining station that was abandoned ten years before. Soon, things get complicated and, when Speedy disappears, Powell and Donovan try to understand what happened. This leads to an examination of the influence of the Laws of Robotics on Speedy’s reactions.
What was the inspiration behind the Laws of Robotics?
Isaac Asimov thought that the laws were so obvious he shouldn’t be praised for creating them. He may be right about that. But he is the one who wrote them anyway.
The story began in May 1939, as he joined a meeting of the Queens Science Fiction Society. There, he met comic book writer Otto Binder and his brother Earl. Under the Eando Binder name, they published short stories like the ones featuring a heroic robot named Adam Link. The first was titled “I, Robot*.” It was about the famous Adam Link robot who wrote his confessions after being falsely accused of murdering his creator.
* It’s the publisher who decided to name “I, Robot” the collection of Asimov’s Robot stories. He objected, but the title stayed anyway.
I, Robot by Eando Binder
This story inspired Asimov to write “Robbie,” and to try to get it published by Astounding Science-Fiction. The magazine editor, Joseph W Campbell, rejected it because he thought it was too similar to 1938 Lester del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy”—about a robot falling in love with one of its creators. Frederik Pohl didn’t have the same objections and published the story under the title “Strange Playfellow” in Super Science Stories (September 1940).
It was the beginning of the Robot series, but not of the laws. They came after a conversation with another science-fiction writer, John W. Campbell (known for his novella “Who Goes There?” aka The Thing). Campbell helped Asimov to formulate his ideas, a collaboration later described as “a symbiotic partnership between the two men.” Campbell refused to take credit because Asimov already had the laws in his mind and just needed help to formulate them.
Even if the conversation between Asimov and Campbell took place at the end of 1940, the laws were not introduced immediately. After “Robbie,” two more stories were published—“Liar!” (1941) and “Reason” (1941)—before “Runaround” in 1942.
Since then, a LOT has been written about the laws. Some refined them, some examined them extensively, some dismissed them. They certainly found a place in pop culture, but also in science as the ones who work on the development of robots can’t ignore them. In fact, Asimov’s work is an inspiration for those who see robots everywhere in our lives in the future.
It seems that more people ask “who invented electricity?” than “who discovered electricity?” There’s a difference between inventing and discovering, but there’s also a difference between discovering the existence of electricity and the invention of technic to produce it.
What is electricity?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines electricity this way:
a fundamental form of energy observable in positive and negative forms that occurs naturally (as in lightning) or is produced (as in a generator) and that is expressed in terms of the movement and interaction of electrons.
a science that deals with the phenomena and laws of electricity
Who discovered electricity?
The best way is to begin with the natural occurrence of electricity. In that domain, the Greeks seem to take the first place (not Benjamin Franklin, he’ll come way later in history). In fact, the word “electricity” comes from the Greek elektron which means “amber,” because they rubbed amber with fur and observed the attraction of feathers and other objects. That was the discovery of static electricity—this phenomenon was not perceived as connected to the electric current until the 19th century.
It was in about 600 BC. With time, researchers and archeologists discovered what they believe may have been ancient batteries meant to produce light at ancient Roman sites, but also in archeological digs leading to Persians artefacts.
Who invented electricity?
The famous Ben Franklin’s kite experiment—with a kite, a key, and a storm—occurred in 1752. It proved that lightning and electric sparks were connected. But it didn’t lead to the use of the word “electricity.’ That came even before. English physician William Gilbert used the Latin word ‘electricus’ in the year 1600 to describe the product of that first Greek experiment. And a few years later, another English scientist, Thomas Browne, used the word ‘electricity’ in a paper in which he talked about his research based on William Gilbert’s work. That said, Franklin’s work inspired a lot of Europeans.
Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky (1816)
English scientists were really dedicated to exploring the possibilities of electricity. In the early 1700s, Francis Hauksbee invented the first electrostatic generator based on German scientist Otto von Guericke’s invention—it was a primitive form of the frictional electrical machine. But it’s another discussion, one about lamps.
Francis Hauksbee was a member of The Royal Society—formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge—as was William Nicholson who, with surgeon Anthony Carlisle, discovered electrolysis in May 1800, the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen by voltaic current. This led Italian physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to the discovery of the voltaic pile, a battery. That’s why batteries are rated in volts.
Englishman Michael Faraday is also famous for the construction of a voltaic pile, one with seven British halfpenny coins stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water—as it was learned in 1812. A few years later, in 1821, after the Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Faraday built devices to produce what he called ‘electromagnetic rotation’—one of these is known as the homopolar motor, and helped build the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. These discoveries can’t all be credited to Faraday though. He based his work on the failed experiments of William Hyde Wollaston and Humphry Davy, fellow members of the Royal Society.
Michael Faraday English Scientist is a drawing by Mary Evans
But Faraday didn’t stop there. He explored the electromagnetic properties of materials, worked with light and magnets, and more. In 1831, he discovered electromagnetic induction—the production of an electromotive force across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field. What he established was then modeled mathematically by James Clerk Maxwell as Faraday’s law. This discovery leads Faraday to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators and the electric motor. Finally, Faraday established that only a single ‘electricity’ exists—at that time, it was thought that there was more than one.
