USPTO
The image above is the first ever patent containing the word ‘robot’.
On October 20, 1936, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Frederick A. Fowler for a ‘robot navigator’.
The hardware patented, although not being very anthropomorphic or groundbreaking, was a design for a robot map, with crosshair wires that would slide along its interior surface, updating its current position by triangulating incoming radio signals.
The device would have been backlit by lightbulbs and was primarily intended for use on airships.
This was, basically, a very early and very steampunk GPS navigation system.
The use of the word roboto might be a bit strong, however a lightbox with a crosshair element that’s triggered by a sensor input that moves itself by way of gears is pretty close, for 1936.
Unfortunately, the network of "so-called radio broadcasting or beacon stations sending out so-called selected waves or impulses" that Fowler envisioned never came to fruition in the way he had hoped, and the issue was patented less than a year before the Hindenburg disaster. So out went that idea.
Another interesting patent lies before this though, one from 1898 by a certain Nikola Tesla. Although not using the word ‘robot’, Tesla’s ‘teleautomanton’ was practically a robotic design, a remote-controlled boat of sorts.
It would seem we’ve always be clamouring to give control of vehicles or transportation apparatus to machines for the sake of putting our feet up. If only Tesla could be alive now to see those snoozy airline pilots catching up on their 40 winks at 40,000 feet high.
