robot etymology in dispute? (not by much)

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:30 PM -0500 3/7/02, AAllan at AOL.COM wrote:
>It's a good thing somebody wrote this book that tells the story:
>
>_The World in So Many Words_ by Allan Metcalf (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) in the
>entry for Czech:
>
>Czech: robot
>
>    The Frankenstein monster of 19th century science, brought to life in Mary
>Shelley's novel of that name, was an English creation in a Swiss setting. The
>monster of 20th century science, the robot, was a Czech creation in an
>English setting.

Note also the legends of the Golem, a monster of 16th century Jewish
folklore, who himself comes from Prague (back before there was a
Czechoslovakia).  The Golem was a creature conjured up by Rabbi Loew
of Prague using Kabbalistic methodology who is infused with life by
supernatural (rather than, as with Frankenstein, scientific) means to
save the Jewish community and then (like Frankenstein's creature and
various robots) goes out of control.  Supposedly the story of the
Golem underlies many of the sci-fi robot stories, including Asimov's,
and also influenced Norbert Wiener and other early cyber-pioneers in
their views of the possibilities and dangers of artificial
intelligence.  There's a great German expressionist silent movie from
maybe the early 1920's called Der Golem.

larry