The Pre-History of Imaginary Robots: Electric Deer, 1892

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 2566

Rebecca Onion at Slate Vault surfaced this very interesting image of electric breath on her twitter account (@Slate Vault), showing early robotic creatures alive and well and living in the minds of thousands of young kids, placed their partially by stories like this found in the pulpy pages of Frank Tousey's Pluck and Luck in 1892. The image  (from the special collections library at the University of South Florida (here)) shows yet another work of genius/ingenuity by the endlessly adventurous "Jack Wright" a boy inventor, who seemingly went everywhere, did everything, and had the stuff to make it all happen.

I've posted¹ many times on this blog about 19th century imaginary robotics, and had not seen this Wright story and his fabulous "electric deers". 

This Jack Wright adventure was written by "Noname", who turns out to be by Luis Senarens (1863-1939)², a very prolific and early sci-fi writer, a Brooklyn boy, who had been referred to as an American version of Jules Verne.  Senarens wrote beginning in the 1880's and was no doubt much taken by the new applications of electricity, and Senarens applied it quite liberally. In a quick browse, he introduced electricity inventively, sprinkling it liberally over powered machinery and introducing his own electric ocean liners, submarines, sledge boats, canoes, air-schooners, locomotives, balloon ships, torpedo rams, horses, and no doubt much else. I'm glad to have caught up to Mr. Senarens' robots.

 Notes:

1. Just search "robot" in the google search box at upper right.
2. See the Edward T. LeBlanc Memorial Dime Novel Collection for very much expanded info on this and other series:  https://dimenovels.org/Series/734/Show