Before the computer age, we already had robots.

Well... sort of.

Long before microchips, electricity, or even the idea of a digital computer,
people were building astonishing mechanical machines out of gears, cams, springs,
weights, water, and clockwork.

They built machines that could calculate. Machines that tracked the movement of
the planets. Mechanical figures that moved and performed. Clocks that put on whole
little shows. Automata that could draw pictures, write messages, or imitate human
movement.

Some of these things were ridiculously complicated.

And that is one of the coolest parts of the history of computing: automation did
not begin with computers. Computers are just the latest chapter in a much older
human obsession.

For centuries we have looked at some repetitive, complicated, or seemingly
magical task and thought, "I wonder if I can build a machine that does that."

First we did it with water and weights.
Then gears and clockwork.
Then punched media and mechanical calculators.
Then relays.
Then vacuum tubes.
Then transistors.
Then integrated circuits.

And now billions of microscopic switches can run software those early mechanical
engineers could never have imagined.

But I think they would have understood the impulse immediately.

Build the mechanism correctly, give it a set of rules, start the machine, and
watch it do something by itself.

There is a straight conceptual line from a clockmaker arranging cams and gears to
somebody sitting at a Commodore 128 typing BASIC and telling a machine what to do.

Different technology. Same wonderfully nerdy idea.