Robot's from Argentina. During the last few decades, toy robots have regained popularity because of the new impulse given by collectible space items. The Buenos Aires Toy Museum holds a spectacular collection of robots made or found in Argentina, as well as a very interesting input of information on the subject. This huge task of collecting and searching information is the result of a very hard work carried on by our team of specialists. It may seem simple to define a robot, most of us would describe the first of those metallic invented creatures as one, though it's quite more complicated to come up with a general definition for robots, since there are quite a lot of variations and differences among them, which make much more complicated to come up with a general definition. The word Robot became popular in 1922 when the Czech writer Karel Capek used it in his play R.U.R to refer to a bunch of animated creatures -created by the leading man of the story- whose main task was to work. Etymologically the word meant slave or servant in Czech, but it was redefined because of this new meaning as a servant or salve that was specially created to work instead of its creator. As a general approach to the subject we can say that robots are machines or devices that move independently, they might be defined as a combined and mechanical system of computation and sensors that receive information through various means in order to act on it through pre-established technical or physical maneuvers. Nowadays there are many types of robots that adjust to this general definition. For example androids; these look alike humans, are what we usually refer to as robots. However there are much more robots than we acknowledge as such, take for example the mobiles, these machinery that has the ability to move from one place to another independently of an immediate indication from outside, are also robots in spite of the fact that they don' t have any esthetical similarity to humans. The medical ones are specially prosthesis control systems. And the industrial robots, very common in these days, are machinery specially designed to carry on pre-established tasks within the working places. In spite of all the esthetic and functional differences, all these robots share a common origin and mechanism. It's quite interesting to find scale reproductions of each and every one of these robots with which millions of children play and that many adults collect because of their cultural, historical and esthetic value. Regarding robots history, it was very common to hear during the fifties that by the next millenium there would be intelligent creatures created by man. This hasn't happened, nonetheless the amount of scientific progress in this field it's bringing much closer the possibility of that to happen. As it happens in every other aspect of life, toys have reflected the boom of robots. At first the design of these toys showed hard angled lines using clockwork mechanisms. Japanese wind-up tin robots from early 30s and 40s are the last expression of that esthetic trend in robot design. These toys were mostly made in tin, though it was during mid 50s and 60s when plastic became the newest material in toy manufacturing, and was also incorporated into the toy robot production and design. During was is commonly known as the Atomic Era and -may be- as a reflection of the competition between the US and the URSS those hard lines in the design of toy robots were left behind, now they used rounded edges and smoother lines, plus this toys had become battery operated. It was during the sixties when these androids appearance evolved into more human features, but paradoxically it was also then when the demand for these kind of toys dropped dramatically. Email: The Buenos Aires Toy Museum,Bob Frassinetti. The Buenos Aires Toy Museum,Argentina. Bob Frassinetti. Copyright 2005 and updated 2009. Roberto Dario Frassinetti.