After a 10 year break, Elektro - the talking and smoking robot returns to public eye

 


Elektro walks, smokes, counts to 10 on his fingers, speaks 77 words, and even distinguishes colors.

A star performer at the New Yotk World's Fair 1939-1940, the seven-foot-tall, 260-pound aluminum robot returned to the public eye after a 10 year break. His new role is to framtatize the possibilities of Westinghouse controls for automatic machines at the 1949 Pittsburgh Industrial Exposition. Elektro responds to an attendant's commands, spoken into a microphone or given by flashing a light.

Through 83 relays in his electrical "brain", these commands trigger 11 electric motors that work his mechanical "muscles" and turntables containing his vocabulary. An aluminum dog named Sparko performs with him.