plasticular inscriptor

Today is the birthday of Karel Čapek, who is attributed with popularizing the term “robot,” which he introduced in his 1921 play “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (or R.U.R.). He gives credit to his brother Josef for inventing the word, which has its roots in the Slovak word robota which translates literally to “serf labor.” Čapek is a fairly well known science fiction writer. Of note is one of my favorites, War with the Newts, in which a species of intelligent newts are enslaved by the humans but eventually rebel and take over the world (I always thought Vonnegut had to have read that one). Happy birthday robots everywhere!