Faraday was not the only one influenced by Hans Christian Ørsted’s discovery. Another one was André-Marie Ampère, a French physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as ‘electrodynamics.’ For him, it really started when his friend François Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the discovery made by Ørsted. After that, Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism. He showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively. This is what laid the foundation of electrodynamics and, of course, Ampère’s law, which states that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and the intensities of their currents. The base unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI) was subsequently named after him—the ‘ampere’ or ‘amp.’
In 1826, German physicist Georg Ohm defined the relationship between power, voltage, current, and resistance in what is now known as ‘Ohm’s Law.’ That’s why the ohm became the basic unit for resistance.
Really, the late 19th century saw the greatest progress in electrical engineering. As you may have noticed, I avoided talking about lights, and more precisely the light bulb, because it will be the subject of another article. For now, let’s go back to electricity.
James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish scientist who specialized in the field of mathematical physics. In 1865, he published ‘A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,’ a paper on electromagnetism in which he derived an electromagnetic wave equation with a velocity for light in close agreement with measurements made by experiment, and deduced that light is an electromagnetic wave. Basically, he demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves move at the speed of light. His work made him a founder of the modern field of electrical engineering.
It certainly influenced German physicist Heinrich Hertz who, in 1886, was the first to conclusively prove the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism. Hertz’s proof of the existence of airborne electromagnetic waves led to an explosion of experimentation with this new form of electromagnetic radiation, which was called ‘Hertzian waves.’ That was until the 1910s when the term ‘radio waves’ became current.
Other discoveries were made after that. A lot. We will explore those subjects in subsequent articles.
The Commercial Electricity
Discoveries, theories, and experiments had to lead somewhere. We needed practical uses of electricity. Michael Faraday’s power generator set the stage for an electrical revolution—this is where the history of the light bulb became important. Having light bulbs was useless unless you had a practical source of energy to power them. Thomas Edison wanted to provide that. In order to make electricity practical and inexpensive. In 1882, he built the first electric power plant that was able to produce electricity, the Pearl Street generating station’s electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts of direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.
Nikola Tesla
By working in Paris with the Continental Edison Company, Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla gained a lot of practical experience in electrical engineering. Soon, he started to design and build updated versions of generating dynamos and motors. In 1884, he moved to the United States with the help of his manager, Charles Batchelor. He ended up working on street lighting but quit after six months with the company. That didn’t stop his work and his new systems didn’t go unnoticed. Nevertheless, investors were not interested in his ideas for new types of alternating current (AC) motors and electrical transmission equipment.
Thomas Edison’s direct current had limitations that were overcome by the AC. In fact, in Europe, the AC power system was developed and adopted rapidly after 1886. In the US, Edison tried to discredit alternating currents as too dangerous in a public campaign called the ‘war of the currents.’ But progress can’t be stopped and, in 1888, alternating current systems gained further viability with the introduction of a functional AC motor—Nikola Tesla’s design for an induction motor was one of them. With Thomas Edison leaving the electric power business, direct current lost the war, and, by October 1890, Edison Machine Works began developing AC-based equipment. Mergers, patents, and other financial deals pushed AC power to the front. Well into the 20th century, some cities still used DC, but most adopted AC quickly.
A lot of people contributed to the ‘invention’ of electricity as we think of it today. Now, the difficulty is to produce more and more of it. That leads to new inventions!
During its first years, American Television was live from New York—or at least from a studio located on the East Coast. The first famous golden age was about live drama anthologies, but they disappeared quickly when Hollywood took over and everything was put on film.
There were exceptions, of course, I Love Lucy and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, for example, comedies with laughs to make you laugh. The shows were filmed before a Live Studio audience or filmed and projected to a laughing audience that was then recorded.
When I was writing about the invention of dynamite, I discovered that the same person behind the explosive substance was also behind the famous prize. At that time, I left a note to myself to write about the Nobel prize! So now, finally, I’m doing it.
The Idea Behind the Nobel Prize
Born in 1833, Alfred Nobel became known as a gifted chemist, refining his skills through education in Russia, Paris, and the US. His breakthrough came with his idea to control the volatile substance called nitroglycerin, paving the way for the invention of dynamite. A tragic explosion at his nitroglycerin factory, resulting in deaths, compelled Nobel to seek even safer alternatives, eventually leading to the creation of blasting gelatin and smokeless powder.
I’m not an astronomy aficionado. In fact, I can’t identify any constellation. I find the subject interesting as much as it is overwhelming, and that’s probably why I never really took the time to familiarize myself with all the wonders in the sky.
That said, even if I’m not invested in the space news, I heard about the Pluto confusion (I’m into science fiction, after all, space is in my life in some way). At one point, I just asked myself what it was all about and that led me on the path to learning about the discovery of Pluto and everything else. So, let’s start at the beginning:
I recently rewatched the documentary Obit. (2016) about the people at the New York Times who wrote the obituaries. I find it entertaining and inspirational at some levels.
During an explanation about how the length of the article is decided, someone says that the inventor of the Slinky and Borbatchev wouldn’t get the same word count as one had a bigger impact on the world, but that doesn’t mean that both can’t be interesting subjects for articles. I didn’t know who invented the Slinky, so now I need to know!
I recently read “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov. At the beginning of the book, there is an essay by Asimov about science in science-fiction and the place of the robot in it—basically. It’s a short but interesting text and I dug a little deeper to learn more about robots.
Who Created the Robot?
First, what are we talking about when it comes to robots? According to Merriam-Webster, a robot is:
