Talk:Elektro

Do you reckon that Elektro had any kind of processing power? I know this was very rare at the time, seeing as the world's computers took up a whole room, but what was it that made him respond to certain electric impulses? or was it simply a combination of fuses? This is something I'd like to know.

Also, this robot looks so damn creepy. Imagine seeing that thing for the first time in real life. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.228.98.168 (talk) 03:28, 26 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Almost no processing power at all. Command recognition was done by counting the number of words in the command (which had to be spoken with pauses). So "Come. Here." would make Elektro move forward. But so would "Brown. Cow." or any other two-word phrase. --ABehrens (talk) 04:01, 25 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the expansion. I changed 1950s->fifties, etc, since that is what I see most often on WP. It doesn't matter to me.

I'm not sure what the difference here is between "Elektro" the name versus "Elektro" the nickname. Did Westinghouse give it an official name? If so, it should be mentioned. If not, "Elektro" is in fact the name.

Did Elektro tour North America? Or just the U.S. and Canada?

I put back the "Thinko" name. See [1] for some outtakes.--192.35.35.34 15:09, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's premature for the page, but the director of the museum, Scott Schaut has a forthcoming book on Elektro: The Robots of Westinghouse.--192.35.35.36 18:25, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Does the last existing one still work?

Are there no public domain or reprintable pictures of this robot in the entire world? I know that pictures were released to the press in 1939 and 1940. The robot appeared on the covers of magazines and World Fair publications. Someone post a picture. --Drvanthorp 06:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)]]Reply

There's high-quality color video of Elektro at the 1939 World's Fair in Westinghouse's film, The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939). The whole act, as done at the Fair, is shown. A good color still could be extracted from that, if someone reads in the MPEG2 version into something that can work with such files. It's public domain material. --John Nagle (talk) 06:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

• Tidy up
• Update if possible
• Copyedit
• Reassess once work completed

Chaosdruid (talk) 17:07, 20 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

The rediscovery link is dead and the Web Archive didn't grab a copy. Here's another Jack Weeks page the archive did grab. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070715224634/http://www.maser.org/k8rt/ Bizzybody (talk) 07:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)Reply

If I'm not mistaken, there was more than one sparko. We know what happened to one, hit by a car before the fair even started, got out the storeroom and because of its programming to chase lights, it saw the headlights, chased after them and was destroyed. However because there was multiple nothing is known about the fate of the others 220.236.0.90 (talk) 00:31, 9 October 2022 (UTC)Reply