Early robots could smoke cigarettes, pour tea...and shoot guns

1934 Shoppers listen to a fortune-telling robot in Selfridges department store in London. Image: London Express/Getty Images The word “robot” first entered the public imagination in 1921, when it was coined by Czech writer Karel Capek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Derived from the Czech word “robota,” meaning “compulsory labor,” the robots in Capek’s play revolutionize the economy with their work, but eventually take over the world and cause the extinction of th...